Appeal No. 96-3056
Application No. 08/173,287
selected in Baber is associated with a desired attendee,
meeting site and/or element of equipment rather than being
associated with the designated calendar event [brief, pages 5-
6]. The examiner responds with the following position:
[I]t is clear that all the information
in the database and the display of
Baber et al. is associated with all of
the other information. The term
“associated with” has no particular
meaning in the art, and as such,
Examiner has given a logical,
reasonable, broad interpretation to
the term [answer, page 7].
Although we agree with the examiner that claim
language should be given its broadest reasonable
interpretation during the course of prosecution, we do not
agree that the associating step of claims 1 and 8 can be
interpreted as broadly as the examiner has interpreted it.
The idea that all information in a computer is “associated
with” all other information in the computer is not reasonable.
The step of associating one piece of information with (to)
another piece of information suggests that there is some
logical relationship or nexus between the two pieces of
information. We agree with appellant that the data selected
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