Appeal No. 2004-0570
Application No. 09/425,532
data by human indexers” and “automatically extracting means for scanning the
textual data and extracting one or more indexing terms from the textual data and
suggesting the extracted indexing terms to the human indexer.” Thus, both
independent claims 1 and 11 require that the index terms are suggested to a
human indexer and that the index terms are assigned to the data by the human
indexer.
We disagree with the examiner’s assertion that Caid teaches that a human
performs the indexing. Rather, we find that column 12, lines 39 through 50 of
Caid, describe a system where the indexing is performed automatically, the
discussion of a human operator is by way of showing a process to be automated.
Caid states “[t]he information retrieval system described above can be used to
emulate the performance of the human editor in assigning such index terms.”
(Column 12 lines 44-46). Thus, while Caid acknowledges that human indexing
has been done in the past, we do not find that Caid teaches that the automatic
indexing should be replaced with human indexers as asserted by the examiner.
As we find that Caid teaches a system for automatic indexing, we do not find that
Caid teaches a concept extracting means which suggests extracted indexing
terms to a human indexer as is claimed. According, we will not sustain the
examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3, 5, 9, 11, 13 and 15 through 20 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over Zellweger in view of Caid.
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