Appeal No. 2006-3038
Application No. 09/750,288
classifying the electronic ink based on a shape of the ink. The examiner cites
Maxted as teaching such a feature and finds that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to modify Morishita to
use shape as a factor in classifying the electronic ink to reduce the number of
symbols needed [answer, pages 6 and 7]. Among other things, appellants argue
that Maxted merely allows a user to place edit symbols in a selection window,
and there is no reason to modify Morishita’s search region embodiment with
Maxted’s edit symbols [brief, pages 10-11; reply brief, pages 2 and 3]. The
examiner responds that Maxted teaches that different shapes of electronic ink
produce different text editing functions. According to the examiner, including
such a feature in Morishita’s system would result in fewer strokes needed to edit
text [answer, pages 11 and 12].
We will sustain the examiner’s rejection of claims 1 and 14. Although the
examiner’s rejection is based on obviousness, we find that both Morishita and
Maxted actually anticipate the claims.
For example, Morishita’s curved and rectangular search regions in Figs.
44A and B fully meet the claimed classification step in that the curved region
corresponds to “Select Mode 1,” and the rectangular region corresponds to
“Select Mode 2” [see Morishita, col. 25, lines 42-58]. Simply put, the electronic
ink is “classified” as corresponding to Select Mode 1 or 2 based on whether it is
curved or rectangular. Also, the ink is associated with at least one object of the
displayed information for the reasons previously discussed.
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