Appeal No. 2006-2193
Application 09/751,823
claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed.
Cir. 1993). As shown above, maintenance of anonymity is only
taught for the period of payload transmission and reception, and the
anonymity may be dropped after this. Thus, the applicant’s statement
regarding May’s eventual ending of anonymity (P. 5, lines 20-31)
does not apply in regards to the claims as drawn, as this activity
clearly occurs at the end of the process execution associated with the
transmitted agent.
The applicant further admits that May teaches an automated
system for distributing anonymous price and position information
(P. 7, lines 9-12). This example further shows that the anonymity is
maintained at the point of transmission.
In response to applicant’s argument that there is no suggestion
to combine the references, the examiner recognizes that obviousness
can only be established by combining or modifying the teachings of
the prior art to produce the claimed invention where there is some
teaching, suggestion, or motivation to do so found either in the
references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one
of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 5 USPQ2d
1596 (Fed. Cir. 1988) and In re Jones, 958 F.2d 347, 21 USPQ2d
1941 (Fed. Cir. 1992). In this case, the applicant argues that
anonymity would be undesirable to Kraft (P. 6, lines 23-28) on the
grounds that Kraft teaches that options include requiring digital
signatures or authentication (P. 6, lines 28-34). First, these are only
sample embodiments and do not by themselves preclude a Kraft
combination involving anonymity. In fact, there are clearly
embodiments upon which anonymity is not required (Fig. 5). Second,
the authentication processes would occur at Kraft’s server (#102), thus
potentially maintaining anonymity between the client (remote
computer) and performing host (#106). Third, such certifications
occur after reception of the imported task, and thus do not preclude
anonymity before or during reception of the imported task. Assuming
argumendo [sic arguendo] that May teaches authentication at the end
of the task, as the applicant claims (P. 7, lines 4-7), the combination
would not destroy the primary invention, and therefore the
combination may be allowed, given proper motivation.
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