Appeal No. 2006-1753
Application No. 09/732,037
Appellants first assert that claims 2, 71, 8, and 13 are patentable over
Meunier in view of Eaton [request, page 2]. Specifically, appellants argue that
the cited prior art does not teach nor suggest providing an electronic update to a
specification coordinator for any of the plurality of users that has acknowledged
the electronic notification if any of the plurality of users has acknowledged the
electronic notification as claimed [request, page 3]. Appellants contend that the
examiner essentially ignored this limitation and therefore failed to establish a
prima facie case of obviousness [id.].
We disagree. Although the examiner admitted that the base reference,
Meunier, lacked this feature, the examiner noted that the secondary reference,
Eaton, discloses the feature. Specifically, the examiner noted that Eaton teaches
automatically transmitting a read acknowledgement signal (READ ACK) to verify
that the message was acknowledged by the user [answer, pages 3 and 4].
We agree with the examiner’s findings in this regard. Indeed, Eaton’s
disclosure is replete with references to read acknowledgement signals and their
role in electronically updating message originators when users have
acknowledged messages. For example, in the Background section, Eaton states
that read acknowledgement signals are typically transmitted to a terminal
responsive to presenting a received message to a user. Accordingly, “[t]he
message originator can then be informed when the user has read the message”
1 Although appellants repeatedly refer to claim 7 throughout the request [see request, pages 2, 3,
and 6-11], claim 7 has been cancelled. See brief, page 2 (noting that claims 2-6, 8-11, and 13-16
are pending). Accordingly, we presume that appellants intended that all references to claim 7
instead pertain to independent claim 6.
2
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