Appeal No. 2002-0556
Application No. 09/177,960
Appellants argue (brief, pages 5 and 6) that the examiner is
using impermissible hindsight reconstruction to arrive at the
claimed invention, that the skilled artisan would have to ignore
all of the teachings of Steele to make the suggested combination of
reference teachings, that the replacement of Steele’s elevator
display with a hierarchy-dependent display would effectively
replace Steele’s teachings in their entirety, and that “neither
Steele nor the IBM TDB, individually or collectively, teach or
suggest the sequential display of a first sequence of icons in a
first field, and a sequential display of a second sequence of icons
in a second field, as specifically taught and claimed by the
Applicants.”
We agree with the examiner’s reasoning that the display screen
anti-clutter teachings of the IBM TDB would have suggested to the
skilled artisan that the icons in Figure 7A of Steele be placed in
a timed loop in the displayed field, and that the icons in Figure
7B of Steele be placed in a timed loop in a displayed field after
the “things” icon is selected by the user. The modified teachings
of Steele would indeed be changed from a cluttered static display
to an uncluttered display as taught by the IBM TDB. Appellants’
arguments to the contrary notwithstanding, the examiner had no need
to resort to impermissible hindsight to demonstrate the obviousness
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