Appeal No. 2000-1962
Application No. 08/697,421
With respect to independent claim 1, the Examiner, as the
basis for the obviousness rejection, proposes to modify the secure
endorsed transaction disclosure of Davies. According to the
Examiner (Answer, page 4), Davies discloses the claimed invention
except for a teaching that “... a ‘human’ identifier, e.g. a
biometric, can be used with such an encryption scheme to further
enhance security.” To address this deficiency, the Examiner turns
to the secure transaction system disclosed by Griffith which, as
pointed out by the Examiner, includes the use of an individual
identifier in the form of a biometric such as a finger print or a
retinal scan pattern (Griffith, column 2, lines 39-53). In the
Examiner’s analysis (id.), the skilled artisan would have found it
obvious to include Griffith’s human identifier in the system of
Davies “... because this would make it more difficult for a thief
to use a stolen smart card, as taught by Griffith to create the
negotiable documents taught by Davies.”
In response, Appellants contend that the Examiner has failed
to set forth a prima facie case of obviousness since proper
motivation for the Examiner’s proposed combination has not been
established. After reviewing the disclosures of the Davies and
Griffith references, in light of the arguments of record, we are in
general agreement with Appellants’ position as stated in the
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