Appeal 2007-1440
Application 09/920,481
In view of this well-known functionality of hyperlinks, we see no
reason why the skilled artisan could not have provided a “mailto” capability
associated with the hyperlink that initiates the transaction in Gifford. Such a
capability would provide, among other things, the ability for the user to add
other information to the request or query the merchant for specific
information in conjunction with the request.
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that receiving an email
message responsive to the user’s activating a link in Gifford (i.e., via an
HTML “mailto” function associated with the link) would have been well
within the level of the skilled artisan.
In addition, we find that Talati is replete with teachings of using email
in an electronic commerce transaction as a traceable delivery system. See,
e.g., Fig. 15 and col. 10, ll. 41-48 (noting that the client generates a purchase
order that is formatted and transmitted to the merchant via an email
message). In fact, a significant portion of Talati pertains to using email as a
traceable delivery system. (See Talati, col. 8, l. 21 – col. 12, l. 46; Figs. 11-
16). As Talati indicates, using email in this manner not only facilitates
exchanging information, but also enables processing complex transactions
and sharing information between multiple entities (Talati, col. 8, ll. 22-25).
In view of these collective teachings, the skilled artisan would have
had ample reason on this record to enable the user to send the first message
via email as claimed. For this additional reason, we will sustain the
(“Most people are aware of the MAILTO tag in HTML, which allows you to
send mail to a particular address by clicking on a link.”).
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