Appeal No. 96-0125
Application 07/878,100
related to any of these products. In Humble, product
identification and message information occur at the point where
the customer is checking out from the store.
The examiner relies on Vela for teaching the invention of
claim 1 except for the failure to teach the selection of
competing or complementary products. The examiner relies on
Humble for providing the motivation to promote other products and
asserts that the modification of Vela to incorporate Humble’s
product promotion ideas would have been obvious to the artisan to
increase flexibility and effectiveness [answer, pages 4-5]. The
examiner also finds the rule-based selection process of claim 1
to be inherent in any computer run by a sequence of instructions.
Appellants argue that Vela does not suggest selecting the
promoted product based upon the products actually selected by the
customer. With respect to Humble, appellants argue that it is
simply a checkout add-on system which provides information too
late to affect the customer’s purchases. Appellants insist that
“[a]bsent the teachings of the Appellants’ disclosure, there is
no suggestion or teaching provided in the references to combine
the references. Even if they were combined, neither teaches a
rule-based system to present messages at the point of selection
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