Appeal No. 1999-1852
Application No. 08/701,242
column 10, line 65-column 11, line 10 of Kupiec are alleged to disclose the claimed
“means for screening the items retrieved...” and the claimed “means for reporting the
search set to the user.”
Thus, the examiner contends that the entire subject matter of the instant
independent claims is anticipated by a few lines of Kupiec, to wit, column 2, lines 39-50,
column 8, lines 1-19, 59 et seq., column 9, lines 1-5 and 55-61, column 10, lines 65 et seq.
and column 11, lines 1-10.
Appellant’s position is that Kupiec is directed to answer extraction, whereby the
system takes a user-supplied question and a given set of relevant documents and
generates answer hypotheses, finding these hypotheses in that given set of relevant
documents. In contrast, appellant argues, the instant invention follows links between
documents to locate other documents of possible interest to the user. Thus, while the
instant invention follows links among documents, retrieving new items of possible interest
based on a sequence of links to a user-retrieved document, Kupiec has no notion of
document linkage or its exploitation.
At pages 6-13 of the principal brief, appellant identifies specific claim limitations
not met by Kupiec. The examiner contends that while Kupiec may differ from the
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