Appeal No. 2001-2050
Application No. 08/997,085
being received from a holding party or a pre-recorded message being transmitted in
response.
Thus, as described above, both Nepustil and Wolff fail to teach or suggest
two elements of the claimed invention: 1) delivering to a hold initiating party a pre-
recorded message in response to the hold termination signal and 2) receiving a
selection identifier and delivering a pre-recorded message in response to the selection
identifier. Because the cited references fail to teach or suggest all elements of the
pending claims, the rejections to claims 1-32 must be reversed.
We agree with appellants’ argument that the holding party accesses a pre-recorded message
and sends it to the hold-initiating party in the claims on appeal, whereas the hold initiating party
(i.e., the end user) in Wolff accesses a pre-recorded message and sends it to the holding party (i.e.,
the calling party) (column 4, lines 5 and 6; column 5, lines 57 through 60). Since Nepustil is not
concerned with sending pre-recorded messages, and Wolff has a hold-initiating party that performs
the pre-recorded message accessing function performed by the holding party in the claims on appeal,
we likewise agree with the appellants’ argument that the obviousness rejection of claims 1 through
5, 7, 9, 11 through 14, 16, 19 through 22, 24 and 27 through 32 must be reversed.
The obviousness rejection of claims 6, 8, 10, 15, 17, 18, 23, 25 and 26 is reversed because
the teachings of Inaba and Nishikawa do not cure the noted shortcomings in the teachings of
Nepustil and Wolff.
DECISION
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007