Appeal 2007-0438
Application 09/905,524
abstraction, as recited in representative claim 1 (Br. 3-4; Reply Br. 2). The
Examiner, in contrast, contends that APA teaches the claimed limitation
(Answer 3, 7). Consequently, The Examiner concludes that APA, taken in
combination with Smith renders claims 1 through 22 unpatentable.
We reverse.
ISSUES
The pivotal issue in the appeal before us is as follows:
(1) Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (a), would one of ordinary skill in the art,
at the time of the present invention, have found that the disclosures of APA
and Smith render the claimed invention unpatentable?
FINDINGS OF FACT
Appellant invented a computer-implemented method and an
electronic system for evaluating a description of audiovisual content (Figure
2). Particularly, the invention determines whether the description of an
audio visual content is an abstraction. If it is, the invention then identifies
the level and type of abstraction. Additionally, the invention stores an
indicator of the level and type of identified abstraction in conjunction with
the description of the audio visual content (Specification 10).
APA discloses a general overview of descriptions of audiovisual
content. Particularly, APA discloses that descriptions of audiovisual content
are divided into structural and semantic descriptions. That latter category is
further divided into concrete and abstract entities. More particularly, the
APA discloses that an abstraction may have one of a plurality of levels, and
one of many types (e.g. media abstraction, formal or lambda abstraction)
(Specification 2). APA also indicates that no mechanism currently exists to
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