Appeal 2007-1595
Application 09/751,858
1 Dependent claim 27 requires that drilling down result in correlating a number
2 of events with a number of employees. Baum describes correlating the number of
3 events with the number of data points (FF 19), which is related to the number of
4 machines. This would correspond to the number of employees in a similar
5 employee accident analysis. The use to which such an analysis might be applied
6 would be entirely a matter of the intent of the person directing the analysis, and the
7 claim limitation directing the analysis toward determining if the number of events
8 is proportional to the number of employees is no more than a field of use
9 limitation, which will not define the claim over the prior art.
10 Thus, all of the claimed subject matter in claims 1-21 and 27 are found within
11 the combined teachings of Baum, Jensen and Dix and one or ordinary skill in the
12 art would have been led by each to combine them together to form the claimed
13 subject matter.
14
15 CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
16 The Examiner has failed to show that the combined teachings of Jensen and
17 Pfeiffer describe all of the claimed subject matter. Accordingly we do not sustain
18 the Examiner's rejection of claims 1-21 and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
19 obvious over Jensen and Pfeiffer.
20 We enter a new ground of rejection under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) of claims 1-21
21 and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Baum, Jensen and Dix.
22
23 DECISION
24 To summarize, our decision is as follows:
19
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