Appeal 2006-0342
Application 09/944,893
before us, that the evidence relied upon supports the Examiner’s rejection of
the claims on appeal. Accordingly, we affirm.
Claims 1-4, 6, and 8-15
We consider first the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-4, 6, and 8-15
as being unpatentable over Pogue in view of Daniels. Since Appellants’
arguments with respect to this rejection have treated these claims as a single
group which stand or fall together, we will select independent claim 1 as the
representative claim for this rejection because it is the broadest independent
claim. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii)(2004).
Appellants state they do not provide a special definition of the claim
term “active network.” Instead, Appellants assert the term “active network”
must be given its plain meaning, i.e., it must be read as it would be
interpreted by those of ordinary skill in the art (Br. 7, emphasis added).
Referring to the articles by Tennenhouse et al., 2 Appellants assert that the
interpretation of the term “active network” given by those of ordinary skill
in the art is clear, as follows:
[A]n active network is a network including nodes capable of
performing custom operations on the messages that pass
through the nodes; does not require a central server or
computing resource; are aware of the contents of the messages
transported and can participate in the processing and
modification of the message while they travel through the
network.
(Br. 7).
2 The Tennenhouse articles were attached as Appendices to the Brief.
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