Appeal No. 2002-2066
Application No. 09/288,504
of complying with the burden of presenting a prima facie case of
obviousness. Note In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d
1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
With respect to each of the appealed independent claims 1,
9, and 18, the Examiner, as the basis for the obviousness
rejection, proposes to modify the decision tree analysis system
disclosed by Ulvila. According to the Examiner (Answer, page 3),
Ulvila discloses the claimed invention except for the use of the
described decision tree support system “... for medical treatment
plans or test plans.” To address this deficiency, the Examiner
turns to Dormond which, in the Examiner’s view (id.), discloses a
“... a support system for making decisions on medical treatment
plans based in part on attribute information of the person to be
inspected (see column 16, lines 58-61 and figure 20).” In the
Examiner’s analysis (id.), the skilled artisan would have been
motivated and found it obvious to combine Ulvila with Dormond
“... for the purpose of using decision tree analysis in the
medical field ....”
Appellant’s arguments (Brief, pages 13-15; Reply Brief,
pages 3 and 4) in response to the obviousness rejection assert
that a prima facie case of obviousness has not been established
since there is no suggestion or motivation in the disclosures of
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