Appeal No. 2000-0259
Application No. 08/827,835
776 F.2d 281, 293, 227 USPQ 657, 664 (Fed. Cir. 1985), cert.
denied, 475 U.S. 1017 (1986); ACS Hosp. Sys., Inc. v.
Montefiore Hosp., 732 F.2d 1572, 1577, 221 USPQ 929, 933 (Fed.
Cir. 1984). These showings by the Examiner are an essential part
of complying with the burden of presenting a prima facie case of
obviousness. Note In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d
1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
With respect to independent claims 19 and 29, the Examiner,
as the basis for the obviousness rejection, proposes to modify
the disclosures of any one of Sundelin, Waterhouse, or Joliey,
each of which discloses the transmission of pricing information
through a plurality of routing points eventually to price tag
modules. According to the Examiner (Answer, page 4), “[t]hese
references show all the claimed limitations yet lack in expressly
discussing the verification of addresses occurring in the routing
means.” To address this deficiency, the Examiner turns to
Opoczynski which, in the Examiner’s view (id.), describes a
master-slave communication system in which address comparison is
performed at a routing point to determine message destination.
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