Obviousness

Based on the provided prior art references, a strong argument can be made that the independent claims of U.S. Patent 6,199,048 would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) at the time of the invention, pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 103. The priority date of the patent is June 20, 1995, a time when the World Wide Web was rapidly expanding and the use of barcodes in commerce was ubiquitous.

An analysis of obviousness requires showing that a PHOSITA would have been motivated to combine the teachings of existing prior art references and would have had a reasonable expectation of success in doing so. The most compelling combination of the provided prior art involves U.S. Patent 5,761,606 (Wolzien) and U.S. Patent 5,727,155 (Dawson).

Obviousness Based on the Combination of Wolzien ('606) and Dawson ('155)

A PHOSITA in mid-1995 would have been familiar with database management, computer networking (specifically the client-server model of the World Wide Web), and the function of common input devices like barcode scanners.

1. Elements Taught by the Prior Art:

   • Wolzien ('606) explicitly teaches core elements of the '048 invention. It discloses a system where a unique identification code, which can be scanned from a barcode on an item, is used to retrieve information about that item from a database. This directly corresponds to the steps in claim 1 of "reading a data carrier modulated with an index" (the barcode) and "accessing a database with the index." The key difference is that Wolzien's system uses this lookup to facilitate ordering the item.
   • Dawson ('155) teaches the remaining conceptual piece. It describes a system for retrieving network addresses (i.e., "pointers" like URLs) from a remote server or database and using them to automatically load a resource in a user's web browser. This covers the steps of linking an identifier to a "pointer which identifies a remote computer," "extracting a pointer," and "using the pointer to establish communication."

2. Motivation to Combine:
   By 1995, companies were rapidly establishing presences on the World Wide Web to provide marketing materials, product information, and customer support. A PHOSITA, observing this trend, would have been motivated to enhance the utility of the product lookup system described by Wolzien.

   • Market Need: There was a clear and emerging need to bridge the gap between physical products and the new wealth of online information about them. A manufacturer with a new website for its products would want a simple way to direct consumers to it.
   • Predictable Improvement: The motivation would be to extend Wolzien's system beyond simple order-entry. Instead of the database merely returning static product data (like price and description), a PHOSITA would find it an obvious and logical improvement to have the database also return a network address pointing to richer, more dynamic online content, as taught by Dawson. This would transform a simple ordering tool into a comprehensive information-retrieval system, leveraging the new capabilities of the web. Combining the convenience of barcode scanning for product identification (from Wolzien) with the concept of remote address lookup for web navigation (from Dawson) is a commonsense solution to a clear market opportunity.

3. Reasonable Expectation of Success:
   The combination of these two systems would have been entirely predictable and achievable for a PHOSITA in 1995. The underlying technologies—barcode readers, database systems, and network communication protocols like HTTP—were well-established. Integrating them would involve straightforward software development, such as adding a "URL" field to the product database in Wolzien's system and programming the client application to launch a web browser with the retrieved URL, a function explicitly contemplated by Dawson. There were no technical hurdles that would have taught away from this combination.

Conclusion

The combination of Wolzien ('606) and Dawson ('155) teaches all the elements of the independent claims of U.S. Patent 6,199,048. Wolzien provides the front-end mechanism of using a standard product barcode to query a database, and Dawson provides the back-end function of having that database supply a network address for automated access to a remote resource. The motivation to combine them—to leverage the burgeoning World Wide Web to provide consumers with easy access to product information—would have been apparent. Therefore, the invention claimed in U.S. Patent 6,199,048 would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made.