Appeal No. 2005-1268
Application No. 10/044,728
With regard to the prior art rejections of claims 5 and 7 under 35 U.S.C. §103
over Shinichiro, and of claims 13 and 17 under 35 U.S.C. §103 over Shinichiro in view
of Heath, we note that we are in a quandary as to what the invention defined by the
claims actually involves, as explained supra. Accordingly, we cannot resolve the issues
of obviousness with any degree of certainty and will, therefore, reverse the
35 U.S.C. 103 rejection of these claims. Cf. In re Steele, 305 F.2d 859, 134 USPQ 292
(CCPA 1962).
With regard to the rejection of claim 3, this claim is not subject to our new ground
of rejection under 35 U.S.C. §112, second paragraph, because the added limitation of
“other thresholds” cures the deficiency, noted supra, of claim 1. However, we will
sustain the rejection of claim 3 under 35 U.S.C. §103 over Shinichiro. We find that
Shinichiro clearly discloses a single threshold which, when exceeded, will change the
pointer, e.g., the display size of the cursor may be expanded. We also find that
Shinichiro mentions other suitable modes of changing the pointer, or cursor, such as
expanding the brightness difference, or changing the complimentary color of the
background color. Accordingly, since Shinichiro teaches changing a pointer when a
certain threshold of speed is exceeded, and also teaches various changes which a
cursor might undergo, it would have been obvious to the artisan that more than a single
threshold may be used for changing the appearance of the cursor in more than one
way, depending on the particular threshold exceeded. We find nothing unobvious
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