Appeal No. 2003-1729 Page 4
Application No. 09/229,733
6,038,551 ("Barlow"). Claims 8, 9, 11, 13, 20, 22, 27, 28, and 30 stand rejected under
§ 103(a) as obvious over Murphy and U.S. Patent No. 5,774,551 ("Wu").1
OPINION
Rather than reiterate the positions of the examiner or the appellants in toto, we
focus on the main point of contention therebetween. The examiner asserts, "Murphy et
al. disclose . . . receiving, by a first process requesting a profile token, the profile token
having associated usage limitations (see column 3, lines 43-45 and column 7, lines 26-
29) representative of the user in response to successfully authenticating the user (see
column 6, lines 28-49 and figure 3, steps 64 and 66). . . ." (Examiner's Answer at 5.)
The appellants argue, "[a]ny fair reading of claim 1 would conclude that the step of
'authenticating the user' covers virtually the whole of Murphy's disclosure, and that the
remaining steps of claim 1 are simply not shown. " (Appeal Br. at 9.)
1The abstract of the disclosure stands objected to because it is not limited to a
single separate sheet. (Examiner's Answer at 14.) The appellants argue that the
abstract "was not objectionable under the applicable Rules." (Appeal Br. at 13.) Rather
than by appeal to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, however, such an
objection is to be settled by petition to the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office. See In re Hengehold, 440 F.2d 1395, 1403, 169 USPQ 473, 479 (CCPA 1971).
Therefore, neither the examiner's statement of the objection nor the appellants'
argument attacking the objection were considered in deciding this appeal.
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