Appeal No. 2002-1079
Application No. 09/124,540
The examiner relies on the following reference:
Malone et al. (Malone) 5,900,870 May 4, 1999
(filed Nov. 9, 1994)
Claims 1-3, 5-13, and 15-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102 as being
anticipated by Malone.
Claims 4 and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Malone.
We refer to the Final Rejection (Paper No. 6) and the Examiner’s Answer (Paper
No. 14) for a statement of the examiner’s position and to the Brief (Paper No. 13) and
the Reply Brief (Paper No. 15) for appellants’ position with respect to the claims which
stand rejected.
OPINION
The section 102 rejection of claim 1 over Malone correlates the claimed “creating
an overlay comprising at least one concept node” to the special kinds of objects called
“Folders” described in column 6 of the reference. The rejection deems the claimed step
of “determining if the digital information object includes at least one concept in common
with concepts expressed in the at least one concept node” to correspond to Malone’s
teaching that “newly arrived mail is identified (see Figure 4)....” The rejection also
correlates the claimed “permitting a user to create an information node in the overlay
representing the digital information object” with storing mail messages, finding that the
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