Appeal No. 1997-2700
Application 08/307,249
USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA 1976).
Dependent claims 4-6, argued separately by Appellant, are
each directed to the routing of a call under a verification
procedure to an operator station if incorrect answers are
supplied in response to the automated system request. In
addressing this claimed feature, the Examiner proposes to
modify the purely automated system of Hunt by relying on the
Hou reference which provides a teaching of routing a verifying
call to an operator after two attempts at automated
verification. In the Examiner’s line of reasoning (Answer,
page 7), the skilled artisan would have been motivated and
found it obvious to provide for the forwarding of calls to an
operator in Hunt, as taught by Hou, to overcome the possible
failure of the automated query process due to environmental
factors (e.g. noise) and program malfunctioning.
In response, Appellant attacks (Reply Brief, page 6) the
Examiner’s establishment of motivation for combining Hou with
Hunt since the Examiner’s suggested motivation is not
explicitly disclosed in Hou. However, despite any explicit
teaching in Hou of the reason for providing operator station
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