Appeal No. 96-1988
Application No. 08/172,290
from the instant claimed invention in the Figure 8 showing of
upward flowing lines and crossing lines in a flowchart.
We agree with appellant in that it is the initial burden
of the examiner to specifically point out where each and every
one of the claimed limitations is taught by the reference if a
proper rejection under 35 U.S.C. 102(e) is to lie. The
examiner has pointed to nothing within the disclosure of
Marmelstein that persuades us that the reference contains a
teaching of the claimed downward flow and the claimed
prohibition of the crossing of two connecting flow forms.
Accordingly, we will not sustain the rejection of claims
1 through 3, 5 through 11 and 13 through 16 under 35 U.S.C.
102(e) over Marmelstein.
With regard to the rejection of the claims under 35
U.S.C. 103, the examiner admits [principal answer-page 5] that
Marmelstein "does not teach preventing construction of visible
crossing lines between icons." The examiner takes the
position, however, that it would have been obvious to
realize such flowchart connection enforcement and
the display of corresponding error messages because it
would have helped programmers to avoid some common program
syntax errors during the program flowchart construction
without having to compile the program...[principal answer-
page 5].
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