Appeal No. 2006-2241
Application No. 09/827,291
teaching in columns 5 and 6 is erroneously equating verifying the identity of an
individual with identifying a financial account. Further, Appellants argue that Pare’s
Party Identifying Apparatus (PIA) is merely a sensor and does not generate a key used to
obtain biometric data. On page 20 and 21 of the brief, appellants cite several sections of
Pare to support the conclusion that “Pare clearly discloses the use of biometric data to
identify an individual by comparing received biometric data with biometric data stored in
a record. Pare fails, however, to disclose using a key generated from the biometric data
to retrieve a financial account data record. Comparing data found in a file with received
data is not the same as retrieving the file using the received data.”
In response, on pages 6 and 7 of the answer, the examiner provides a brief
discussion of the transmission of biometric data over a network, identifying the biometric
data is transmitted as a code. Further, the examiner considers the code to be the key.
Further, the examiner finds that Pare shows a database is used to store captured biometric
data and financial account information.
We concur with the examiner’s findings. Initially, we note that claim 1 recites:
“A biometric data capture device for reading consumer biometric data; and a database
server for generating a data storage key from the consumer biometric data received from
the biometric data capture device and for retrieving a financial account data record
corresponding to the generated data storage key.” We accept the appellants’ proffered
definition of the term “key”, thus the scope of claim 1 includes that a biometric data
capture device, a database server, which receives this data and uses it to create a value
that uniquely identifies a data storage record for a financial account and retrieves the
financial account. Thus, the examiner’s assertion that the transmitted code from the
biometric sensor to the database meets the claimed ‘key” does not seem to meet our
determination of the claim scope. Nonetheless, as discussed infra we do find that Pare
teaches the claimed “key.”
Pare teaches a system for token-less biometric electronic debit and credit
transactions. (See title of Pare ‘348 or Pare ‘166). The system makes use of biometric
sensors to obtain fingerprint data. (See Pare ‘348 column 8, lines 16 through 25 or Pare
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