Appeal 2007-1401
Application 09/882,094
Id., citing In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2006)
(“[R]ejections on obviousness grounds cannot be sustained by mere conclusory
statements; instead, there must be some articulated reasoning with some rational
underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness”). However, “the
analysis need not seek out precise teachings directed to the specific subject matter
of the challenged claim, for a court can take account of the inferences and creative
steps that a person of ordinary skill in the art would employ.” Id.
ANALYSIS
The Appellants argue that Huang does not disclose part data and that the
DSS support thread 40 relied upon by the Examiner does not teach or suggest
extracting part data (Br. 4). The Examiner responds that Huang discloses a second
storage area in its database 12 involving part data and that the process of Huang
would not function if the support thread 40 was incapable of extracting data
(Answer 4-6).
Huang discloses a system for supporting management decisions associated
with manufacturing of service supply chains (Finding of Fact 1). Huang’s system
interfaces with supply chain information systems 15 through data exchanges
between these systems and a database 12 (Findings of Fact 2, 3). Huang’s system
invokes a decision support thread 40 to capture and process a user’s decision
support request (Finding of Fact 4). Huang discloses that the database 12 includes
process information, which is dynamic and includes a ProductID and a Date
Created (Findings of Fact 5, 6, 7, 17). As such, Huang discloses a database with a
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