Appeal No. 2005-2329
Application No. 09/738,293
the examiner’s view expressed in the paragraph bridging pages 19 and 20
of the answer which we reproduce here in part:
Appellant has argued that Tang fails to teach or suggest
that the system can support communications over a Switched
Telephone Network (STN) as claimed. The Examiner strongly
disagrees with the Appellant because Tang clearly teaches the
usages of email, chat, Instant Messaging, audio/video
conference, and also telephone use (e.g., col. 6, lines 47-59,
col. 8, lines 8-14), and the system automatically switches to
other available devices if the current application device is not
available to that user (e.g., col. 14, lines 45-51), and each
computer or device of the workgroup members must be
connected to the network such as LAN, WAN, and the Internet
to be able to communicate with others throughout the Network
(e.g., col. 11, lines 5-57). Based on those strongly supported
evidences as stated above, Tang clearly suggests the usage of
telephone lines for connecting the users with the Network in
the invention. It is also well known in the art that client
computers are coupled to the Internet through computer’s
modems which connect to telephone lines, and the telephone
lines must connect to Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN)
(including service switching point (SSP) or a virtual switching
point) which provides access to Internet providers such as AOL,
Netcom, Net zero, etc. via the telephone lines; therefore, the
Examiner strongly agrees that Tang clearly teaches and
suggests using telephone lines in the invention, and the Switch
Telephone Network of Klein is just bringing more detail
evidence showing the usage/connection between the telephone
lines and the Network. It would have been obvious at the time
of the invention, a person with ordinary skill in the art would
want to modify the communication system of Tang to provide
an ultimate implementation when user can manually/
automatically control the switches to the telephones having the
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