Appeal No. 2004-0227
Application 09/140,151
over Verschuur in combination with Brosow and/or Stockburger and
further in combination with Matsumoto or Hasegawa.
OPINION
We reverse the aforementioned rejections. We need to
address only the independent claims, i.e., claims 1, 11 and 18.1
Each of the appellants’ independent claims requires a random
distribution of dielectric components affixed with a substrate.
Verschuur discloses a system and method for “accessing
information from the contents of sealed envelopes or other
layered structures by making use of localized capacitance changes
introduced into a substrate, such as a paper insert inside the
envelope, by conductive or dielectric ink used to print encoded
information such as a bar-code” (col. 2, lines 53-58).
“Variations in capacitance associated with the pattern of the
conductive ink are detected as a function of the relative
position of the capacitance sensor along the covered substrate
and are compared to stored information about similar patterns for
reading the encoded information” (col. 3, lines 1-5). “While the
information encoded in the envelopes’ contents 83 is preferably a
1
1 The examiner does not rely upon Matsumoto or Hasegawa for
any disclosure that remedies the deficiency in Verschuur, Brosow
and Stockburger as to the independent claims.
3
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