Appeal No. 2006-0360
Application No. 10/388,691
explicit on this point, it would appear reasonable that such an
indication is stored somewhere at the server since the server has
that information in order to encode the time limit, at the central
station, in the instructions (column 3, lines 34-37).
The examiner’s specific response to appellants’ argument is
that the examiner considers only the TV and order input 24 to be
components of the client device and that everything else (e.g.,
microprocessor-based memory interface and memory control unit 22)
is part of the “server.”
We find the examiner’s interpretation to be reasonable in view
of the breadth of the claim. It is true that Garfinkle describes
all the components in box 10 of Figure 1 to be at the “customer
site,” and the central station would be more akin to appellants’
intended server. However, the instant claim language specifies
nothing that would indicate that the server is at some remote
location, quite some distance from the client device. The server
and client may be at the same, or nearby, locations. In any event,
based on the breadth of the claim language, we see nothing
intrinsically wrong with drawing artificial lines around elements
14, 20, and 22 in Figure 1 of Garfinkle, calling everything therein
the “server,” and around elements 18 and 24, calling the
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