Appeal No. 95-3175
Application 08/124,361
Every obviousness determination is based on the four factual inquiries of Graham v. John Deere
Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17, 148 USPQ 459, 467 (1966): (1) the scope and content of the prior art;
(2) differences between the prior art and the claimed invention; (3) level of ordinary skill in the art; and
(4) any objective evidence such as commercial success, failure of others, long-felt need, and unexpected
results.
Scope and content of the prior art
Webb discloses a menu-driven system for maintaining expense records. The system "can be
tailored to operate in several environments such as a lap computer, desk-top computer, pocket calculator
or mainframe computer" (column 1, lines 28-31). The system has a display and keyboard for manual
entering of information and inherently has "a microcomputer, a real time clock, and random access
memory," as recited in claim 15. "Manual data entry can be accomplished on hardware integral to the
storage and calculating system or through external hardware interfaced to a computing system, such as a
modem or cellular telephone" (column 1, lines 34-37), which suggests that information can be transferred
to an external computer. Webb also discloses that "[d]ata can be provided to a disc memory" (column 1,
line 68), which would permit the disc to be taken to another computer. The system has twelve modular
expense routines for manually entering both vehicular information "including data regarding cumulative
vehicle travel mileage and vehicle operating expenses" (figure 1: mileage module 11, fuel module 15, tolls
module 17, miscellaneous module 18) and non-vehicular information "including travel expenses" (figure 1:
meals module 12, lodging module 13, etc.). "The user can enter unique identifying titles and descriptive
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