Appeal No. 97-3660
Application 08/055,802
Appellant’s own admitted prior art on pages 1-2 of the
specification.
The Rejection on Appeal
Claims 1-14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Snodgrass, Risberg, and the appellant’s own
admitted prior art.
As for the appellants’ own admitted prior art on pages 1-
2 of the specification, the examiner merely stated on page 4
of the examiner’s answer: “Applicant’s admitted prior art in
the specification p. 1 and 2 includes time-relational database
management systems comprising master, pending, history and
error records.” How this statement fits within the rationale
of the rejection is not apparent and is not explained.
Snodgrass already discloses different kinds of time-relational
database systems storing time-differentiated records. We
decline to speculate as to what the examiner had in mind. An
examiner must always articulate and express the reasoning and
rationale underlying a rejection and cannot simply throw up a
reference and hope that the Board would compose a meaningful
2
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