Appeal No. 1998-3394
Application 08/405,964
the programming. Moreover, we fail to see how a general goal,
such as decreasing programming complexity, suggests the
specific limitation of prompting a user in a
questionnaire-style format.
For the reasons discussed above, the Examiner has failed
to establish a prima facie case of obviousness as to the
limitation in independent claims 1, 4, 7 and 10 of "prompting
a user in a questionnaire-style format to provide data." The
rejection of claims 1-15 is reversed.
3.
In case the Examiner had not considered it, we point out
that a fill-in-the-blanks-type template or dialog box, such as
the Task Dialog Box shown in the non-prior art reference PTO
Calendar/Planner User's Guide -- Version 1.0, Publication
#97007, Office of the CIO, USPTO (August 1997), p. 10 (copy
attached), prompts the user in a questionnaire-style format to
provide data. This is consistent with Appellant's disclosure
that inputting of answers in the questionnaire-style format
may be fill-in-the-blank-style data inputs or multiple-choice
data inputs depending on which would be the most appropriate
(specification, p. 12).
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