Appeal No. 1997-3206
Application No. 08/350,274
After careful review of the Brown reference in light of
the arguments of record, we are in agreement with Appellants’
position as stated in the Briefs. Although the Examiner
contends (Answer, page 10) that no modification of Brown is
necessary, it is apparent to us that some modification of the
color coded nesting scheme of Brown is necessary in order to
provide an indication of the sequence of program execution.
As pointed out by Appellants (Brief, page 11), the color coded
differentiation of nesting structures provided by Brown is
independent of the order of instruction execution since some
nesting levels may never be executed, and others may be
continuously executed. An initial starting point in this
modification would be to ascertain the order of execution from
the differentiated nested hierarchial instruction structure
provided by Brown. Although the Examiner suggests that any
skilled artisan with program debugging experience could deduce
the order of instruction execution in Brown, such a suggestion
is completely devoid of any support on the record. We are not
inclined to dispense with proof by evidence when the
proposition at issue is not supported by a teaching in a prior
art reference, common knowledge or capable of unquestionable
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