Appeal No. 2001-2051
Application 08/923,293
Appellant argues that the examiner's reasoning is contradictory,
but, in any event, the combination does not disclose using the
specification of a good/service as filter data for a previous
customer purchase history database (RBr3).
We find that Robinson does not disclose a database storing
"information pertaining to goods and/or services purchasing
history of previous customers" (claims 1 and 7) or "data
concerning goods or services purchase decisions of prior users"
(claim 16). Robinson is a recommendation service, not a sales
service, and, therefore, it does not teach maintaining purchasing
history. The examiner's reasoning that "pertaining to ...
purchase history" is broad enough to read on the users' ratings
of items in Robinson because, indirectly, the users had to have
purchased the items somewhere, is not necessary since Payton
expressly discloses that the ratings can be based on requested
(purchased) items. We conclude it would have been obvious to one
skilled in the art that the ratings in Robinson could be based on
request (purchase) history in view of Payton.
The examiner finds that "Robinson discloses receiving
customer commands specifying a particular good or service to be
used as filter data (column 6, lines 24-35; see also column 6,
line 56, through column 7, line 46)" (FR2; EA3; see also EA10).
Appellant argues that these passages deal with procedures for
determining the proper subgroup of users (RBr1) and have "nothing
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