Appeal No. 1996-3048
Application No. 07/998,316
containing the message is monitored when the distribution is
accessed by the recipient and the time duration of access is
tracked. This is brought out in claim 1 and, in more detail,
in claim 8.
The examiner relies on Okumura for teaching the claimed
subject matter but for “details about specifying an access
relationship between a plurality of objects within the message
and monitoring the time duration of access based upon the
access relationship” [answer-page 4]. The examiner then
relies on Johnson for an electronic mail system which
specifies the access relationship between a plurality of
objects within a message, concluding that it would have been
obvious to combine these teachings to arrive at the claimed
subject matter.
We disagree. Okumura is concerned with giving the
recipient a signal, based on instructions from the originator
of the message, as to the urgency of the message. The “time”
references within the disclosure of Okumura refer to possibly
increasing the frequency of a flashing signal or varying a
notice pattern until the receiver notices the mail-receive.
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