Appeal No. 2005-2433
Application No. 10/259,789
With respect to the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)
based on Fujita, the examiner has urged that this patent is anticipatory of the subject
matter defined in claims 1 through 9, 11, 13 through 21, 23, 25 through 33, 35 and 37
through 39. See pages 3-10 of the answer for details of the examiner’s explanation of
this rejection. Appellant’s sole argument concerning the § 102(b) rejection is that Fujita
does not describe or suggest using a routing graph representing a network of roads in
which a directed link of the routing graph is associated with a direction of travel along the
directed link from a starting node to an ending node.
More particularly, appellant contends (brief, page 3) that in Fujita a node shows an
intersection and a link shows the relationship between two intersections. Thus, in
appellant’s view, a link in Fujita connects two intersections and is therefore non-
directional (or bi-directional), such that the
link connects one intersection to the other intersection in each travel direction between
the intersections. From this, appellant concludes that the link in Fujita is not a “directed
link” that is associated with a direction of travel along the directed link, as recited in the
claims on appeal. In the reply brief, appellant contends that the direction of travel
disclosed in Fujita is a direction of travel that is an attribute of the vehicle in which the
navigation system of Fujita resides and is not a direction of travel that is permitted on a
road.
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