Appeal No. 2002-1777 Page 8
Application No. 08/953,219
"In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. Section 103, the examiner bears the initial
burden of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness." In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531,
1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993)(citing In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443,
1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992)). "'A prima facie case of obviousness is
established when the teachings from the prior art itself would . . . have suggested the
claimed subject matter to a person of ordinary skill in the art.'" In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781,
783, 26 USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir. 1993) (quoting In re Rinehart, 531 F.2d 1048,
1051, 189 USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA 1976)).
Here, the examiner fails to allege, let alone show, that the addition of Keith cures
the aforementioned deficiency of Sotheran. Absent a teaching or suggestion of
reorganizing sections of data wherein one of the sections is reorganized in a way
independent of a temporal decoding relationship between that section and the other
sections being reorganized, the examiner fails to present a prima facie case of
obviousness. Therefore, we reverse the obviousness rejection of claims 5 and 18-20.
Second, the examiner asserts, "figure 33 describes the start and end of token
which refers to maintaining segments location information." (Examiner's Answer at 9.)
The appellants argue, "the disclosure in Sotheran is directed to objects that are placed
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