Appeal 2007-2128
Application 09/757,006
to retrieve and record media files on a removable storage medium, so that
they are played back in the manner of a slideshow. (Id.)
Claim 87 is drawn to a “graphical user interface.” The interface
includes a control element that causes an icon to be displayed in said defined
area onto which the user can drag and drop image files. The graphical user
interface does not record anything on a removable storage medium. The
graphical user interface does not present anything on a media playback
device. The use of icons for managing computer files was (and is) widely
known; see, e.g., “Recycle Bin” in Figure 2 of MS Win. MS Win and Yang
establish that the ordinary artisan was well acquainted with the use of icons
to represent what a user may wish to do with files, as represented by the
dragging and dropping of icons on a graphical user interface. Although
claim 87 does not require any kind of a slideshow, Yang also demonstrates
that the artisan knew about storing image files on different types of storage
media, as the Examiner finds, and about presenting the files in the format of
a slideshow (e.g., Yang Figs. 6 and 26).
To be nonobvious, an improvement must be “more than the
predictable use of prior art elements according to their established
functions.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S. Ct. 1727, 1740, 82
USPQ2d 1385, 1396 (2007). Even if we presume that claim 87 requires
more than activation of a control element that causes display of an icon,1 the
1 The name given to the icon relates to nonfunctional descriptive material,
entitled to no patentable weight. The content of the nonfunctional
descriptive material carries no weight in the analysis of patentability over the
prior art. Cf. In re Ngai, 367 F.3d 1336, 1339, 70 USPQ2d 1862, 1864 (Fed.
Cir. 2004) (“‘[w]here the printed matter is not functionally related to the
7
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