Appeal No. 2002-0799
Application No. 08/947,435
particular folder class” (answer-page 18). Of course, even if something is “possible,”
this is not a valid line of reasoning that may lead to a conclusion of obviousness under
35 U.S.C. §103.
The examiner says that Zarmer does not explicitly indicate a method to link the
imported documents in a folder but finds that the skilled artisan would have found it
obvious “to construct a folder for linking imported documents to avoid processing of the
documents that are already registered in a database but process the ones that are
imported or newly arrived and thus improve system performance. It would have been
within the general knowledge of a person of ordinary skill to use a data, for instance
today’s date, as an attribute to do so” (answer-page 18). This sounds like a classic
case of hindsight to us since the examiner’s reasoning appears to be tantamount to
saying that something would have been obvious merely because appellants have done
it, with no convincing support from anything in the prior art for doing what appellants
have done. Of course, the examiner may be correct that system performance is
improved, but it appears from the record that appellants are the only ones suggesting
the claimed invention.
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