Appeal No. 2001-1205
Application No. 08/729,362
that Dudzik was cited for the proposition of providing assistance to a user running an
application program. We understand the examiner’s position but we agree with
appellants that there would appear to be no reason, other than impermissible hindsight,
for the artisan to have taken the teaching of collecting information about a user and a
web page and apply this teaching, in some mysterious way, to modify Dudzik by
collecting information associated with an application program being run on a user’s
computer. Dudzik’s is a stand-alone help system whereby a help system is provided for
an applications program but that help is provided, not by a person, but, rather by the
computer system intercepting a communication between an operating system and the
application program, determining that the object characteristics in the intercepted
communication match the characteristics of an object in a list of object characteristics,
and then displaying a help text on a display screen. In our view, there would have been
no possible motive, within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 103, for extending this teaching,
even in view of Bateman’s collection of information regarding a web page and a user, to
collect information associated with the application program in Dudzik, including an
application identifier for the application program, and then establish a communication
link with another computer, based upon this identifier and a request for assistance by
the user at the first computer.
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