Appeal No. 2000-1323
Application No. 08/923,474
telephony arts, with Dilts directed to enabling a set of object interface application elements
and telephony system elements, while Bayless provides a GUI for providing for telephone
functions to be accessed through a client computer system. The skilled artisan would have
been expected to have knowledge of both of these systems. In our view, it appears to be
the examiner’s contention that the GUI system of Bayless, which allows for telephone
operations to be performed using personal computers, would have led the artisan to
include such a system in Dilts as a means to provide for user-friendly tools. This rationale
appears reasonable to us, especially in view of appellant’s lack of any argument except
that the examiner “has not pointed to any motivation” in either of the references for making
the combination. In fact, the examiner did provide a reason, or “motivation,” by stating that
it would have been obvious to “use of importing tools, for example the invention disclosed
by Bayless for that of Dilts, since this method would provide friendly tools to the users” [sic].
Perhaps there is a reasonable rebuttal to the examiner’s reasoning but appellant has
provided none. Therefore, we are not persuaded by appellant’s argument that there was
no “motivation” for making the combination.
We are persuaded, however, by appellant’s argument that the combination of
references still fails to teach the claimed “collecting” step of independent claim 1. The
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