Appeal No. 1999-0091
Application No. 08/762,052
suggestion in either of the references to reroute the calls to
the passengers through a base station. The Federal Circuit
states that "[t]he mere fact that the prior art may be modified
in the manner suggested by the Examiner does not make the
modification obvious unless the prior art suggested the
desirability of the modification." In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260,
1266 n.14, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-4 n.14 (Fed. Cir. 1992), citing
In re Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902, 221 USPQ 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir.
1984). Without some suggestion in the prior art to make the
modification, we cannot sustain the rejection of claims 16
through 18, 21, and 22.
Representative claim 6 requires that the distinctive ringing
sound include at least two rings having different time durations.
The examiner states (Answer, page 6) that "[i]t would have been
obvious to use known specific distinctive ringing as taught by
Reyes ... to provide an acoustically pleasing sound to a user."
Appellant responds (Brief, page 10) that there's no motivation to
combine the specific ringing sounds of Reyes with the system of
Ross as modified by Oprea. We disagree. Oprea teaches generally
the use of distinctive rings. Oprea lists a few types of
distinctive rings that can be used, but the teachings are more
general and should not be considered as being limited to the
types of rings that are discussed. Nonetheless, Oprea discloses
7
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