Appeal No. 2003-1924 Page 4
Application No. 08/554,533
time the invention was made to have modified McLeod's long distance telephone switching
system to include an automated collect call service as disclosed in Murphy in order to
reduce the time required by human operators. Thus, we continue to find the appellants
argument that there is no motivation, suggestion or basis for combining McLeod and
Murphy to arrive at the claimed subject matter unpersuasive.
The arguments raised by the appellants are unpersuasive for the reasons which
follow.
First, McLeod does not teach away from the claimed subject matter. As to the
specific question of "teaching away," our reviewing court in In re Gurley, 27 F.3d 551,
553, 31 USPQ2d 1130, 1131 (Fed. Cir. 1994) stated "a reference will teach away if it
suggests that the line of development flowing from the reference's disclosure is unlikely
to be productive of the result sought by the applicant." In this case, McLeod does not
teach or suggest that automated collect calls (i.e., collect calls without the use of a human
operator) would not work. Instead, it is our view that 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.
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