Appeal 2007-1492
Application 10/061,813
background knowledge possessed by a person having ordinary skill in the
art" and "the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in
the art would employ." See KSR Int’l v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S. Ct. 1727, 1740-
41, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1396 (2007). In the present case, since an object of
the EPG in Rodriguez is to present a user with abbreviated information
about available programs, it would have been obvious to the skilled artisan
to abbreviate the titles by omitting words that convey no information
specific to the programs. The skilled artisan knows that articles (a, an, and
the), prepositions, joinder words (and, but, and or) and other common words
typically convey no information specific to the programs. Furthermore, it is
well-known that stop words typically are not indexed in databases and are
omitted for searching. Therefore, it would have been obvious to use stopped
name versions of the titles, as defined by Appellants on page 12 of the
Specification, for sorting program guide information. Accordingly, we will
sustain the obviousness rejection of claims 14 through 16 over Rodriguez.
Furthermore, as Appellants' only argument for claims 4, 9, 18, 21, and 24 is
that neither Rodriguez nor Byrne suggests sorting using stopped name
versions of program titles, and since we have found that Rodriguez does
suggest sorting with stopped name versions of program titles, we will sustain
the obviousness rejection of claims 4, 9, 18, 21, and 24 over Rodriguez and
Byrne.
ORDER
The decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 4, 9, 14 through 16, 18,
21, and 24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is affirmed.
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