Appeal No. 2004-0831
Application 09/650,176
appellants’ own disclosure and teachings, uses claim 35 on appeal
as a road map to seek out and combine disparate features from
selected pieces of unrelated prior art, and relies upon
impermissible hindsight to reconstruct the presently claimed
invention.
Basically, we share appellants’ views as aptly expressed in
the brief and reply brief concerning the examiner’s attempted
combination of the Windel and Fischer ‘200 patents, and with
regard to the failure of either of the applied patents to
disclose or suggest a method for generating an electronic
certificate for a digital message and using a register having
funds stored therein for paying for “signing the electronic
certificate contents,” as specifically set forth in claim 35 on
appeal. Windel discloses a system and method for applying a
security imprint on a physical piece of mail as part of the
postmark so that an evaluation can ultimately be made by a
postal authority at a remote location as to whether an improper
manipulation was undertaken upon mailing or at a postage meter
machine. While the postage meter of Windel has a register having
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