Appeal No. 2002-1761
Application No. 09/169,757
With regard to the rejection of claim 15 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103, the examiner now appears to take the view that Pepe does
not disclose SMS for message notification, but contends that it
would have been obvious because “SMS is well known, using for
sending or receiving, short alphanumeric messages to or from
mobile telephones.”
We will not sustain the rejection of claim 15 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 because, in our view, the examiner has not
established a case of prima facie obviousness.
Initially, we note the inconsistency of the examiner’s
rationale, first contending, at page 4 of the answer, that Pepe
teaches the routing of SMS notification to the subscriber
Internet gateway to provide an indication to the subscriber of
the stored voice mail message, citing Figure 1, elements 26, 29,
40, 39 and 32, and column 5, lines 51-67, and then, in the very
next sentence, apparently conceding that Pepe does not disclose
message notification by SMS, but holding that since SMS is well
known, it purportedly would have been obvious to use SMS in Pepe
for sending or receiving short alphanumeric messages to or from
mobile telephones.
The examiner has not adequately come to grips with the SMS
limitation of the claim. Appellant does not deny that SMS was
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