Appeal 2007-1355
Application 09/735,499
anticipation. Accordingly, we will sustain the Examiner’s rejection of
representative claim 14 as being anticipated by Helfman.
Pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii), we have decided the appeal
with respect to the remaining claims in this group on the basis of the selected
claim alone. Therefore, we will sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims
1, 7, 8, 12, 13, and 15-20 as being anticipated by Helfman for the same
reasons discussed supra with respect to representative claim 14.
Claim 2
We consider next the Examiner’s rejection of dependent claim 2 as
being anticipated by Helfman. We note that claim 2 recites: “A messaging
system according to claim 1 wherein said manipulation consists of selecting
a functionality associated with a plurality of options presented to the user.”
Appellants argue that Helfman teaches a user interface displaying a
list of mailboxes rather than a list of notifications. Appellants further argue
that the portion of the reference cited by the Examiner merely discloses a
description of steps in establishing a mailbox, rather than options presented
to a user for manipulating a message notification (Br. 12).
After reviewing Helfman’s invention as shown in Fig. 3A, we find
that Helfman’s mailboxes within “window 40” are part of the textual line
corresponding to each message notification. Thus, we find Helfman
discloses a list of notifications in window 40 of Fig. 3A. Because a user can
select and open a mailbox and read an unread e-mail message (and thus
manipulate the message notification by clearing it to zero unread messages),
we find the weight of the evidence supports the Examiner’s position.
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