Appeal No. 1998-2870
Application 08/429,954
rejection"). Furthermore, based on past experience, examiners
often will not conduct a further search for a better reference if
a new ground of rejection is entered. We leave it to the
Examiner to decide whether to search further.
Although we have reversed the rejection of claims 1-25, we
make the following comments regarding the rejections of the
dependent claims for the Examiner's benefit without addressing
Appellants' arguments. As to claim 2, Snyder also shows DTMF
signals emitted by amplifier 58. As to claim 3, we further note
the phone identification number (col. 10, lines 18-23) and the
amenity identification number in Biggs (col. 19, lines 45-47) and
the serial ID code in Snyder (col. 7, lines 34-36). The
rejection of claims 4, 5, and 25 would benefit from further
explanation by the Examiner. Claims 6-11, 15, 16, and 22 require
no comments. As to claim 12, the Examiner has not addressed the
difference between the claimed EEPROM and the EPROM of Biggs. As
to claim 13, no additional reference is deemed necessary if it
would have been obvious to use the EEPROM in claim 11; the term
"integrated" in the limitation "memory device is integrated with
the central processing unit [20]" only broadly requires the
memory to work in tandem with the CPU, which is shown in Biggs.
Nevertheless, the Examiner's citation of Berry as to claim 13 is
a safe precaution. As to claims 17-19 and 24, an additional
reference is required; in particular, the CPU in Biggs does not
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