Appeal No. 1997-2658
Application No. 08/478,974
terminology “critical regions” can be broadly interpreted to
include any portion of a program which would cause incorrect
execution of a computer program.
With respect to the proposed combination of O’Hair and
Spix, Appellants assert (Brief, page 16) that the Examiner has
not established motivation for combining the references. We
disagree. The Examiner’s statement of the grounds of
rejection at page 4 of the Answer provides clear motivation
for combining O’Hair and Spix. As asserted by the Examiner,
the skilled artisan, using the program debugger of O’Hair
would clearly be aided by the use of the interactive visual
display features of the program tuner of Spix.
As to Appellants’ assertion (Brief, page 18) that Spix
has no disclosure of the identification of “critical regions,”
we point out that Spix is used in combination with O’Hair to
address the claim limitations. One cannot show nonobviousness
by attacking references individually where the rejections are
based on combinations of references. In re Keller, 642 F. 2d
413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., Inc., 800 F.
2d 1091, 231 USPQ 375 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
For all of the above reasons, it is our view that
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