Appeal No. 2002-1380
Application No. 08/786,270 Page 6
that claim 1 requires extracting signatures from both the
monitored receiver and the local signal source, and using both
signatures to identify the local source of the program supplied
to the display of the monitored receiver. It is argued that in
Thomas, signatures are not extracted from both the monitored
receiver 24 and the VCR 132 in order to determine which is the
local source of the program displayed on the monitored receiver.
It is additionally argued that the devices are not local because
they are at different sites.
With regard to independent claim 15, appellants assert
(brief, pages 16-18) that Thomas merely discloses that a program,
whether broadcast or supplied from a tape to the monitored
receiver, can be identified from the output of the monitored
receiver, but that Thomas does not disclose identification of the
local source itself. Thus, Thomas does not disclose how to
determine whether the program was broadcast or played from a
tape. Appellants acknowledge that Thomas uses signature
extractors, but assert that in Thomas, the signature extractor is
used only to identify a program, whereas the signature extractor
of independent claim 15 is used to identify the local source of
the program. Appellants additionally assert (id.) that in
Thomas, signatures are not extracted from three devices in the
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