Appeal No. 96-1928
Application 07/504,679
[sic] requires selectively expanding the fields.
The Examiner never says why selective expansion is
desirable or what problem it solves that is not
already solved by Vincent's Day Screen display of
all fields fully expanded. Vincent's solution
appears to work fine and be complete. [Principal
Brief on appeal, February 15, 1995, pages 13-14].
In fact, the combination does make the system
more complex, but does not solve any problem that
Vincent recognized. The problem that Vincent states
he is solving is to automatically generate the
month-at-a-glance screens from the day screen
without the user having to enter the information
twice. Appellant cannot find anywhere that Vincent
suggests the issue addressed by Heckel `857 -- the
ability to display a single record containing more
characters than can be displayed on a display screen
at one time -- is a problem. It appears that the
Examiner with hindsight has manufactured a problem
that does occur in Vincent to justify the
combination. Indeed, Vincent states this as a
virtue of their invention is that “The advantages of
these advances are that screen size does not have to
be increased” (Vincent: col. 2, lines 32-33).
Lacking a recognized problem, there is no incentive
to combine. [Reply Brief, July 3, 1995, pages
3 and 4].
Taking representative claim 95 as an example, the
examiner, at page 4 of the initial answer of April 28, 1995,
indicates that Vincent fails to teach certain aspects of this
claim. The examiner makes reference to column 1, lines 47-67
of Vincent allegedly isolating various deficiencies in this
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