Appeal No. 1999-0227
Application No. 08/722,414
Anticipation is established only when a single prior art
reference discloses, either expressly or under the principles
of inherency, each and every element of the claimed invention.
See In re Paulsen, 30 F.3d 1475, 1480-1481, 31 USPQ2d 1671,
1675 (Fed. Cir. 1994) and In re Spada, 911 F.2d 705, 708, 15
USPQ2d 1655, 1657 (Fed. Cir. 1990). It does not require that
the reference teach what the applicant is claiming, but only
that the claim on appeal "read on" something disclosed in the
reference, i.e., all limitations of the claim are found in the
reference. See Kalman v. Kimberly-Clark Corp., 713 F.2d 760,
772, 218 USPQ 781, 789 (Fed. Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 465
U.S. 1026 (1984).
The objective of the appellant’s invention is to decrease
the amount of traffic on the interconnecting network among
multiple users sharing a virtual environment such as a video
game. This is accomplished by transmitting a change of a
state of an application of a specific user only to others of
the users who are located within a particular distance in the
virtual environment, rather than to all of the other users.
Independent claim 1 is directed to a method of processing a
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