Appeal No. 2001-1791
Application No. 08/992,038
We agree with appellants (Brief at 13) to the extent that the examiner’s
statement of the rejection of claim 6 (Answer at 5-6) falls short of meeting all the
requirements of a prima facie case of obviousness. However, as the examiner points
out at page 14 of the Answer, the claim does not set forth how a “credit” is to be
calculated. Further, we agree with the examiner that Sitbon, particularly at column 5,
lines 55 through 65, would have suggested determining a least loaded server and
requesting services of that server accordingly. The combination of the teachings of
Sitbon with the INTERNET reference’s teachings with respect to associating buckets
with servers leads us to agree with the examiner’s conclusion that the subject matter of
claim 6 would have been obvious to the artisan. Since appellants rely on the limitations
of claim 6 as representative of claims 6, 7, and 16-18 (Brief at 6), and present
arguments accordingly, we sustain the rejection of claims 6 and 16-18 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over INTERNET and Sitbon, and the rejection of claim 7
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over INTERNET, Sitbon, and Li.2
However, with respect to claim 8, we agree in substance with appellants’
arguments at page 14 of the Brief. The rejection of claim 8 (Answer at 9 and 15) does
not appear to speak to the express requirements of the claim. In any event, all the
requirements of claim 8 have not been shown to be rendered obvious by the references
applied. Since claim 9 depends from 8, and the addition of the Rege reference does
2 We note, further, that appellants have shown no error in the examiner’s finding (Answer at 8-9)
that Li teaches the claim 7 requirement of detecting a skewed load on a plurality of servers.
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