Appeal 2007-0459
Application 10/285,927
Claims 1-8 and 14-30
We consider first the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-8 and 14-30 as
being anticipated by Liddy. Since Appellants’ arguments with respect to
this rejection have treated these claims as a single group which stand or fall
together, we will select independent claim 1 as the representative claim for
this rejection. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii)(2004).
Appellants argue that Liddy does not teach an agent that generates an
augmented search, performs the search, and retrieves a result, as required by
the language of independent claim 1 (Br. 11, emphasis in original).
Appellants acknowledge that Liddy generates, sorts, ranks, and displays
documents automatically (Br. 11). However, Appellants maintain that Liddy
does not teach or suggest a single component (i.e., an agent) that performs
the claimed functions (Br. 12, emphasis added).
The Examiner disagrees. The Examiner argues that Liddy’s Query
Processor (QP) automatically constructs a logical representation of the
natural language query (col. 19, ll. 30-32). The Examiner notes that the user
is not required to annotate the query (col. 19, ll. 30-32). The Examiner
further notes that Liddy’s system “automatically sorts, ranks and displays
documents judged relevant to the content of the query …” (col. 3, ll. 42-45).
The Examiner also points out that Liddy’s server may itself act in the
capacity of a client when it accesses remote databases (col. 5, lines 29-31)
(Answer 13).
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102, a single prior art reference
that discloses, either expressly or inherently, each limitation of a claim
invalidates that claim by anticipation. Perricone v. Medicis Pharmaceutical
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