Appeal No. 2005-0986
Application No. 09/727,904
would result in the suggestion of a user providing a “blinded
version of the first ciphertext portion of the signed
ciphertext,” in conjunction with a request for the purchase of a
given information item, as claimed.
Moreover, we agree with appellants that the examiner has not
provided sufficient motivation that would have led the artisan to
make the proposed combination. In Nishioka, there are three
parties concerned with the transaction, a customer, a merchant
and a credit card company. Nishioka seeks to keep information
anent specific items purchased from the credit card company, but,
unlike the instant claimed invention, information relating to the
products purchased by a user “can become known to only a retail
store” (Nishioka, column 2, lines 43-44). Thus, why would the
artisan modify any teaching in Nishioka to keep the information
from the retailer, or merchant, when Nishioka specifically
provides for the merchant to have this information? And, if we
consider the credit card company of Nishioka to be the
“merchant,” it may be said that purchased product information is
kept from the “merchant,” but the technique for doing so is
different from the method of the instant claims, wherein a user
provides a blinded version of the first ciphertext portion of the
signed ciphertext in conjunction with a request from the user for
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