Appeal No. 1998-0252
Application No. 08/555,795
file, taking the position that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in this art to utilize “a two-tier
filing system with the social security number as the principle
[sic] base and the alphabetical labeling based on the
individual’s name as a subbase . . . with the Colavito et al
labeling system . . . color coded adhesive labels” (Answer,
page 7). Acknowledging that the content of the main set and
the subset differ from that recited in claim 11, the examiner
takes the point of view that using the individual’s month and
date of birth instead of the social security number would have
been obvious because “[t]he plain fact is that the date of
birth of an individual has long been used to identify that
individual on written records,” with Official Notice being
taken that this “was old and well-known in this art many years
before the filing date of this application” (Answer, page 8).
While we might quarrel with the “Official Notice” ingredient
of the rejection on the basis of relevancy in that the issue
here is not using the date of birth on official records to
identify an individual but using it as a main set in a filing
system, and because the information so categorized is not so
notorious as to fall within the prescribed definition (see
6
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