Appeal No. 2002-1971
Application 09/020,668
We agree with appellant that the rejection (Paper No. 28)
does not clearly specify how the claimed "lenses" and
"information elements" correspond to elements in Lucas. It was
therefore reasonable for appellant to guess that the examiner
interpreted the "information elements" to correspond to the
document representations (e.g., 19a to 19e in Fig. 1 or 100a to
100e in Fig. 9) and the "lens" to correspond to the window in
which the documents are displayed (e.g., the window in Figs. 1 &
2). Documents 100a to 100e in Fig. 9 are screen objects which
are visual representations of documents and are not "windows," as
stated by the examiner, in the usual sense of scrollable viewing
areas on the screen. The specification states that "[l]enses are
much like windows in common GUI environments, insofar as they
provide a window into a portion of the information in a body of
knowledge" (specification, p. 29). Nevertheless, we will use the
examiner's interpretation of document objects 100a to 100e in
Fig. 9 as "lenses" showing "information elements." These
"lenses" are oriented perpendicular to a strand path, which the
examiner considers to be the "abstraction axis." Thus, according
to the examiner's interpretation, Fig. 9 shows five lenses (100a
to 100e), one for each information element.
Appellant argues that if the examiner takes the alternate
position that the documents in Lucas correspond to lenses, the
find function does not affect what is displayed within each
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