Appeal No. 1997-1117
Application No. 08/300,703
the Examiner has established a prima facie case of obviousness
with respect to independent claim 1 which remains unrebutted
by any convincing arguments offered by Appellants.
Accordingly, the rejection of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is
sustained. Since, as noted above, Appellant has grouped
claims 1, 2-9, 12, and 15-26 as standing or falling together,
claims 2-9, 12, and 15-26 fall with claim 1 in accordance with
37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7). Thus, it follows that the decision of
the Examiner to reject claims 2-9, 12, and 15-26 under 35
U.S.C. § 103 is also sustained.
We now turn to a consideration of independent claim 27
(grouped together by Appellant with dependent claims 28, 29,
and 32 as Group II) and independent claim 33 (grouped together
with dependent claims 35 and 36 as Group III). After
reviewing Appellant’s arguments, we sustain the Examiner’s
obviousness rejection of these claims as well. Appellant’s
arguments center on the alleged deficiencies of the references
in disclosing the claimed limitations requiring two levels of
verification before recognizing a message as an authorized
message for accessing a protected device. In particular,
Appellant attacks the teachings of Warren which the Examiner
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