Appeal No. 2000-1962
Application No. 08/697,421
Briefs. Our interpretation of the disclosure of Davies coincides
with that of Appellants, i.e., there is no indication in Davies
that a unique identifier is used in the generation of digital
signature 16 which the Examiner has identified as corresponding to
the claimed generated unique code. In reaching this conclusion, we
construe the claimed feature of ”a unique human identifier” to be
very narrowly defined, as argued by Appellants and disclosed in the
instant specification, as an identifier which is “...associated
with an individual that is unique to the individual and non-
transferable.” (Specification, page 14, lines 18-21).
We agree with Appellants’ assertion (Brief, pages 14 and 15)
that, from every indication in Davies, the customer identity item
(5 in Davies’ Figure 1), identified as the unique identifier in the
statement of the grounds of rejection at page 4 of the Answer, is
not used in the generation of the digital signature. To the
contrary, the description of Davies’ Figure 1 indicates that only
data items 9-15 are involved in the generation of the digital
signature 16.
We are cognizant of the fact that the Examiner, in the
“Response to Argument” portion of the Answer at page 10, suggests
that, contrary to Appellants’ contention, a unique identifier is in
fact used to create Davies’ digital signature. In drawing this
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