Appeal No. 95-3744
Application 08/084,838
beyond the viewport boundary determines the speed at which the world-plane image will be
panned [column 1, line 64 to column 2, line 5]. Steele teaches a graphical user interface in which
a dragged icon will be returned to its “home” position when it has been moved a small distance
with respect to its size [column 9, lines 6-10].
Appellant argues that Yanker’s cursor 50 is not part of the viewport, and the Yanker cursor
does not have a home position [brief, page 5]. The examiner responds that the entire viewport 40
is considered to be the claimed home position, and that this interpretation meets the language of
claim 1. Although we can agree with the examiner that Yanker can be interpreted in this manner,
such interpretation does not suggest the claimed invention.
Claim 1 recites that the scroll direction must be in the same composite direction that the
object is moved. Regardless of the direction in which the cursor 50 of Yanker is moved outside
the viewport 40 or home area, the pan occurs in either a horizontal direction or a vertical
direction depending on which boundary is closest to the cursor. The examiner has belatedly
argued that if the Yanker cursor were moved at a diagonal outside a corner of its home viewport,
it would cause scrolling both in a horizontal and vertical direction [answer, page 8]. We are
unable to find any support in Yanker for this assertion of the examiner. Yanker only desribes
panning in a single direction toward the closest boundary. While in theory a movement of cursor
50 at a 45 degree angle away from one of the viewport corners would make two boundaries
equally close, Yanker never suggests this as a possibility. The examiner’s position is pure
speculation based on trying to achieve in hindsight what appellant has done. Thus, Yanker does
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Last modified: November 3, 2007