Ex parte CHIANG - Page 18




          Appeal No. 97-0642                                                          
          Application 08/242,318                                                      

          symbol or command, as described at column 17, lines 51-63,                  
          meets claim 7 (EA8).  Appellant argues that Sklarew merely                  
          searches for the "best match" and does not perform any ranking              
          before selecting the top ranked candidate (Br17).  We agree                 
          with Appellant.  There is no suggestion of any "ranking" of                 
          candidate text strings in Sklarew.  A "best match" comparison               
          merely replaces the old best match with a new best match and                
          does not retain the previous best matches in any sort of rank               
          order.  Therefore, the rejection of claim 7 is reversed.                    
               Issue C:  Claims 8-20                                                  
                    Claims 11-15, 19, and 20                                          
               As a matter of claim interpretation, claim 11 does not                 
          require that the recognizer produce a computer character from               
          the handwritten character, which computer character is then                 
          converted to a second text domain; compare claim 11 to                      
          claim 24.  Therefore, we interpret claim 11 to cover                        
          converting handwritten characters ("displayed characters of                 
          the first text domain," as claimed) to computer generated font              
          symbols ("characters of the second text domain," as claimed)                
          as disclosed in Sklarew.  The software in Sklarew which takes               
          the recognized character or command and converts it into the                

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