Appeal No. 96-1343
Application 07/993,225
producing action to a user, and (c) providing to said user a
selection of whether said message should be provided to said user
upon future occurrences of said detected message producing
action. Independent claim 9 contains similar limitations in
means plus function format.
In rejecting the appealed claims as being anticipated by
Obata, the examiner has taken the position that Obata meets step
(c) because
Obata teaches awaiting a “choice selection” in which a
message is displayed and the skill level is decreased
if the user does not input a valid selection within a
predetermined time interval.
Thus, Obata does teach providing to a user a
“selection of whether a message should be provided upon
future occurrences of an action that produces the
message” because based upon the user’s “choice
selection”, the skill level of the user is determined.
The skill level in turn determines whether the message
should be displayed on future occurrences because as
the user’s skill level increases, the time interval
increases, such that messages take longer to be
displayed. Hence, the user is offered discretion over
displaying messages in the future by the speed in which
he/she makes a selection. In other words, the user
makes a selection of sooner versus later for displaying
future messages by the quickness of his/her response.
[answer, page 5; emphasis added]
We appreciate the point the examiner is making, namely, that
Obata’s delaying of the display of the message, coupled with the
user’s control over the length of the delay by inputting a valid
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