Appeal No. 96-1349
Application 08/002,168
In summary, the examiner’s rejection of claims 1-3 and 5-
9 under 35 U.S.C. § 112 is not sustained.
We now consider the rejection of claims 1-3 and 5-9 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over the teachings of Davidson.
The examiner points out that Davidson normalizes a data structure
which is the purpose of appellant’s invention. The examiner
admits that “Davidson did not explicitly give details about
producing the normalized data structure by performing a logical
bitwise AND operation of the data structure with a template data
structure” [answer, page 5]. The examiner concludes, however,
that it would have been obvious to normalize a data structure in
this manner because it “would have performed a very efficient
comparison of the data structure than the marshalling mechanism”
which has the effect of “thereby increasing the overall
performance and reliability of the data structure comparison
mechanism” [answer, page 5].
Appellant responds that the examiner has failed to set
forth a prima facie case of obviousness. Appellant argues that
the examiner has modified the teachings of Davidson without any
suggestion from within the prior art. Appellant also argues that
Davidson discloses no template structure as claimed and suggests
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