Appeal No. 2002-0349
Application No. 09/442,352
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 because it is our view that the examiner
has set forth a prima facie case of obviousness which has not
been convincingly rebutted by appellant.
We do not find appellant’s arguments to be persuasive of
nonobviousness because they appear to be arguments against the
references individually. It is not proper to argue the
references individually where, as here, the rejection relies on a
combination of references. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ
871 (CCPA 1981).
In particular, appellant argues that Stringer does not
disclose a telephone communication network utilizing
bidirectional communication when the examiner relies on the
secondary references for such a teaching and appellant argues
that the secondary references do not teach providing anything but
a full and undegraded version of the data when the examiner
relies on Stringer for the teaching of providing a degraded and a
full version of data, dependent on whether a fee has been paid.
This is clearly an argument against individual references rather
than an argument against what the combination of references would
have fairly suggested. We are unpersuaded of any error in the
examiner’s rationale.
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