Appeal No. 2006-1790
Application No. 10/042,030
With regard to claims 11 and 22, these claims include an authentication of the
user, wherein the step of modifying the attribute comprises modifying the attribute in
response to the user being authenticated.
The examiner contends that both APA and IE authenticate a user, and that after
authentication, when the user modifies an attribute, this modification is “in response” to
the user being authenticated.
While appellants do not deny that conventional systems authenticate users,
appellants argue that IE does not provide any connection whatsoever between user
identification and accessibility options.
Again, while we understand the differences between the disclosed invention and
that described by IE and what was conventional in the art, we do not find that the instant
claim language distinguishes over the prior art. That is, while appellants wish the
attribute modification to be a direct result of user authentication (so that a user signing
on will automatically be sent documents in accordance with that user’s preferences), the
claims only require that the modifying step be “in response to the user being
authenticated.” A broad, yet reasonable interpretation, in our view, would be that
although the prior art does not automatically modify the attribute on authenticating the
user, the modification is certainly “in response to the user being authenticated” since
until the user is authenticated, he/she cannot have access to the system in order to
change the default settings of the Web page attributes. Thus, being given access
(being authenticated) permits the user to modify the attributes. Therefore, in the prior
11
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