Appeal No. 2005-2642
Reexamination Control No. 90/005,841
the manner in which each respective component is accrued or retired, the
cash flow characteristics of the account can be significantly altered to fit
the requisites of the individual or institution.
Id. at col. 3, ll. 13-23.
None of the patent claims have been amended during this reexamination
proceeding. There are three independent claims (1, 24, and 36), of which claim 24
reads:
24. In combination, in an investment system for managing inflation risk:
means for establishing data representative of a deposit account
with an institution, the deposit account having a principal
component representing the cash investment of a depositor
for an account term, and an accrual component comprising a
fixed interest component which is enhanced at a fixed
interest rate times the principal component and a variable
interest component which is enhanced at an index
responsive to the rate of inflation times the principal
component; and
an account management dataprocessor [sic] including means for
paying the deposit account over the term.
D. The grouping of the claims
At page 5 of the brief, appellant states that “[f]or purposes of this Appeal, all of
the claims shall be considered separately and do not stand or fall together.” Under 37
CFR § 1.192(c)(7) (2001), which was in effect when the brief was filed, a group
of claims rejected on the same ground can be treated as standing or falling together
unless the brief states that the claims of the group do not stand or fall together and
explains why the claims are believed to be separately patentable. As noted below,
some of the rejected claims have not been separately argued and thus will be treated as
standing or falling with their parent claims.
E. The scope and meaning of the claims5
5 The copy of the claims provided in Appendix I to the brief is inaccurate in that it
fails to accurately reproduce the formulas recited in claims 12 and 21.
4
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