Appeal No. 1998-2848
Application 08/398,862
Thus, the Examiner interprets "disassociated" to mean not
associated with a tangible medium.
A "computer program" per se is an abstract entity and
does not imply association with a storage medium or memory. A
medium must be explicitly recited. Therefore, we do not
interpret "disassociated" to necessarily refer to lack of
association with a tangible medium, although it could have
that meaning also. The term "disassociated" is used in the
specification in the sense of "separate," "standing by
itself," or "not part of something else," which is consistent
with its normal meaning of "detached from association." For
example, the specification discusses the opportunity for
"multimedia products that allow consumers to browse, create,
collect, and exchange disassociated pieces of multimedia data"
(emphasis added) (page 4, lines 7-8) as opposed to "large,
monolithic collections of data that can only be browsed by the
consumer" (page 4, lines 9-10). As another example, the
specification discusses "disassociated components in the form
of ETCs" (page 20, lines 2-3).
We interpret "a disassociated computer program" in
claim 1 to be a separate computer program, i.e., a program
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