Appeal No. 2006-1272
Application No. 10/104,615
V. Appellants argue that someone having in their possession at the time of the invention
the system of Echerer would not have looked to add the “modern telecommunications
technology” disclosed in Liff, because they would have already had in their possession a
system utilizing modern telecommunication technology that was directed to enabling a
registered pharmacist to provide cognitive/consultative services without being physically
located at the dispensing site [supplemental brief, page 8, 2nd paragraph].
We note that the examiner does not rely upon Liff to add additional “modern
telecommunications technology” to the two-way video-conferencing system taught by
Echerer. As admitted by Appellants, Echerer teaches that a “medical practitioner” (which
Echerer defines as including a “physician, nurse, pharmacist, or other medical practitioner,”
col. 1, line 45) can provide cognitive/consultative services without being physically located
at the dispensing site [Echerer, col. 6, lines 21-29]. However, the only type of verification
disclosed by Echerer is verifying the identity of the patient requesting medical attention
[Echerer, col. 2, line 8]. The examiner relies upon Liff for the teaching of a single
pharmacist who provides verification of prescription information as part of the
cognitive/consultative services without being physically located at the dispensing site
[answer, page 13, 2nd paragraph]. We note that Liff explicitly teaches a pharmacist who
performs verification of prescription information for a technician at a remote site, as
discussed supra [see also Liff, col. 11, lines 35-37, col. 13, lines 17-19; figures 11A, 11B].
VI. Appellants argue the Remote Control Dispenser (RCD 20) disclosed by Liff utilizes a
verification process that uses pre-packaged pharmaceuticals and a code reader to read the
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