Appeal 2007-0437 Application 09/982,224 may include any type of documents including drawing and three dimensional views as well as images. As noted by the Examiner, the teachings with respect to figure 2 at the top of column 4 of Kumar also characterize the shared work spaces comprising graphical objects. Of particular note as to the combinability issue are the teachings in the last paragraph at column 4 of Kumar which indicates that its system teachings may be easily built into any real time collaborations system. This teaching also brings out another major teaching of Kumar, that it is in a real-time collaboration environment. Thus, also emphasized is the heartbeat command nature of the communications between collaborators on a regular basis as claimed. We therefore do not agree with Appellants’ characterization of the Brown and Kumar references at the bottom of page 5 of the principal Brief on appeal since the remarks here appear to play off the teachings of Kumar and Brown against each other. We turn now to the subject matter of argued dependent claim 6 where it is stated that the command comprises an extensible markup language (XML) command. Appellants’ own Specification is written in the sense of recognizing that XML was well known in the art and Appellants’ disclosed invention makes use of it. We therefore agree with the Examiner’s views at the bottom of page 5 of the Answer that XML would have been an obvious choice for a network-based application of which each of the three references basically teaches. While we recognize the Examiner’s choice of term as characterizing the use of this well known language as being a mere design choice is misplaced, the arguments behind the Examiner’s characterization have not been seasonably challenged by Appellants at page 10 of the principal Brief and at pages 5 and 6 of the Reply Brief. The Examiner’s 6Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013