Appeal No. 2002-1308
Application No. 09/161,787
the fact that the loan is a syndicated one." Nonetheless, the
examiner contends that "streamlining the loan process as much as
possible would be desirable," and "it is old and well-known in
the art to search and filter candidates based on a user's desired
conditions in order to save time that would otherwise be spent
sifting through impertinent information." The examiner asserts
(Answer, pages 8-9) that
it would have been obvious . . . to store loan
participant information regarding loan criteria data .
. . which can be searched to filter out matching lender
candidates in order to reduce the time that would
otherwise be wasted on communicating with lenders who
are not likely to be interested in a particular loan
deal.
Like appellant, we find Tebbe as well as the other articles
relied upon, lacks any disclosure of all but the last three steps
of claims 1 and 10. A factual inquiry whether to modify a
reference must be based on objective evidence of record, not
merely conclusionary statements of the examiner. See In re Lee,
277 F.3d 1338, 1342-43, 61 USPQ2d 1430, 1433 (Fed. Cir. 2002).
The examiner's explanation, however, as to why some of the
missing steps would have been obvious is merely conclusionary and
devoid of any evidentiary support. Accordingly, we cannot
sustain the obviousness rejection of claims 1 and 10 and their
dependents, claims 2 through 9 and 11 through 15. Further, since
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