Appeal No. 2005-0274
Application No. 09/738,319
With regard to the claimed “abstract variable,” the examiner contends that it is
“well known in the art that a variable is an instance of a data type” and Liddy produces
codes of categories or concepts, wherein the codes are abstract variables and concepts
are abstract data types, the codes being instances of the concepts (answer-page 12).
Appellants take the opposite view, i.e., that the codes of Liddy are fixed dimension
vectors, not abstract variables. Moreover, appellants contend that not only is there no
disclosure in Liddy that the concept codes are abstract variables, but to interpret them
to be abstract variables would render Liddy inoperable for its intended purpose (reply
brief-page 4).
Our review of Liddy does disclose, at column 15, lines 5-6, that module MCVG
190 produces a “fixed-dimension vector representation of the concept-level contents of
the text.” Thus, it would appear that appellants’ position is supported by the disclosure
of Liddy while the examiner has offered nothing to convince us that the codes of Liddy
constitute “abstract variables.” Accordingly, since appellants have pointed to a portion
of Liddy which supports the position that Liddy does not disclose the claimed step of
“replacing the linguistic information with abstract variables in each of the second
representations,” while the examiner’s contrary position can only be supported by
speculation, we will not sustain the rejection of claims 1-8, 10-18, and 20 under
35 U.S.C. §102 (e).
In addition, we will not sustain the rejection of claim 19 under 35 U.S.C. §103,
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