Appeal No. 2006-1156
Application No. 09/903,882
For his part, appellant asserts that the examiner has failed to present a prima facie case of
obviousness with regard to claim 1 because the examiner has relied on Official Notice for
transmitting an address inquiry signal to an address despite appellant’s traversal of that Notice;
the examiner has failed to cite a reference that describes determining whether more than one
response is received to an address inquiry signal; and the examiner has failed to cite a reference
that teaches sending a randomize address signal addressed to a specific address (principal brief-
page 15).
We have considered the evidence before us, including, inter alia, the disclosures of the
applied references and the arguments of appellant and the examiner, and we conclude therefrom
that the examiner has established a prima facie case of obviousness with regard to independent
claim 1 that has not been successfully rebutted by appellant.
We adopt the examiner’s reasoning as our own and respond to appellant’s arguments.
Appellant first argues that appellant did traverse the examiner’s taking of Official Notice
that was well known to transmit an address inquiry signal to an address. However, appellant
merely points to a statement by appellant in an earlier paper (“Appellant’s Response to Office
Action mailed December 10, 2003, page 20, last two lines” – see page 12 of the principal brief),
viz., “‘The Applicant denies any statement, position or averment of the Examiner that is not
specifically addressed by the foregoing argument and response.’” We agree with the examiner
that this is not a proper traversal of the examiner’s taking of Official Notice as it does not
directly respond to that of which the examiner takes Official Notice. The statement does not
indicate with what, exactly, appellant disagrees.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007