Appeal No. 2002-1732
Application No. 09/338,238
nonobviousness in view of Raney’s disclosure of a computer
analyzing images.
With regard to claims 7 and 47, appellants argue that no
reference teaches or suggests how one might evaluate positioning
of an element which has already been established. Appellants
take issue with the examiner’s citation of column 9, lines 62-65,
of Raney regarding these claims because, according to appellants,
Raney only addresses the manner or method of applying the defined
areas (elements) 58, 62, which are the e.g. print eyes.
We will not sustain the rejection of these claims under
35 U.S.C.§ 103 because they require human intervention in the
evaluating step of claims 1 and 41, respectively. The examiner
merely states that substituting manual activity for automated
procedures would have been obvious. While this may, sometimes,
be the case, the examiner has presented no convincing line of
reasoning why that should be the case here, especially since the
instant claimed invention provides for a combination, i.e., an
interaction of both manual and automatic activity. That is, the
evaluation step may have direct human intervention in determining
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