Appeal No. 2002-1627
Application No. 09/132,450
obviousness. Note In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d
1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
We consider first the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of
claims 1-8 and 10-15 based on Ichikawa and note that Appellant’s
arguments in response assert that the Examiner has failed to
establish a prima facie case of obviousness since all of the
claimed limitations are not taught or suggested by the Ichikawa
reference. With respect to independent claims 1 and 8, Appellant
initially contends (Brief, pages 5 and 8) that Ichikawa lacks a
disclosure of converting spoken words into a “sequence of letters
and gaps” as claimed. We find ourselves, however, in agreement
with the Examiner (Answer, pages 4 and 5) that, although Ichikawa
has no specific mention of “gaps” being created when spoken words
are converted to characters, the skilled artisan would have
recognized and appreciated that spaces or “gaps” are necessary to
delineate the beginning and ending of words in order to create
intelligible text. We further agree with the Examiner that
Appellant has provided no basis for the assertion that Ichikawa’s
extraction and subsequent processing of spectrum envelope
information from spoken word input supports the conclusion that
letters and gaps are not created.
We are in agreement, however, with Appellant’s further
argument (Brief, pages 5, 8, and 9) that, in contrast to the
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