Appeal 2007-2127
Reexamination Control No. 90/006,621
the art at the time the invention was made to have immediately emitted an
error message upon determination of an error condition because of Nitta
taught that using a dictionary for comparison of the different part of speech
pattern" (Final Rejection 141 ¶ VIII.4).
Patent Owner does not mention Nitta in connection with the rejection
of error messages in the obviousness rejection over OS/2 and Nitta.
However, Patent Owner argues in connection with the obviousness rejection
over De Jong and Nitta that the Examiner implicitly recognizes that Nitta
does not disclose generation of error messages and "[t]he Examiner
conclusorily states that generation of an error message would be obvious,
notwithstanding that Nitta omits such a feature" (Br. 70 n.15) and that such
rejection should be withdrawn. Patent Owner argues that Nitta is less
pertinent than Heard because "[i]n Heard, the spelling checking operation is
performed as the words are being typed, generating an error signal when an
error is encountered, allowing the typist to correct the error" (Br. 69).
Nitta does not disclose checking spelling and grammar for correctness
and, thus, has no need for error messages. The portion of Nitta pointed out
by the Examiner refers to a prior art problem where selection of a wrong part
of speech by a translation program leads to a wrong translation. However,
this is not the kind of error that would be detectable, much less correctable
by a user, so there is need to notify the user by an error message. We agree
with Patent Owner that Heard is a better reference for the error message
limitations because Heard expressly discloses generating an error message
when a misspelled word is detected (e.g., col. 3, lines 26-33 and col. 6,
lines 40-54). However, Heard is not applied in the rejection. Since Nitta
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