Appeal No. 95-2429
Application No. 07/916,770
dictionary entry would have been obvious in view of the database
system of Simonetti. As noted above, appellants argue that the
artisan would not have appreciated that dictionary entries would
lend themselves to hierarchical data structures of the type
claimed. We agree. The claimed hierarchical data structures
have nothing to do with the “commonly known lexical order”
pointed to by the examiner. The hierarchy in the claimed
invention is established between the items which make up the
entry for a given dictionary entry (see Figures 2-5 which show
the relationship for a single dictionary entry). We agree with
appellants that such dictionary definitions are not normally
considered to be hierarchical in nature in the manner recited in
the claims. Therefore, the database of Simonetti would not have
suggested the hierarchical data structure of a dictionary entry
as recited in the claims.
Since both independent claims 1 and 22 recite the
specific features of data structures which are not taught or
suggested by the data structures of Simonetti, we do not sustain
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