Appeal No. 2006-0203
Application No. 09/187,332
From our review of Ho and Fabbio, we remain unpersuaded by
Appellants’ arguments that any error in the Examiner’s
determination regarding the obviousness of the claimed subject
matter has occurred. Both references are concerned with sending
an electronic file to different destinations. Ho transmits the
scanned document to either a fax machine or an e-mail account
(col. 6, lines 24-27) if the destination is in the form of a
telephone number or in the form of an electronic mail address,
respectively (col. 7, lines 6-17). Fabbio, similarly sends a
document to multiple destinations such as an e-mail address and a
fax machine outside the network and a printer connected on the
local area network (col. 3, lines 6-12). Although Fabbio does
not specifically identify the destinations as an e-mail address
and a fax machine belonging to the same recipient, such
requirement, as argued by the Examiner, does not distinguish the
claimed subject matter over the applied art. The common
ownership of the destinations’ addresses or numbers is a non-
functional descriptive aspect of the claims that has no bearing
on receiving the destination addresses and transmitting the
document to those destinations. In other words, the same
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