Appeal No. 1997-1012
Application No. 08/115,937
limitation and directs our attention to pages 487 and 488 of Strong for a teaching of this
limitation. (See answer at page 15.) Appellants argue that “Strong et al. do not disclose
a thesaurus as claimed here. Strong et al. employ a concept-based hierarchical structure
(i.e., facets and sub-facets). With regard to independent claim 1, Strong et al. do not
expand the list of search descriptors, but rather only allow the user to navigate down the
hierarchical tree from broad to narrow facets.” (See brief at page 5.) We agree with
appellants. The three brief quotations of the text of the Strong reference cited by the
Examiner do not expressly teach that the thesaurus is used in a manner to function as a
means to “expand” the list of search descriptors. Furthermore, the Examiner has not
provided a convincing line of reasoning why the skilled
artisan would have been motivated to “expand” the list of search descriptors using a
thesaurus means in view of the lack of an express teaching in any of the references
applied against the claims. Appellants further argue that Kawai, Strong and Cannon “all
base their search strategies on either menus or hierarchies of limited, predetermined
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terms.” (See brief at page 6.) We agree with appellants. Therefore, we will not sustain
the rejection of claims 1, 3, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14, 18, 21-22, 24 and 28 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
While we do not find that Strong teaches the use of a thesaurus to expand the list of search2
descriptors, we note that Reed et al. U.S. Patent 5,241,671 at col. 3-4 and IBM Technical Disclosure
Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 12, pp. 117-118, May 1988 teach and suggest the use of a thesaurus in the
generation or modification of data base search queries. We make no finding beyond directing attention
thereto.
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