Appeal No. 96-1032
Application 08/197,443
reading and conversion to a numeric code, while claims 19 to 21
and 25 are drawn to an apparatus (“improvement”) for the same
purpose.
The references relied on by the examiner are:
Gunn 3,757,942 Sept. 11, 1973
Phipps, Sr. et al. (Phipps) 4,676,162 Jun. 30, 1987
Pusic 5,065,000 Nov. 12, 1991
The claims stand finally rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 on
the following grounds:
(1) Claims 2 to 6, 8, 20, 21, 23 and 25, unpatentable over
Gunn in view of Pusic.
(2) Claim 19, unpatentable over Gunn in view of Pusic and
Phipps.
Rejection (1)
The essence of this rejection is stated at pages 3 and 4 of
the examiner’s answer as follows:
Pusic teaches the conventionality of applying
zip code, country code, special request code,
and identification code in the form of machine
readable bar code on almost all mailings. From
the teaching of Pusic, it is apparent that
using bar code(s) as a tool to transmit
identifying information is a common practice in
the postal mail handling operation. See Fig.
7, column 2, lines 14-25 and column 6, lines
19-29 in Pusic for example. In view of the
teaching of Pusic, it would have been obvious
to one having ordinary skill in the art at the
time the invention was made to substitute the
machine readable bar code for the code guide
elements of Gunn to achieve the same result.
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