Appeal No. 2006-2241
Application No. 09/827,291
Initially we note that Pare ’166 includes a reference to the prior applications as required
under 35 U.S.C. § 120, and the prior applications contain the same inventors. While we
note that we have reviewed patents 6,662,166; 5,870,723 and 6,269,348 (patent issued
from application 09/239,570) and do not find that the disclosure of the three patents to be
identical, we nonetheless find that the teachings of Pare 6,662,166 (hereinafter Pare ‘166)
upon which the examiner relies upon are disclosed in Pare 6,269,348 (hereinafter Pare
‘348). Throughout our written opinion we will identify the teachings of Pare by
referencing column and line number of both Pare ‘116 and Pare ‘348. The filing date of
Pare ‘348 is January 29, 1999 which is prior to appellants’ April 5, 2001 filing date.
Thus, we concur with the examiner’s finding that Pare’ 166 is prior art as defined by 35
U.S.C. 102(e).
Appellants argue, on page 13 through 18 of the brief, that the examiner
misconstrued the limitations of claim 1, specifically the term “key”. On page 16 of the
brief, appellants state:
[T]here is a distinction between values which form an index used to search
for and retrieve records and values stored within the record that may be used after
retrieval of the record for authentication. Accordingly, a "key" is a value that
uniquely identifies a particular record so as to allow retrieval of the record. Thus,
the generation of "a data storage key from the consumer biometric data" as recited
in claim 1 means that the biometric data is used to generate a value that uniquely
identifies a data storage record so that the data storage record may be retrieved.
The claim further recites that the data storage record is "a financial account data
record." Therefore, the plain meaning of the words in the claim is that the
database server uses biometric data to generate a value which uniquely identifies
a particular financial data record so that the financial data record may be
retrieved.
Appellants argue that the examiner has read the term “key” out of the claim and as such
has misinterpreted the claim language. Appellants further argue, on pages 18 and 19 of
the brief, that Pare does not disclose a “database server for generating a data storage key
from the customer biometric data received from the biometric capture device and for
retrieving a financial record corresponding to the generated data storage key.”
Appellants argue, on page 19 of the brief, that the examiner’s reliance upon Pare’s
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