Appeal 2007-0437
Application 09/982,224
Examiner’s observation that heartbeat commands are not per se taught in
Brown, there are significant teachings and suggestions to the artisan that
collaboration of modifying commands exist and are regularly transmitted at
defined intervals among the responsive collaborators in Brown. Because of
the extensive dialog depicted among the various parts of flow chart figure 2
comprising figures 2A through 2G, the artisan would have readily concluded
that there are significant dialogs between the collaborators in Brown that
substantially teach heartbeat commands in other words that are regularly
transmitted at defined intervals to the extent claimed.
Caronni merely confirms this in a collaboration environment.
Although we recognize that Caronni’s focus is upon a group key
management concept for encrypting and making secure multicasting in a
collaboration environment, the need for the heartbeat message among them
is emphasized in the discussion at columns 11 through 13. Collaboration in
Caronni is detailed at column 1 and the specific teachings at column 6, lines
4 through 18 at least. The claims on appeal do not exclude the use of a
secure or encrypted environment as taught in Caronni. It is also plain to us
that the artisan would have considered it advantageous in a collaboration
environment to have utilized a secure environment thus rendering the
additional teaching of Caronni obvious to the artisan within 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Although we do not disagree with much of what Appellants said about
the explicit teachings of Caronni, for example, at pages 6 through 9 of the
principal Brief on appeal, we strongly disagree with Appellants’ urging that
this reference teaches away from the invention as claimed. There is simply
no active discouragement from following the path set out in the reference or
any teaching that would have led the artisan in a direction divergent from the
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