Appeal No. 95-1682
Application 07/853,459
many more that 10,000 bases. We note that Appellants
state on page 4 of the reply brief that claims 13 and 16 stand
or fall with claim 8. There- fore, we will sustain the
Examiner's rejection of Appellants' claims 8, 13 and 16.
In regard to claim 4, Appellants argue on pages 4-6
of the reply brief and pages 3-4 of the supplemental reply
brief that claim 4 distinguishes the teachings of Maizel and
Pustell by claiming "[a]pparatus for displaying similarities
between lines of text in a sequence of n lines of text."
Appellants argue that Pustell and Maizel compare elements that
are single characters (G,C,T,A) while Appellants’ claim 4
requires the elements to be lines of text.
However, the Examiner points out in the answer that
Pustell and Maizel teach the comparison of bases (G,C,T,A)
which are nucleotides. The Examiner argues that these nucleo-
tides are a sequence of characters that are a line of text.
We note that a claimed "line of text" does not
require that the line be made of words. Furthermore, Appel-
lants' claim language does not preclude the Examiner's inter-
pretation that a base (G,C,T or A) is a token repesenting a
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