Appeal 2007-1751
Application 09/769,511
1 matters is the objective reach of the claim. If the claim extends to what is obvious,
2 it is invalid under § 103. ” Id. at 1741-42, 82 USPQ2d at 1397.
3 “One of the ways in which a patent’s subject matter can be proved obvious is
4 by noting that there existed at the time of invention a known problem for which
5 there was an obvious solution encompassed by the patent’s claims.” Id. at 1742,
6 82 USPQ2d at 1397.
7 ANALYSIS
8 Claims 2-5, 8-12, and 15-19 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over
9 Greene, Lynch-Aird, and Chang.
10 Independent Claim 16
11 The Appellant argues claims 2-5, 8, 10, 11, and 15-19 as a group.
12 Accordingly, we select claim 16 as representative of the group. Claims 9 and 12
13 are argued separately.
14 The Examiner found that Greene discloses claim element [2], wherein the
15 access cost is charged to the originator and credit at least in part to an account of a
16 called party associated with the user terminal (Answer 3, second to last ¶).
17 However the Examiner further found that Greene does not disclose the remaining
18 limitations of claim 16 (Answer 3, last ¶).
19 To overcome this deficiency, the Examiner found that Lynch-Aird discloses
20 claim element [1], that charging information can be maintained in a suitable
21 charging table; and claim element [3], in which an entry is kept against each
22 allocated recipient identifier indicating the charging scheme associated with the
23 recipient identifier (Answer 4, first ¶).
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