Appeal No. 2004-1911
Application No. 09/558,387
any domains within the enterprise are defined (brief, page 8).
Additionally, Appellants argue that since interviewing the users
in Cortez relates to the efficiency of information flow, there is
no reason for the skilled artisan to consider its combination
with L3 and use the interviews for risk assessment and security
planning (brief, page 9).
In response to Appellants’ arguments, the Examiner relies on
the fifth page of Cortez regarding the brief discussion of
safeguarding information and asserts that interviewing the users
for assessing the information flow in combination with the
security analysis of L3 would teach the claims (answer, page 15).
Furthermore, to support the combination, the Examiner asserts
that the combination would have been obvious since querying the
employees would have “intuitively” be related to the overall
security assessment of the network (answer, pages 16 & 17).
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the Examiner
bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of
obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d
1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). To reach a conclusion of
obviousness under § 103, the examiner must produce a factual
basis supported by teaching in a prior art reference or shown to
be common knowledge of unquestionable demonstration. Such
evidence is required in order to establish a prima facie case.
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