Appeal No. 2005-0986
Application No. 09/727,904
the purchase of the given information item from the merchant; and
the blinded version of the first ciphertext portion is decrypted
and returned to the user for the user to use in such a manner as
to prevent the merchant from identifying the given information
item purchased by the user. Nothing in Kyojima remedies this
deficiency in Nishioka.
Accordingly, we will not sustain the rejection of claims 1-
17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Regarding claims 18-20, these claims do not recite the
receipt of a “blinded version of the first ciphertext portion of
the signed ciphertext.” The examiner, however, employs the same
reasoning to reject these claims as was applied to independent
claim 1 (see page 8 of the answer).
Yet, while claims 18-20 do not relate to a blinded version
of a first ciphertext portion of a signed ciphertext, they all do
recite the requirement that a merchant is unable to identify the
given information item purchased by the user, and this is the
distinguishing feature of claims 18-20 argued by appellants.
Clearly, as discussed supra, Nishioka specifically permits
the merchant to identify such information, and we find nothing in
Kyojima suggesting any modification to Nishioka whereby a
merchant would be unable to identify this information. Such
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