Appeal No. 2002-0695
Application No. 09/132,731
page 11].
Despite our failure to understand, from the examiner’s explanation, what would
have led the artisan to combine the teachings of these references, the major flaw in the
examiner’s reasoning is the determination that, somehow, Coker teaches a “file system
identifier” in source program statements We fail to find any such “file system identifier”
in a source program statement, as claimed, in Coker.
When it was pointed out by appellants, at page 6 of the principal brief, that Coker
may teach the interchangeability of file systems for use in conjunction with COBOL
programs but it does not teach the use of source language statements, acting as
compiler directives, to identify the desired file system, the examiner’s response was to
change course and now hold, in the answer, that it is really appellants’ admitted prior art
[from page 2, line 11, through page 3, line 11, of the specification] that taught this
feature. More particularly, the examiner points to the language, “As a general rule, a
file name is specified by COBOL source language statements using the “SELECT” and
“ASSIGN” clauses.”
Notwithstanding the impropriety of the examiner changing the reasons for the
rejection this late in the prosecution, we are unpersuaded by the examiner’s “new”
reasoning because we agree with appellants that while the “Background of the
Invention” section of the instant specification may describe how a “file name” can be
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