Appeal No. 2003-1924 Page 3
Application No. 08/554,533
b. In rejecting the claims as being obvious over McLeod in view of Murphy at page
7 of the Decision, the Board overlooked the fact that McLeod teaches away from the
modification suggested by the Board.
c. Moreover, in making its obviousness rejections, the Board overlooked the
substantial non-obvious advantages obtained by the invention.
We have once again reviewed the teachings of McLeod as a whole and find that
McLeod does not teach away from the claimed invention but rather is suggestive of the
claimed invention when considered with the teaching of Murphy. It remains our conclusion
that it would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person of ordinary
skill in the art to have modified Murphy's "Example Call Flow" by providing a toll-free 800
access number which does not include a prefix for reaching an operator as suggested and
taught by McLeod. In our view, McLeod suggests that an 800 number be provided by a
long-distance company in order to provide automated enhanced services that were
previously available only through private exchange network systems or local telephone
exchanges (column 2, lines 18-23). Murphy's "Example Call Flow" discloses the use of an
automated enhanced feature (collect call) and discusses the value of providing such
automated services (i.e., the reduction in time spent by human operators) (see Murphy at
p. 25). Therefore, it remains our opinion that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art to provide an 800 access number for the automated collect call system of
Murphy in order to provide such service outside of a local telephone exchange. Likewise,
we still consider that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the
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