Appeal No. 97-1353 Page 7
Application No. 07/843,704
Although we find no support for a user-defined arbitrary
tree structure, we agree with the examiner that Simonetti's
hybrid database otherwise teaches or suggests Appellants' tree
database. In particular, the distinction between Simonetti's
rows and Appellants' rows is based on a failure to compare the
two data structures at the same time in their evolution. In
Appellants' design stage, the structure of the database is set
forth in rows in a table. Simonetti's tables reflect their
appearance at the data-entry stage. At the design stage,
however, it is now commonplace in user-defined databases such
as dBASE, ACCESS, or PARADOX to define the database structure
as rows in a design table, which then become columns in the
data-entry table. The record contains no evidence of whether
this was the case at the time of Appellants' invention.
Indeed, the record contains no evidence regarding user-defined
databases as of the time of Appellants' invention other than a
brief summary in the specification (Paper No. 1 at 3-4). We3
find this fact to be astonishing given Appellants' emphasis on
user definition, and related features of user-defined
databases, to distinguish their invention from the prior art
3 The record doe not contain copies of the summarized
references.
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