Appeal No. 97-0628
Application 07/992,428
It is improper to generalize claim features to some broader
concept and then only attempt to find the broad concept in the
prior art. It is the claimed invention which must be examined.
The examiner stated (answer at 4):
Chang and Morita teach the step/means for assigning a
weight factor to a keyword (see Chang Col. 2, lines 22-
25, and 30-45; col.7, line 40 to col. 10, line 30 and
see Morita, col. 2, lines 39-43, col. 3, lines 9-16 and
col. 6, lines 39-40). It would have been obvious to
one skilled in the art to include the teaching of Chang
and Morita in the Reed's system. This is because both
Chang and Morita teach or suggest the use of weight
factor assigned to each keyword by a user so that to
enhance the user's power in controlling the searching
process.
The appellants contend that Chang's weighing factors are
relevance factors which concern the relative ranking of the
retrieved articles rather than weighing factors which are
attached to a keyword and associated topic for categorizing the
subject matter of the articles (Br. at 14). The appellants are
partially wrong but also partially right. In column 7, Chang
lists five attributes which a user may control within the
weighing or ranking process, one of which is Importance --
Relative weight of the term assigne[d] by the user. It can be
said that a weighing factor is assigned to keywords. However,
the claims call for attaching a weighing factor to each "tag" and
a "tag" is assigned to a pair of associated topic and keyword.
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