Appeal 2007-1440
Application 09/920,481
person of ordinary skill in the art would employ.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex
Inc., 127 S. Ct. 1727, 1741, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1396 (2007) (quoting In re
Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2006)).
If the Examiner’s 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 the independent claims, the Examiner's rejection essentially
finds that Gifford teaches a method of delivering items of content through
email based inquiry-response automation with every claimed feature except
for (1) assigning a tracking code for the inquiry-response transaction, and (2)
parsing the second email message and identifying the tracking code in the
second email message as claimed. The Examiner cites Talati as disclosing
an electronic commerce system that uses a Unique Global Transaction ID
(UTID) to help identify the originator (user). The Examiner concludes that
it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of
the invention to use a tracking code such as a UTID in Gifford’s system to
reduce fraudulent transactions (Answer 3-7).
Regarding representative claim 1,2 Appellant argues that because the
buyer initiates the transaction in Gifford by clicking on a hyperlink -- not via
email -- the reference does not teach or suggest “receiving a first message
via e-mail from a user of a given client device at a remote location, whereby
2 Appellant argues independent claims 1, 13, 22, and 41 together as a group.
See Br. 6-8. Accordingly, we select claim 1 as representative. See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(vii).
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