Appeal 2007-1063
Application 09/881,594
the communications path through the firewall. As a result, Appellant has
failed to carry his burden of establishing that the Examiner erred in
interpreting the reference. We find that Thomas discloses all the limitations
of the invention claimed in representative claims 1 and 25, and that the
Examiner did not err in his rejection of claims 1-4, 25 and 26 under 35
U.S.C. § 102.
With regard to claims 30 and 35, Appellant argues that Thomas does
not teach repeatedly sending the keep-alive messages to maintain the path
through the firewall and network address translator … for a duration of the
registration of the first terminal” (Br. 7:7-9). We disagree, for the reasons
held supra. Thomas may fairly be interpreted to teach that one may select an
interval between communication sessions short enough that the path between
client and server would never be dropped. The “initiation” messages then
become the equivalent of “keep-alive” messages, which would be sent for
the [indefinite] duration of the registration of the first terminal. We therefore
find no error in the Examiner’s rejection of claims 30 and 35 under 35
U.S.C. § 102.
With regard to claims 33, 34, 38 and 39, Appellant argues that
Thomas does not teach “causing a mapping table to be maintained by the
firewall and network address translator” (Br. 8:16-17), because as noted
supra, the repeated initiation of communication taught by Thomas does not
correspond to the maintenance claimed by Appellant. For the reasons held
above, we read Thomas to anticipate these claims as well. Thomas teaches
that if a communications session is initiated by the MAPI client, a MAPI
server will use the IP address in the packet header to communicate with that
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