Appeal No. 2002-2066
Application No. 09/288,504
values influenced by subjective input from a patient or a person
to be inspected as claimed.
We find a similar deficiency in the disclosure of Dormond.
While inquiries are made to a patient, which in at least some
instances require a subjective response from a patient (Figures
11 and 12), the answers to these inquiries are not part of the
decision tree evaluation but, rather, are input to Dormond’s
expert system which results in suggested treatment choices for a
particular patient (Figure 16). A decision tree (Figure 20) is
subsequently developed which displays the likelihood of success
of each of the suggested treatment choices. While entries
farther down in the tree may be considered “events” occurring as
a result of choices made at higher branches in the tree, the
values associated with these lower branches are not based on an
inspected person’s intentions or a subjective worth that a
patient attributes to the events. Rather, the branch values are
based on certainty or success factors and weighted values related
to the hierarchical position of a particular branch in the tree.
In view of the above discussion, it is our view that, since
all of the limitations of the appealed claims are not taught or
suggested by the applied prior art Ulvila and Dormond references,
the Examiner has not established a prima facie case of
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