Appeal No. 2004-0644
Application No. 09/222,209
not pertinent to the base combination. (See brief at page 9.) The examiner maintains
that Zellweger teaches the use of annotations to data and that it would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to look to
annotations in a pen-based system. (See answer at pages 14-15.) We agree with the
examiner and find that the use of annotations in Zellweger would be similar to the
notepad of Capps. Therefore, we disagree with appellants’ contention that Zellweger
is not pertinent and is non-analogous. Therefore, this argument is not persuasive.
Appellants’ further reliance on the arguments above are also not persuasive. Therefore,
we find that appellants have not adequately rebutted the examiner ’s prima facie case
of obviousness, and we will sustain the rejection of claims 5, 8 and 15.
CLAIM 2
Appellants argue that neither Moran1 nor Capps discloses the use of a surrogate
element. (See brief at page 7.) The examiner maintains that Capps teaches a
surrogate structure which is implied to replace the handwritten stoke in the recognized
text. (See answer at pages 13-14.) While we agree with the examiner that the
recognized text is a surrogate for the handwritten input, we do not find that the
surrogate is “based on the structure” as recited in dependent claim 2. Appellants argue
that the examiner confuses what appellants mean by the term “structure.” (See brief at
pages 7-8.) As discussed above, appellants have not specifically defined, and we do
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