Appeal No. 97-0628
Application 07/992,428
true as to claim 12's focus information regarding handicapped
individuals and claim 13's article topics selected from various
specific groups.
The examiner stated (answer at 4): "Kucera teaches the
step/means for assigning a tag to the keyword (cols. 1-2)." We
note, however, that the claimed invention calls for assignment of
a tag to the "associated topic and keyword." As is pointed out
by the appellants (Br. at 11), Kucera generates a sequence of
possible tags for each word in a sentence and then operates on
strings of tags of adjacent words to determine the probable tags
for each word, and each tag indicates a possible syntactic use of
the word. In the claimed invention, however, the tags are
assigned to a keyword and an associated topic for subsequent
assignment of a weighing factor. Kucera does not disclose
assigning a tag to any pair of associated topic and keyword, and
Kucera provides no reasonable motivation for one with ordinary
skill in the art to assign a tag to any pair of associated topic
and keyword. Kucera's focus is on syntactic use of words, not on
topics with which the words are associated. The examiner
erroneously concluded that Kucera's tag is functionally
equivalent to the claimed tag (answer at 6). Neither Kucera's
nor appellant's tag simply provides a mark or identifies a word.
-8-
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