Appeal No. 2000-0235
Application No. 08/765,502
needed for decoding and outputting the at least one traffic message”. The examiner recognizes
(answer at page 4 and 5) that the primary reference, Braegas, does not disclose this limitation,
however, the examiner asserts that Kakihara’s CD-ROM element 25a which is used for map storage
could have been consolidated in a single memory medium to store both traffic decoding information
and the map data. (Id. at page 5).
Appellants argue (brief at page 5) that “[i]n clear contrast to Appellants’ invention, the
Braegas Patent and the Kakihara Patent, taken alone or in combination, in no way teach or suggest a
device for informing a motor vehicle driver in which only one data storage unit stores both a
digitally coded road map and information needed for decoding and outputting at least one
traffic message, as clearly recited in independent claim 11.”
We agree with the appellants’ position. Like appellants, we find that element 25a of
Kakihara is a read-only memory which cannot store any information that was not originally stored
therein. Furthermore, we find that Kakihara does not contain any other information in the CD-ROM
element 25 besides the road map information. In other words, element 25 of Kakihara does not
contain or suggest the storing of any decoding information which might be accessed by the
decoding program to output a traffic-modified route. See item 34 in Figure 3 and page 11 of the
Appellants’ disclosure for a detailed explanation of the decoding information contained in the
recited storage medium for the determining of the route as modified by the traffic conditions on the
road. Therefore, we conclude that the examiner has not established a prima facie case of
obviousness in rejecting claim 11 over Braegas and Kakihara.
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