Appeal No. 2003-0509 Page 6
Application No. 08/657,510
2. Obviousness Determination
Having determined what subject matter is being claimed, the next inquiry is
whether the subject matter would have been obvious. "In rejecting claims under 35
U.S.C. Section 103, the examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie
case of obviousness." In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed.
Cir. 1993) (citing In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir.
1992)). "'A prima facie case of obviousness is established when the teachings from the
prior art itself would . . . have suggested the claimed subject matter to a person of
ordinary skill in the art.'" In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 783, 26 USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed.
Cir. 1993) (quoting In re Rinehart, 531 F.2d 1048, 1051, 189 USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA
1976)).
Here, Rodens describes "[t]he Symantec C++ 7.0 Integrated Development and
Debugging Environment (IDDE). . . ." P. 1. "Two of the most innovative features of the
development environment are the hierarchy and class editors, which work together to
provide a smooth visual method for program design and coding." Id. "The hierarchy
editor can be used to build a complete class hierarchy for the application; the class
editor can then fill in the class members and provide the required program
functionality." Id. The class "editor is a three-paned window. . . ." Id. "The left pane
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