Appeal No. 2005-2744
Application No. 09/849,979
Appellants’ specification states on page 62:
The presentation of the e-card may be accomplished in one of at least two
ways, as will also be understood by one skilled in the art. In a first way,
the e-mail message sent to the recipient may comprise the entire e-card.
That is, the e-mail message is the e-card. Or, in a second way, the e-mail
may contain a hyper-link back to the processing agent 130. By following
this link, the e-card is displayed to the recipient via a unique web page.
The contents of the e-card, whether presented to the recipient in
the first way or the second way, inform the recipient that he has received a
gift, as well convey any additional text specified by the donor. The e-card
may contain text informing the recipient of the amount of the gift payment
and the identity of the donor.
We find no disclosure in appellants’ specification that an e-card may contain a
background, images or music as argued is known in the art and alleged by
reference to the TechEncylopedia document. Rather, appellants’ specification
appears to identify the key feature of the e-card is that it conveys a message to
the recipient concerning a gift and additional text. Further, we note that even if
we were to accept appellants’ asserted definition, the definition can not be
applied to identify that which is and is not an e-card as it identifies features which
may be in an e-card, not features which make the e-card unique from other
electronic messages. Thus, we find that the scope of the limitation of an
“electronic greeting card including a notification of the monetary gift” as including
an e-mail message1 which contains a text message. We do not find that the
scope of the limitation is narrowed to the e-card having additional features such
as a background, images or music.
1 Note to avoid confusion, we refer to “e-mail” as a system to deliver messages
and “e-mail message” to refer to individual documents delivered by e-mail.
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