Appeal No. 2002-2316
Application No. 09/408,443
Claims 18-35 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Aikens, Tarr, and Frantz.
We refer to the Final Rejection (Paper No. 15) and the Examiner’s Answer
(Paper No. 20) for a statement of the examiner’s position and to the Brief (Paper No.
19) and the Reply Brief (Paper No. 21) for appellants’ position with respect to the claims
which stand rejected.
OPINION
In the rejection set forth at pages 4 and 5 of the Answer, the examiner contends,
in essence, that Aikens discloses the first two steps required by instant claim 16. The
rejection turns to Tarr for suggestion of that deemed to be missing from Aikens.
Appellants assert (Brief at 5-6) that nothing in Tarr would have suggested the
details of the “determining” and “transmitting” steps of claim 16. The examiner
responds (Answer at 8-9) that Tarr teaches that if a first, remote computer has not
received a signal within a given period of time from second, local computers, then the
first computer automatically transmits a message containing at least some information
obtained from the sensors on the local network. Appellants respond in turn (Reply Brief
at 1-3) that although Tarr discloses sending a signal from a remote computer to local
network systems for triggering information to be sent to the remote computer, claim 16
requires more.
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