Appeal No. 2004-0174
Application No. 09/789,405
established a prima facie case of obviousness of the invention as recited in
independent claim 70. Appellants have argued throughout the brief and reply brief that
the examiner has not shown where the prior art teaches or fairly suggests the recited
limitation of
key encoding means which uses a plurality of specific information
possessed by said information collecting side and transmitted from said
information collecting side so as to encode key information required to
decode said encoded information of the information medium, wherein said
plurality of specific information is non-specific to said information medium,
and includes a user ID, a user password and a medium reading apparatus
ID. [Emphasis added.]
In the reply at page 2, appellants argue that the examiner has not responded to all of
appellants’ arguments and the examiner has not shown where or how the prior art
teaches or fairly suggests use of “a medium reading apparatus ID” as part of the key
encoding means and the use of information non-unique/specific to the medium. We
agree with appellants.
Additionally, we do note the examiner’s use of official notice in the final rejection
in the new grounds of rejection necessitated by amendment seems to rely upon a
handbook that is not properly presented as prior art to the earliest filing date of
Jun. 27, 1996. Upon return of the file to the examiner, we leave it to the examiner and
appellants to determine this. Here, we do not reach this argument since we find that the
examiner has not set forth a prima facie case of obviousness of the invention as recited
in independent claim 70. Even if we were to find the examiner’s use of official notice
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