Appeal No. 2004-1179
Application No. 09/127,284
profitability of the pending interaction request” sends a clear
signal that the appellant does not want the disclosed and claimed
invention1 to be limited to any one algorithm. We are of the
opinion, therefore, that the broadly claimed phrase when read in
light of the disclosure would have been understood by one of
ordinary skill in the art. Thus, the indefiniteness rejection of
claims 23 through 28 and 34 through 39 is reversed because the
breadth of the claims is not equated with indefiniteness of the
claims. In re Miller, 441 F.2d 689, 693, 169 USPQ 597, 600 (CCPA
1971).
Turning next to the obviousness rejections, we find that the
broadly recited subject matter of claim 23 reads directly on the
teachings of Walker. A method for automatically routing incoming
interaction requests in a hosted communications network to
different positions in a queue is disclosed by Walker (Figures
1 through 3; Abstract; column 1, lines 5 through 10). Walker
receives a new interaction request from a customer via an
incoming call (Abstract), and identifies the initiating
1 The examiner has not rejected the claims on appeal for
lack of enablement in spite of the fact that the disclosure does
not present a specific algorithm that will perform the potential
profitability calculation. In the absence of such a rejection,
it appears that the skilled artisan would have known which
algorithm to use to make the noted calculation.
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