Appeal No. 2000-2012
Application No. 08/937,354
disagree with appellants and find that the examiner has merely rejected the claims over
the apparatus that is required to carry out the method disclosed by Abraham.
With respect to independent claim 20, we agree with the examiner’s rejection
and find that the apparatus of claim 20 does not require a "determination means" or a
step of "determining" as discussed above with respect to independent claims 1, 14
and 15. We find that Abraham teaches an interface for accepting user requests,
execution means for performing a first analysis, and storage means for storing the
results. The execution means reads the results of the first request and performs a third
request to provide the second results. Therefore, we will sustain the rejection of claim
20. Since appellants elected to group dependent claim 21 and independent claim 30
with independent claim 20, we will sustain the rejection of dependent claim 21 and
independent claim 30 with independent claim 20.
Although appellants have elected to group claim 31 with claim 20 and rely on the
argument that the examiner has not addressed these apparatus claims, we note that
independent claim 31 parallels the limitations of claims 14 and 15 reciting a determining
means. Since we found that Abraham did not teach a step of determining, it similarly
does not teach a determining means, and we will not sustain the rejection of claim 31.
With respect to claims 22 and 23, the examiner maintains that the examiner has
ignored the limitations of the knowledge module and inference engine and Abraham
has no teaching of either the knowledge module or an inference engine. (See brief at
page 15.) We agree with appellants, and find that the examiner has not shown where
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