Appeal No. 2003-0425
Application 08/773,692
We will not sustain the examiner’s rejection of independent
claim 1 or of dependent claims 4, 6, 8 and 19 which are grouped
with claim 1. The examiner has failed to establish a prima facie
case of obviousness because the examiner has failed to properly
consider all the limitations of the claimed invention.
Specifically, we agree with appellant that the suggestion in
Dascalu that access can be restricted based on the type of
communication protocol being used does not, by itself, suggest
that access is also restricted based on the protocol commands.
The suggestion in Dascalu is that as long as the protocol is
acceptable, then the access will be permitted. The claimed
invention, however, can restrict access even though the protocol
is acceptable if the command within the protocol is not
acceptable. The examiner’s failure to treat the access
limitation based on protocol commands as a separate requirement
results in the examiner having failed to consider all the
limitations of the claimed invention. While we cannot say
whether there is prior art which teaches restricting network
access based on both the type of communications protocol and the
type of protocol commands, we can say that the prior art relied
on by the examiner fails to support the examiner’s findings.
Although appellant has argued the appealed claims in eight
different groups, each of independent claims 9, 14, 22 and 25
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