Appeal 2007-1063
Application 09/881,594
MAPI client for the duration of that session (FF 7). Thomas may fairly be
interpreted to teach that one may select an interval between communication
sessions short enough that the path between client and server would never be
dropped. We therefore find that the Examiner did not err in rejecting claims
33, 34, 38 and 39 under 35 U.S.C. § 102.
Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
With regard to claims 5 and 6, Appellant argues that the Examiner has
not provided any objective evidence to support his conclusion that it would
have been obvious to modify Thomas to include sending a Session Initiation
Protocol (SIP) REGISTER message as taught by Roach (Br. 9:18-20).
Appellant further states that “Thomas relates to the initiation of
communications sessions by a MAPI client with a MAPI server to enable the
MAPI client to receive electronic mail, calendar items, and task items from
the MAPI server” (Br. 9:20-22), and that “substituting the SIP messages into
the system of Thomas would likely render Thomas inoperable for its
intended purpose, since SIP generally is used for establishing … telephony
voice call sessions or multimedia call sessions” (Br. 10:10-13). We do not
agree that Thomas’s intended purpose is so limited. Thomas discloses that
“[i]n an embodiment of the invention, an extension to a client software
application is provided that can enable use of the client with a server across
a network that includes such a firewall or gateway” (FF 4; para. [0014]).
One of Thomas’s embodiments does involve electronic mail, but Thomas is
careful to state that the examples recited (electronic mail messages, calendar
items, task items) are “without limitation” (para. [0018]). The Examiner
stated that the skilled artisan “would have been motivated to [modify
10
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