Appeal No. 97-1303
Application 08/160,300
We are unpersuaded by the examiner's reasoning to modify the
sorting operations in Kawata to encompass other types of data
processing operations, such as that recited in the claims on
appeal, on the basis of the examiner's reasoning alone without
additional evidence in the form of other prior art to suggest
otherwise.
As to the examiner's observation at page 9 of the answer,
even though there appears to be no positive statement of a
structural component to perform the priority operation in
representative independent claim 1 on appeal, this is a method
claim and the priority operations recited are crucial to the
operation of the overall functionality of the subject matter
in the claim as best expressed in the whereby clause at the
end of claim 1. That the architecture of Kawata's Figure 1
may be amenable to support modification as urged by the
examiner, absent the earlier noted additional evidence
necessary to persuade us of the desirability or need of the
modification, clearly, the modification would not have been
obvious to the artisan within
35 U.S.C. § 103 as proposed by the examiner.
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