Appeal No. 2003-0483
Application No. 09/375,429
With regard to claims 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 15, 19 and 20, the examiner contends that
Gervais does not explicitly show the process of anonymizing the device identification
information and anonymizing the location address included in the received packet but
relies on Barton for the teaching of anonymizing identification and address information
of devices in a communication network system. The examiner concludes that it would
have been obvious to modify Gervais in view of Barton because it was “old and well
known . . . to use the process of anonymizing identification and address information of
devices in a communication network” and this would “permit convenient expansion of
the network as suggested by Barton” [answer-page 6].
We will not sustain the rejection of claims 4, 5, 9, 10, 14, 15, 19 and 20 under 35
U.S.C. § 103 because, while Barton may disclose keeping network addresses
anonymous (column 2, line 58), we fail to find any suggestion therein of the claimed
“anonymizing the device identification information” and “anonymizing the location
address.” Moreover, even if we accept, from Barton, that it was known to anonymize
network addresses, this still falls far short of any suggestion that it would have been
obvious to combine this teaching in any manner with Gervais in order to achieve
anonymizing the device identification information and/or the location address included
in a packet including this information, processing the packet and then forwarding the
packet with this anonymized information to a location address.
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