Appeal No. 2004-0007 Page 3
Application No. 09/844,105
The following is the sole rejection before us for review.
Claims 1-4 and 26-43 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Yamaguchi in view of Johnson.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and
the appellant regarding the above-noted rejection, we make reference to the answer
(Paper No. 9) for the examiner's complete reasoning in support of the rejection and to
the brief and reply brief (Paper Nos. 8 and 10) for the appellant's arguments
thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
the appellant's specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. For the reasons
which follow, we cannot sustain the examiner’s rejection.
Yamaguchi discloses a fingerprint registering and checking device and method
which registers fingerprints and reads the fingerprints to see if the fingerprint is
registered in the system. If the fingerprint is registered in the system, the system
provides access to the user presenting the fingerprint. Such access can be in the form
of unlocking a door lock, for example. In storing the fingerprint data, Yamaguchi’s
system also stores a key number, to or from which the contents of the n-th byte of the
stored fingerprint data is added or subtracted to produce a conversion key number. The
conversion key number is then inserted in the m-th byte of the fingerprint data. To
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