Appeal No. 2000-0377
Application 08/777,841
been established with respect to claim 4. The rejections of
claims 1, 3-5, and 7-17 are reversed.
Although we have reversed the Examiner's rejection of
independent claims 1 and 4, and their dependent claims, we
nevertheless comment on a couple of the Examiner's statements.
The Examiner states that Appellant's arguments are not
persuasive because one cannot show nonobviousness by attacking
references individually when the rejection is based on a
combination of references (EA7). Appellant responds that the
arguments merely show that, even if combined, the claim elements
are not shown in the references (RBr1).
We agree with Appellant. Manifestly, if none of the
references teach a claimed feature, as shown by addressing the
references individually, then the combination of references will
also not contain the claimed feature. The admonition against
attacking references individually applies where an applicant
fails to address the combined teachings of the references.
The Examiner states that it is not necessary for the
references to expressly suggest the modification and that the
rationale to combine is that "it would enable a user, from
his/her own workstation, to monitor the health of hardware
located at a remote location(s); quick detection/troubleshooting
of any hardware malfunction is an advantage for monitoring
hardware at remote locations" (EA8).
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