Appeal No. 2000-1999
Application 08/748,314
signature of the merchant which is a function of the account and the price. The
examiner also admits that Sirbu does not disclose an order from the customer
containing the public key of the customer, a signature of the central authority which is a
function of the account, and a signature of the customer which is a function of the
account and the price.
The examiner relies on Schneier for a disclosure that information sent between
parties is signed using the private key of the sending party, referring to page 37,
paragraphs 3-6. Schneier is also relied on for a teaching of a public key sent with a
message in a digital certificate which contains a signature of the certification authority
which is a function of the sender’s information, referring to page 185, paragraph 6, and
page 186.
The examiner concludes therefrom that it would have been obvious “to use a
digital signature and certificate in the invention of Sirbu...motivated by the need to verify
the person sending the information and the information sent” (answer-page 4).
We will not sustain the rejection because, while the examiner has provided a
reference, in Schneier, that mentions public and private keys and certification authority,
the examiner has not established Schneier as teaching what is specifically claimed.
That is, claim 1, for example, requires the quotation to include the merchant public key,
a central authority private key-signed signature that is a function of the merchant
account, an unsigned copy of a price and a merchant private key-signed signature that
is a function of the merchant account and the price. The claim further requires that the
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007