Appeal No. 2002-2011
Application No. 09/163,643
bookmark merged with a second bookmark using a predetermined
affinity criteria (citing column 5, lines 8-15). Citing column
5, lines 42-50, of Burke, the examiner contends that the
reference teaches associating related bookmarks.
The examiner recognizes that Burke does not specifically
teach bookmark association in response to an affinity exceeding a
threshold, but points to Maarek for a teaching of association
using predetermined thresholds of similarity including lexical
affinity and data slicing, at page 6, paragraphs 1-3 and page 7,
paragraphs 2-3. The examiner concludes that it would have been
obvious to apply Maarek to Burke “because Maarek’s taught
advantage of a lexical affinity indexing scheme to provide
increased precision to the bookmarking association method of
Burke” (answer-page 5).
The examiner further recognized a deficiency in Burke in not
teaching the claimed affinity association via a link, i.e., a
linked list. The examiner turned to Mantha for a teaching of
categorization of related web pages utilizing a linked list
pointing to the pages, in an embodiment utilizing bookmarks.
Specifically, the examiner points to column 2, lines 34-44, and
column 9, lines 26-33, and Figures 7A-7C, of Mantha. The
examiner then concludes that it would have been obvious “to apply
-5–
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