Appeal No. 2001-1070
Application No. 08/678,781
each cell of the grid would contain only one character/numeral
. . . ” so that “the sums add up without error.”
Appellants argue (brief, pages 3 through 6) that the
examiner has not provided any evidence to support the assertion
concerning the ledger, that the examiner has not established any
error in the summation process described by Torres, and that any
modification to Torres’ teachings to limit each cell to only a
single character would alter the teachings and purpose of
Torres’s invention.
We agree with appellants’ arguments. In the absence of
evidence, we can not assess the propriety of the examiner’s
assertions. Even if it is true that ledger’s use only a single
character per cell, we must nevertheless agree with the
appellants that the movement of the “1,” for example, from the
cell 26 would indeed alter the teachings of Torres because “5 ”
is not the sum of all of the numbers in column 22 (Figure 6).
Any modification to Torres that limits each cell to a single
character would indeed lead to an error in the summation process.
In summary, the obviousness rejection of claims 1 through
16 is reversed because the applied references neither teach nor
would have suggested each cell being able to contain “no more
than a single character.”
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