Appeal No. 1997-3822
Application No. 08/406,668
whatsoever in Nagata as to how a calling party could opt
to either [sic] transmit, at the calling party's option,
either a voice-mail message or a standard telephone
transmission to the called party at a single address for
the called party.
For example, looking at Nagata, and applying the
Examiner's argument, if a called [sic, calling] party
wishes to transmit the digital signal from a stored
message to the receiving party, the Examiner suggests
that the transmitting party would transmit the digital
signal right off of the card, sending it to the receiving
party at one address for the receiving party. Now, the
receiving party's telephone would ring and the receiving
party would have no idea as to whether or not the
incoming call was a digital transmission or the calling
party with a standard telephone transmission. Thus, the
receiving party might answer the phone and be greeted
with a series of digital impulses. This, of course,
would not be an acceptable situation.
Similarly, at the receiving site, when the phone
rings, the receiving party might think it is receiving a
digital transmission, not answer the phone, and thereby
miss a standard telephone transmission.
[Brief at 14-15.]
In our view, the foregoing problem, which was not addressed in
the Answer, must be resolved by the examiner in order to
satisfy his burden to make out a prima facie case for
obviousness. A related question, not raised by appellant, is
how the receiving telephone device would recognize voice-mail
messages in order to cause them to be recorded in memory 35.
In other words, what is it that corresponds to the claimed
identifier tag and means for detecting the identifier tag of
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