Appeal No. 2001-1070
Application No. 08/678,781
OPINION
At the outset, we note that “[a]ppellant accepts [sic,
appellants accept] the Examiner’s position that the combination
of Bates and Torres teaches or suggests all the features of claim
1 (or equivalent method claim 16), apart from the limitation of
‘each cell being able to contain a single logical character’”
(brief, page 3). Thus, the patentability of all of the claims on
appeal depends upon whether the examiner is correct that it would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art “to include
‘no more than a single character’ in view of Torres’ disclosure
because in figures 1-6, he illustrates tables in which each cell
contains ‘no more than a single character’” (answer, page 3).
Torres discloses (Figures 1 through 6) an electronic sheet
that is logically divided into a set of cells. A single
character per cell is shown in the first five figures. After the
sum icon 24 (Figures 4 and 5) is dropped into the cell 26 (Figure
6), the cell 26 reflects the total of the numbers in column 22.
The sum (i.e., 15) in cell 26 is not “a single character.”
Notwithstanding this teaching in Torres, the examiner
concluded (answer, page 3) that “[i]t was well known at the time
of the invention to input data into an accounting ledger in which
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