Appeal No. 2002-0556
Application No. 09/177,960
OPINION
We have carefully considered the entire record before us, and
we will sustain the obviousness rejection of claims 1 through 10.
According to the examiner (answer, page 3), Steele displays in
a first field a first sequence of first icons (i.e., actors,
actions, placement, modifiers, things and other) that belong to the
parent TOLFA (Figure 7A), and, upon user selection of the first
icon, displays in a second field a second sequence of second icons
(i.e., home, hospital and school) from which the user can select a
second icon (Figure 7B). The examiner acknowledges (answer, page
3) that “Steele fails to teach the displaying of a sequence of
icons in a timed loop and repeatedly making the currently displayed
icon selectable to be applicable to both the first and second
sequence of icons.” The examiner recognizes (answer, pages 3 and
4) that the IBM TDB teaches the use of a timed sequence of icons to
“greatly compact the presentation of a plurality of icons while
allowing selection of one of the plurality of icons.” Based upon
this IBM TDB teaching, the examiner concludes (answer, page 4) that
“[i]t would have been obvious to an artisan at the time of the
invention to apply IBM TDB’s teaching with Steele’s method at each
hierarchical level in order to provide a more compact presentation
resulting in a more efficient use of screen real estate.”
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