Appeal No. 1999-1590
Application No. 08/803,624
OPINION
We have carefully considered the claims, the applied prior
art references, and the respective positions articulated by
appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we
will reverse the obviousness rejection of claims 1 through 20,
and affirm the obviousness-type double patenting rejection of
claims 1 through 20.
Independent claim 1 recites, in pertinent part, means for
displaying "associated dates of the woman's menstrual cycle."
Desjacques, in Figure 9, shows displaying the current date, but
no other dates. Desjacques is concerned with calculating on a
particular day the probability of getting pregnant following an
act of sexual intercourse. Although the calculations require
information about the woman's menstrual cycle, such as the
beginning date of the last cycle and the average length of the
cycle, as pointed out by appellant (Brief, page 6), Desjacques
has no reason to display any information other than the
probability of becoming pregnant.
The examiner asserts (Answer, page 3) that "[i]t would have
been obvious . . . to adapt the reference to include calculating
and displaying differing data related to the menstrual cycle in
order to provide information on the varying dates. . . . What
data is calculated and the relationship to the current date is an
3
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