Appeal 2006-2496
Application 09/944,696
USPQ 459, 467 (1966). Furthermore, “‘there must be some articulated
reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of
obviousness’ . . . . [H]owever, the analysis need not seek out precise
teachings directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for
a court can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of
ordinary skill in the art would employ.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127
S. Ct. 1727, 1741, 82 UPSQ2d 1385, 1396 (2007)(quoting In re Kahn, 441
F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 2006)). In this appeal, we
are satisfied the Examiner has met the requirements of the recent precedent,
as embellished upon here.
We initially note that Appellants have presented only a general
argument that there is no teaching, suggestion or motivation for combining
the cited references, and have not presented any specific arguments refuting
the rationale set forth by the Examiner for combining the references.
Appellants present three principal arguments against the first stated
rejection: 1) Microsoft ® Word 2000 fails to disclose displaying a frequency
change in edit history (Br. 5); 2) a document generated using Microsoft ®
Word 2000 is not a plan (Br. 6); and 3) the term “function of frequency” is a
limiting term that requires a mathematical correspondence that assigns a
value to a variable as a function of frequency (Reply Br. 1-2).
Regarding the first argument, the Examiner disagrees, and cites to
page 2, paragraph 2 of Microsoft ® Word 2000 (Answer, 14). We agree
with the Examiner, and find that the cited portion of Microsoft ® Word 2000
teaches storing multiple versions of a document, and allowing a user to
display a listing of each version using the “Versions dialog box”. By
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