Appeal No. 2006-1279
Application No. 10/249,005
therefore qualifies as prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e).
Turning to the merits of the rejection, the examiner
essentially argues that Berson discloses all of the subject
matter of claims 1-4 and 6-9 except for decontaminating the mail
[answer, page 3]. The examiner cites Fink as teaching
decontaminating mail to protect against chemical and biological
agents. The examiner finds that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to
combine the teachings of Fink with the mail reading apparatus of
Berson "to protect mail handlers, readers and others from danger
such as terrorism" [answer, pages 3 and 4].
Appellant argues that the cited references do not teach
detecting the entire document content using a detector sensor as
claimed [brief, page 10, emphasis added]. Appellant notes that
Berson does not teach reading the entire content of the document
because the envelope is not opened when read, but opened later
[brief, page 10]. The examiner responds that Berson's repeated
10
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