Appeal No. 2002-1846
Application 09/146,199
monitoring of transaction-oriented events at the point of sale. As is pointed out by the appellant
on page 6 of the reply brief, the types of testing conducted in Bass are procedures such as an
“audio loop test” to measure line transmission parameters, a “one way test” to test the reception
of the receiving component, a “digital loop test” to test digital data round trip integrity, and a
modem performance test. Remote testing of such nature does not reasonably suggest the
monitoring or storing of transaction-oriented events at the point of sale like the four mentioned in
claims 20 and 36: (1) loop error events, (2) terminal reload events, (3) price change at the
terminal events, and (4) item-not-on-file events. Note that a “loop error event” is defined on
page 20 of the appellants’ specification, and represents the failure of a message to successfully
flow from the cash register to the store controller. Thus, monitoring a loop error event during
real transactions is quite distinct from Bass’ conducting a digital loop test.
The examiner has failed to satisfy his appropriate burden of proof. The stated rationale is
missing several key steps. Bass’ general teaching about a desire to increase system reliability
has been relied on to meet the appellants’ claimed feature of collecting and storing certain types
of transaction-oriented system data. That is inappropriate. The examiner has not set forth
sufficient motivation, based on the disclosure of Bass, for one with ordinary skill in the art to
collect and store any of the transaction-oriented system data such as those explicitly defined in
claims 20 and 36. In our view, the examiner has adopted an inappropriate hindsight analysis in
light of the appellants’ own disclosure.
For the foregoing reasons, the rejection of claims 17-20, 24, 26-36, and 39-45 as being
unpatentable over Mindrum, Bass, Orr, and Shimoda cannot be sustained.
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