Appeal No. 1997-2656
Application No. 07/907,472
Appellants argue that the implementation of Yoshida would not result in the
claimed invention unless it were shown that it would have been obvious to provide a
structure which combines the structure of Yoshida and the APA. (See Request for
Rehearing at page 2.) Appellants argue that the decision overlooks the examiner’s
failure to demonstrate the obviousness of the underlying combination and failure to
show any motivation for the combination. (See Request for Rehearing at page 3.) We
disagree with appellants. As discussed above, we find that the skilled artisan would
have been motivated to combine the teachings and suggestions of the two prior art
references, and in our decision, we agreed with the examiner that the suggestion of
Yoshida to display the remaining data space in a user friendly and understandable
format would have provided the motivation to skilled artisans to have consistency in the
display of both formats to the user. (Decision at page 5.) Appellants argue that
appellants’ disclosure is the only disclosure of the combination of an audio message
display with a display of a number of document pages which may be received by the
communication apparatus. We agree with appellants, but the argument does not
address the basic combination of the teachings and the motivation to have a similarity
of display units/format, as discussed for the two types of stored units.
Appellants argue that the examiner’s rejection is based upon hindsight, and the
Board’s affirmance overlooked the examiner’s reliance upon appellants’ own teaching.
(See Request for Rehearing at page 3.) We disagree with appellants, as discussed
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