Appeal 2006-2673
Application 10/004,192
35 U.S.C § 103(a) REJECTION
With respect to the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claims 2-9
and 12-20 based on the combination of Humes and Meyerzon, Appellant’s
arguments in response assert a failure to set forth a prima facie case of
obviousness since all of the claim limitations are not taught or suggested by
the Humes and Meyerzon references. In particular, Appellant contend (Br.
7-9; Reply Br. 6) that Meyerzon does not overcome the deficiencies of
Humes in disclosing the searching of a tree structure as set forth in detail in
dependent claims 2 and 12 and independent claim 17.
Initially, we find that, as alluded to by the Examiner (Answer 11-12),
the folders and documents in the history table 400-2 of Meyerzon are in fact
arranged in a hierarchical tree format. This is verified by the illustration in
Meyerzon’s Figure 3 as well as the description at column 8, lines 45-67 and
at line 13 of the Abstract of Meyerzon.
We do agree with Appellant, however, that Meyerzon does not
provide a disclosure of the traversing of the tree data structure as set forth in
claims 2, 12, and 17. In particular, we find no teaching or suggestion in
Meyerzon of the identification of a branch associated with a root node of
search tree which corresponds to a determined hash value for a received
URL followed by the traversing of only that branch in search for a match for
a received URL as claimed.
Accordingly, since we are of the opinion that, even if combined, the
proposed combination of the Humes and Meyerzon references set forth by
the Examiner does not support the obviousness rejection, we do not sustain
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