Appeal 2006-2855
Application 09/774,727
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, it is incumbent upon the
Examiner to establish a factual basis to support the legal conclusion of
obviousness. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1073, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598
(Fed. Cir. 1988). In so doing, the Examiner must make the factual
determinations set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17, 148
USPQ 459, 467 (1966). If that burden is met, the burden then shifts to the
Appellant to overcome the prima facie case with argument and/or evidence.
Obviousness is then determined on the basis of the evidence as a whole and
the relative persuasiveness of the arguments. See In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d
1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
Regarding independent claims 1, 9, and 15, the Examiner's rejection
essentially finds that Lang teaches an automated system for providing
reputation information with every claimed feature except for transmitting the
reputation information responsive to an authorization received by the user as
claimed. The Examiner cites Coueignoux as teaching this feature and
concludes that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art
at the time of the invention to modify Lang so that reputation information
was transmitted only upon affirmative consent for publication (Answer 3-5,
7-11).
Appellant argues that Coueignoux is not analogous to the claimed
invention. According to Appellant, Coueignoux pertains to communication
between a sender and a user that is moderated by an agent; the user in
Coueignoux must give authorization to the agent to share private
information with the sender. Appellant emphasizes that the reputation
authority of the claimed invention, however, is centralized, accessible by
both the community organization and the user, and does not simply act as a
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