Appeal No. 2003-1605
Application No. 08/982,934
a prima facie case of obviousness since all of the claimed
limitations are not taught or suggested by the applied Cole
reference. In particular, Appellants contend (Brief, pages 8-11;
Reply Brief, pages 2 and 3) that, contrary to the Examiner’s stated
position, Cole has no teaching or suggestion of an information
reference system which provides for the monitoring or counting of a
reference total for a reference path wherein the path includes a
reference start and a reference destination as claimed.
After reviewing the Cole reference in light of the arguments
of record, we are in general agreement with Appellants’ position as
stated in the Briefs. Our interpretation of the disclosure of Cole
coincides with that of Appellants, i.e., while Cole provides for
the counting of the number of web site categories a user may
access, there is no clear disclosure of the counting of a reference
path, including a reference source and reference destination, by
which a user may have arrived at a particular selected category.
Although the Examiner (Answer, page 3) makes reference to the
illustration in Figure 6 of Cole along with the accompanying
description beginning at column 4, line 57 as disclosing the
claimed reference path counting feature, we find that, in our view,
this portion of Cole at best discloses only the number of times a
category is selected by a user. For example, while Cole’s Figure 6
5
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