Appeal No. 2006-1753
Application No. 09/732,037
We will sustain the examiner’s obviousness rejection of the independent
claims. We agree with the examiner that the skilled artisan would find ample
motivation on this record to modify Meunier’s document change notification
system to electronically update the message originator and electronically alert
users that have not acknowledged sent messages essentially for the reasons
stated by the examiner. We add, however, that Meunier’s system is ultimately an
electronic communication system – a system that electronically communicates
document changes to a community of interested users [see Meunier, col. 3, lines
59-61].2 As with any electronic communications system, there is always a
concern that the intended recipient will not receive a sent communication for a
variety of reasons (system failures, technical issues, etc.). Electronically
updating the message originator and electronically reminding intended recipients
would, in our view, provide a convenient way to electronically verify that the
communication was, in fact, received. At a minimum, such electronic updates
would verify that the communications link remained viable. We see no reason
why the skilled artisan would not reasonably refer to teachings of Eaton to
enhance the electronic document communication system of Meunier to ensure
that messages sent electronically to intended recipients (e.g., changed
documents) were actually received by the intended recipients. For at least these
reasons, ample motivation exists on this record to modify Meunier with the
teachings of Eaton.
2 See also Meunier, col. 5, lines 49-52 (“The monitoring agent 102 notifies the user 101 about the
[document] change, typically by sending an email describing the detected change.”).
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