Appeal No. 2005-1132
Application No. 09/738,294
motivation for the combination proposed by the examiner, we
nevertheless agree with the examiner’s findings that Tang
essentially teaches the invention of claim 1 all by itself. In
the response to arguments section of the answer, the examiner
notes that the computers in Tang, which can communicate with each
other over a network such as the Internet, rely on an STN for
completing connections between computers. Thus, even though Tang
may be unable to determine if a telephone is currently being used
without dialing the number, claim 1 does not require such a
feature. Claim 1 only requires that presence and availability
information be maintained over at least an STN. Since the
availability of the computers in Tang is communicated to other
computers on the network, and since the computers are connected
to the network by telephone lines as noted by the examiner, we
find that the language of claim 1 is met by the network of Tang
when the connections to the network are made by conventional
telephone lines. The examiner’s findings in the response to
arguments section of the answer are persuasive that the computers
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