Appeal No. 96-3260 Page 8
Application No. 08/134,214
objects, are brought closer together, or sorted as a function
of the position of the objects on the computer screen.
Accordingly, we will also sustain the rejection of claims
10 through 13 under 35 U.S.C. 103.
Appellants finally argue that claims 17 and 18 are
patentable over the applied references since they are limited
to the operation of appending successive objects in a round-up
paragraph to form a string. The examiner points out that a
“string,” in a broad sense, is merely a group of words without
a carriage return [answer-page 20] since carriage returns are
employed to end strings. The examiner refers to Baumgarten as
providing a teaching for replacing a carriage return with a
space and concludes that the forming of strings is therefore
“inherently” shown in such an operation as the carriage returns
separating each string are removed. Appellants do not respond
to this reasoning.
We find the examiner’s reasoning with regard to the
rejection of claims 17 and 18 to be convincing. While we do
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