Appeal No. 95-4356
Application 08/133,821
to it (icons 45 and 51, respectively). Although icons 45 and
51 are not displayed on the same menu bar in Fleming, claim 16
does not require this limitation. The icons 45 and 51 in
Fleming are selected, tested and a message is broadly sent to
the assigned object as recited in claim 16. In our view,
claim 16 is broad enough to be suggested by the teachings of
Fleming taken alone so that IBM and the IBM Guide are
considered unnecessary to meet the invention as recited in
claim 16.
Appellants argue that Fleming et al. "do not teach an
ability to have multiple icons representing different objects
nor do they teach replacing the action list pull-down menus
with object invocation via a message" [brief, page 11]. As
noted above, however, Fleming does teach a plurality of
objects each of which has an assigned icon as recited in claim
16. We also agree with the examiner that claim 16 is not
limited to the replacement of action list pull-down menus with
object invocation via a message.
For all the reasons discussed above, we consider the
invention of claim 16 to be sufficiently broad that it would
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