Appeal No. 2006-2584
Application No. 09/797,754
Our reference to the cited portions of Spencer finds some measure of
importance of a “term” in a database, but not a measure of importance of a
“document,” as claimed. Moreover, we find nothing therein about a value
being a function of both usage data for the document and link information for
the document.
Spencer does appear to relate to “scoring” a document (column 1, lines
47-50, describing the background of the invention) and to measuring
significance of terms within a document based on usage, or “frequency” of
unique words (column 1, lines 33-36), but the examiner has made no
convincing showing of Spencer teaching or suggesting a value corresponding to
the importance of a document wherein that value is a function of both usage
data for the document and link information for the document.
Perhaps more importantly, the examiner has failed to cite any convincing
motivation for making the combination of Fish and Spencer. The statement of
rejection at page 9 of the answer merely cites certain portions of Spencer
without indicating what part of Fish is being relied on, without indicating why
the skilled artisan would have sought to modify Fish with any teaching of
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