Appeal No. 2002-0867
Application No. 08/738,659
use TCP/IP protocol, if the LAN is running a Unix operating system. Col. 18, l. 60 - col.
19, l. 4. As shown in Figure 5C, the network administrator may request detailed status
information from the printer (or other peripheral device on the network, if equipped with
an NEB), the status information being transmitted from the printer through the LAN to
the administrator’s PC 14. Col. 20, l. 49 - col. 21, l. 15.
Kraslavsky thus discloses a monitoring device (PC 14) which determines
information to be transmitted to a monitored device (printer 4), the information including
a request for status of the printer determined using sensors within the printer, such as
sensors that ascertain if the printer is off-line or out of paper.
Claim 10 further requires that the information from the monitoring device to the
monitored device (e.g., the request for status) be transmitted through “electronic mail.”
In view of the broadest reasonable interpretation of “electronic mail,” as we discussed in
the above-noted prior decision -- “electronic mail” requires “the transmission of
messages over a communications network” -- we find no difference between the
relevant claim 10 requirement and the transmission of the PC 14 message to printer 4,
over the LAN 6 using TCP/IP protocol within a Unix operating system, as disclosed by
Kraslavsky.
Instant claim 74, depending from claim 10, requires that the transmitting step
comprises transmitting the electronic mail message “without using a telephone line.”
Kraslavsky, disclosing transmission of the message over a LAN, is squarely within the
terms of the negative limitation of claim 74.
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