Appeal No. 2003-0355
Application No. 09/217,725
elements in the prior art, but also show “some objective teaching
in the prior art or that knowledge generally available to one of
ordinary skill in the art would lead the individual to combine
the relevant teachings of the references.” In re Fine, 837 F.2d
1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
Upon a review of the applied prior art, we find ourselves in
agreement with Appellants’ arguments that because many
hierarchies of groups and classes of the item names can be
provided, one skilled in the art would not necessarily be
motivated to include multiple descriptions/versions of each item
name (brief, page 16). Claim 1 requires that different versions
of the same item name, which are additional multiple entries, be
provided under the same hierarchical arrangement. In contrast,
Humble provides only one version of an item name in each of the
different categories that guide the customer through a
hierarchical arrangement of classes of items until the actual
item name is encountered (col. 5, lines 37-68 and col. 6, lines
18-26), instead of providing different multiple entries for each
item under each category.
We also disagree with the Examiner (answer, page 9) that the
claimed displaying of item names in different combinations is
nothing more than nonfunctional descriptive material which would
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