Appeal 2007-0352
Application 09/996,130
System VCS is discussed at length at columns 80 through 96 of Herz. It is
thus readily apparent that we cannot agree with Appellants’ assertion at the
top of page 10 of the Brief that Herz does not teach determining a group
interest of a user group, only the concept of comparing profiles for target
objects. Herz repeatedly teaches the ability to group people by their
interests, which are determined by determining the similarities among users
and their respective user profiles.
We thus strongly believe that it is apparent to the artisan that the
teachings of Jacobs relied upon by the Examiner are merely cumulative as
they are applied to independent claim 1 on appeal to what we have already
identified as pertinent teachings in a general sense in Herz. In contrast to the
views expressed at page 9 of the Brief, Jacobs actively teaches the concepts
of caching or to cache data for subsequent use as expressed in the Summary
of The Invention and shown in figures 2 and 3 of that reference.
Appellants’ view that Jacobs cannot be combined with any reference
appears to be based upon a structural combinability approach to Jacobs in
view of Herz, which approach is not a proper means of analysis within 35
U.S.C. § 103. The Examiner has identified and we have embellished upon
pertinent teachings of the references.
Likewise, it cannot be accurately stated that the references teach away
from their combinability with each other in the first instance since we
consider Jacobs to be merely cumulative to what is already taught in Herz as
expressed earlier in this opinion. There is no apparent active
discouragement to an artisan to follow the approach followed by Appellants
in the claimed invention in any one or both of the applied prior art.
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