Appeal No. 97-2466 Page 18
Application No. 08/461,943
inserting a legality assertion. An assertion is a “Boolean
statement in a program that tests a condition that should, if
the program is operating correctly, evaluate as true.”
Microsoft Press Dictionary 28 (1994). It is neither a store
instruction nor a reference instruction. The examiner’s
opinion that the variable v is a pseudo reference to z,
(Examiner’s Answer at 12), in the bind statement bind var z to
v on page 760 of Cordy is irrelevant. Because the bind
statement is not a legality assertion, it cannot be a pseudo
operation of any sort including a pseudo reference
instruction.
For the foregoing reasons, the examiner failed to show
that Pyster and Cordy teach or would have suggested the last
two steps of claim 2 and its dependent claims 4-7, the last
step of claim 13 and its dependent claim 15, or the last step
of claim 14 and its dependent claim 16. Accordingly, we find
that the examiner’s rejection of these claims does not amount
to a prima facie case of obviousness. Because the examiner
has not established a prima facie case, the rejection of
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