Appeal No. 1997-3822
Application No. 08/406,668
claims 5, 14, and 24. However, as will appear, we are3
reversing the rejection of all of these claims for failure to
demonstrate the prima facie obviousness of the "single
address" requirement common to all of the independent claims,
which requirement the examiner and appellant apparently agree
refers to the ability to transmit standard telephone calls and
voice-mail messages to a party using a single telephone number
for that party. The examiner argues that when voice-mail
messages are sent to memory 35 in the receiving telephone
device instead of to memory 41 in exchanger 4, the calling
party is able to use the same telephone number to reach the
receiving telephone device whether making a standard telephone
call or sending a voice-mail message to memory 35 (id.).
Appellant offers the following reasons why it would not have
been obvious to use the same telephone number for both types
of communication:
In Nagata, a casual reference is made to the fact
that the receiving device 3' could be a standard
telephone. Note, however, that there is no teaching
3The Brief (at 17-20) recites the limitations of
claims 5, 14, and 24 and argues that those claims are
patentable over Nagata for the reasons given with respect to
claim 1.
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