Appeal 2007-1554
Application 10/844,387
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) Rejection
The Robinson and Ginter Combination
Appellants argue that the limitation in claim 34 of the “details in the
transaction record [being]… protected from modification by the parties to the
transaction” is not found in the prior art and that this limitation further prohibits the
combination of Robinson and Ginter (Br. 5, 8). Specifically, it is asserted that:
1. because the merchant in Robinson is capable of tampering with the transaction
details against the interests of the purchaser, Robinson cannot meet this claim
limitation, and 2. because Ginter would lessen merchant control in Robinson, it
would destroy Robinson’s teachings (Br. 5, 8).
We reject these arguments and find that the combination of Robinson and
Ginter answers the limitations of the claim elements, and that a person with
ordinary skill in the art person would have known to use the teachings of Ginter as
part of the electronic transaction in Robinson.
In making the combination, the Examiner refers to Figs. 115-122 in Ginter
to teach the known use of a third party digital receipt agent for electronic
transactions to independently generate an electronic receipt for electronic
commerce transactions (Final Office Action 4 (mailed Feb. 27, 2006)). We are not
entirely sure that Figs. 115-122 in Ginter provide the necessary teaching for the
stated modification made to Robinson. This is because Figs. 115-122 in Ginter
relate to a created data object 300 and its subsequent down stream authentication
and delivery (Ginter, col. 40, ll. 48-65) against tampering by third parties, and not
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