Appeal No. 1998-3394
Application 08/405,964
Appellant argues that there is no basis for the
Examiner's assertion regarding motivation to modify Cox and
Sidekick to use a questionnaire-style format to simplify user
input to discrete questions and reduce the complexity of the
programming required for the input data module (Br12). It is
argued that providing prompts in a questionnaire-style format
does not reduce the complexity of programming over the simple
stock input devices of the prior art (Br12). It is argued
that with the prior art, organization and planning, which are
not intuitive functions, must be performed by the user outside
the system using, for example, a mental step (Br12-13).
While it may be true that providing a questionnaire-style
format for user data input will simplify data entry by the
user because it does not require the user to think of all the
information that needs to be recorded, this is one reason for
Appellant's invention and the Examiner errs in relying on this
reasoning for motivation. The Examiner's conclusion that
adding additional interface features using the questionnaire-
style format will reduce the complexity of the programming
required for the input data module is not understood because,
as a rule, adding features always increases the complexity of
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