Appeal No. 1996-3750
Application No. 08/321,058
11]. However, the examiner has pointed to nothing in the
applied references which would have led the artisan to “add
space so as to maintain the alignment...,” as claimed. The
examiner’s conclusion of obviousness appears to be based on
pure conjecture and hindsight with no evidence to support the
conclusion that it would have been obvious, within the meaning
of 35 U.S.C. § 103, to provide for the addition of space in
the body of the word processing object so as to maintain the
alignment of the annotation and the selected location. Thus,
we will not sustain the rejection of claims 4 and 16 under 35
U.S.C. § 103 based on the evidence provided by the examiner.
Claims 5 and 17 relate to the situation where there are
annotations associated with two selected locations contained
in a single line of the body wherein at least one annotation
is moved within a predetermined number of lines of the body so
that the annotations do not overlap. The examiner contends
[answer-page 11] that it would have been obvious “that some
particular thing, most obviously one of the annotations, must
be moved in order to allow the user visual and functional
access to the two annotations.” The examiner’s rationale
appears to be based on hindsight gleaned from appellant’s
-7-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007