Appeal No. 2001-2051
Application 08/923,293
broad enough to read on the input means for inputting ratings in
Robinson and Payton, where the rated goods or services are used
as filter data. Note that this limitation of claim 16 does not
require "specifying a particular good or service to be used as
filter data," as recited in claim 1, or filtering the purchasing
history of previous customers based on "the goods and/or services
requested by said potential customers," as recited in claim 7.
Thus, claim 16 does not capture the idea of using a specified
good or service as a filter for obtaining recommendations of
other goods and services. Payton discloses "database storage
means for the retention of data concerning goods or services
purchase decisions of prior users" because it stores a database
of subscriber profile rating vectors which vectors contain data
concerning items which the user subscriber has previously
requested (col. 5, lines 6-12), where requested information (such
as a pay-per-view movie) is purchased information, and the
ratings can be based on the use of a requested item (col. 6,
lines 41-42), i.e., the ratings directly reflect purchase
(request) decisions of previous users. For this reason, we
disagree with appellant's argument that "neither Robinson nor
Payton disclose a database of previous customer purchase history,
as required by the claims on appeal" (RB2). It would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art that the
recommendation system in Robinson could be applied in a purchase
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