Appeal No. 2006-2225
Application No. 09/815,439
finds that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the
invention to include Kiger’s teaching of breadth and depth information of a hierarchical tree
structure in a menu-driven graphical user interface in Herz to provide an intuitive tool to
visually and graphically present information to the end user [answer, pages 3-5].
Appellant argues that there is no motivation to combine Herz and Kiger [brief, pages
4 and 5]. Appellant notes that Herz customizes electronic newspapers and target
advertisements, but Kiger discusses the design of menu-driven user interfaces. According
to appellant, the references constitute non-analogous art and neither reference suggests
combining the references [brief, page 4]. Appellant further argues that Kiger is nearly 15
years older than Herz, yet Herz does not mention Kiger’s feature of representing depth
and/or breadth information. Appellant concludes that Herz’ failure to incorporate such a
feature from Kiger actually teaches away from the combination [brief, pages 5 and 6].
Appellant also argues that Herz and Kiger cannot be combined in the manner
suggested by the examiner [brief, page 6]. Appellant contends that the claimed invention
pertains to a graphical user interface, but Kiger’s menu-driven aspects refer to a fixed tree
structure used to construct a database. Kiger’s menu-driven aspects do not remotely
resemble “menus” within graphical user interfaces as understood by skilled artisans [id.;
reply brief, pages 2 and 3].
The examiner responds that Herz and Kiger constitute analogous art. The
examiner notes that Herz profiles users to determine their interests and retrieves target
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