Appeal No. 2006-1753
Application No. 09/732,037
[Eaton, col. 1, lines 20-25; emphasis added]. In the Detailed Description section,
Eaton notes that when messages are sent to the transceiver 110, the transceiver
sends (1) an acknowledgement (ACK) to acknowledge reception of the message,
and (2) a read acknowledgement (READ ACK) when the message is presented
to the user [Eaton, col. 3, lines 14-22].2 Significantly, Eaton states that “[t]he
read acknowledgement can then be forwarded to the originator to inform him of
the message status” [Eaton, col. 9, lines 35-37; emphasis added]. Appellants’
argument that such an electronic update “does not ensure that messages sent
electronically to intended recipients were actually received by the intended
recipients” [request, page 7] is simply counter to Eaton’s teachings.
In our view, Eaton’s teaching of automatically transmitting a read
acknowledgement signal to the message originator would have reasonably
suggested to the skilled artisan the desirability of electronically updating the
message originator regarding whether users have acknowledged the message
that was sent to them. As we indicated in our opinion, Meunier’s system is
ultimately an electronic communications system that communicates document
changes to a community of interested users [decision, page 9]. We find no error
in our decision that updating the message originator as taught by Eaton in
Meunier’s system would provide a convenient way to electronically verify that
messages sent to intended recipients (i.e., changed documents) were, in fact,
received by the intended recipients [decision, page 9]. For at least the above
2 See also Eaton, col. 5, lines 58-59 (“The READ ACK indicates that the message has been
presented to the user of the transceiver 110.”).
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