Appeal No. 1998-1345
Application 08/362,318
In re Ehrreich, 590 F.2d 902, 909-10, 200 USPQ 504, 510 (CCPA
1979). "Consequently, the inventive portion of the claim must
lie in the clause beginning: 'the improvement comprising.'
See In re Simmons, 50 C.C.P.A. 990, 312 F.2d 821, 824
[136 USPQ 450, 451] (1963)." Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc. v.
United States Surgical Corp., 93 F.3d 1572, 1577,
40 USPQ2d 1019, 1022-23 (Fed. Cir. 1996). Therefore,
regardless of the problems with Clanton, it seems that the
relevant issue is whether Abecassis discloses or suggests the
claimed improvements.
The Examiner finds (FR5): "Abecassis provides a teaching
of automated selected retrieval of video segments of a video
program that are responsive to a viewer's preestablished video
content preferences, wherein the viewer [sic, viewers] enter
their selections on a screen as shown in Fig. 4, and at
col. 11, lines 5 - 27. In the invention of Abecassis,
undesired audio or video is blocked by skipping over those
video segments [see col. 11, lines 20 - 27]."
Appellants argue that Abecassis requires pre-classifying
and encoding of each segment of an audio visual program as to
content, whereas the claimed invention does not require
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