Appeal 2007-2250
Application 09/818,480
The Examiner responds stating:
[T]he modified method of Smith et al. does include the essential
method steps of capturing', transmitting', translating; and notifying to
enable a recipient to inform a carrier of the manner in which the
recipient wants some or all of their mail. Furthermore, the appellant
never expressly claim a particular approach (e.g. using the user ID or
not requiring the ID) to capture the mail piece to patentably
distinguish from the prior ad. Accordingly, the difference between the
appellant's invention and Smith et al. would be obvious.
(Answer 8).
Thus, Appellant’s contentions present us with the issue of whether the
combination of Smith (‘306 or ‘808) and Higgins would have made obvious
a system in which the name and physical address of the recipient and the
sender are captured in the form of an image; then the image is processed by
translating the image consisting of text and graphics to selected
alphanumerics; and then a data center translates the name and physical
address of the recipient into an e-mail address.
FINDINGS OF FACT
Smith (‘306) teaches a mail tracing and tracking system. See abstract.
A user of the system accesses a web page and is able to see mail or packages
that are to be delivered to the user. The user can also obtain information
about the mail or packages. See figure 3 and paragraph 0010. The system
allows a user to see an image of the mail; the image may be created by
scanning the mail by the Post Office. See figure 6 and paragraph 0038.
Smith (‘306) teaches that the additional information displayed to the user is
supplied directly from the sender through machine readable code, pre-coded
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