Appeal No. 2004-0007 Page 6
Application No. 09/844,105
observations regarding the claims and Yamaguchi, infra. If the examiner determines
that there are no differences between Yamaguchi and the subject matter of any of
appellant’s claims, the examiner should reject such claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102. If the
examiner identifies differences, the examiner should consider whether such differences
are of such a nature that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious in light
of Yamaguchi in view of other prior art.
With particular regard to claim 1, we note that the solid-state media are recited
simply as being “adapted for” storage of a reference fingerprint representing
characteristics of the media created by an instance of writing data to the media. The
examiner should consider whether this requires anything more than a conventional
semiconductor memory device, such as an EEPROM, whose characteristics could be
used as a basis for creating a reference fingerprint and which is capable of storing such
reference fingerprint. We observe that all data stored in conventional EEPROMs, for
example, is broadly representative of the level of charges trapped in the floating gates
thereof, a characteristic of the media.
With further regard to claim 1, there is no indication on the record as to how the
examiner is interpreting “stored value.” Under its broadest interpretation, any data, in
the form of “1" or “0" or stored charge or voltage is “stored value.” It appears from the
nature of the examiner’s rejection and appellant’s argument, however, that the examiner
and appellant may be interpreting this terminology more narrowly. The interpretation
given to this terminology should be made clear on the record.
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