Appeal Number: 2006-3172
Application Number: 10/420,685
Claims 1-7 and 11-20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over Wills
and Hodgson.
We note that the appellant argues these claims as a group. Accordingly, we
select claim 1 as representative of the group.
The examiner applied Wills for its teachings of the need for visual
enhancements to treemaps and Hodgson to show highlighting and drawing
linkages among related nodes in a tree in response to selection of a tree node
(Answer 3-5).
The appellant argues that the examiner failed to provide objective evidence for
the motivation to combine the teachings of Wills and Hodgson (Br. 5-9; Reply Br.
2-4), and that even were Wills and Hodgson combined, it would not have resulted
in the claimed invention (Br. 9-10; Reply Br. 5).
The examiner points to Hodgson’s col. 5, lines 11-15, as evidence that a person
of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine its teachings
with Wills (Answer 8-9). This portion of Hodgson states
By selecting a capability (node 12) in the model display (10), the user
causes the processing means (not shown) to automatically generate
the hierarchical structure display (16) and redisplay the same on a
display screen with an indication, such as a highlight, to indicate the
selected capability (node) in its contextual location in the hierarchy of
the organization.
(emphasis as added by examiner).
We agree that this is evidence of such desirability and further note that
Hodgson provides stronger evidence earlier in its disclosure:
However, many organizational needs are not currently met by the
graphical model of an organization. These needs can include a need
for the user to be able to understand the location of an organization
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