Appeal No. 2007-0220
Application No. 09/982,640
descriptive material and the substrate, but the prior art describes a different
descriptive material than the claim, and then the descriptive material is non-
functional and will not be given any patentable weight. That is, we conclude
that such a scenario presents no new and unobvious functional relationship
between the descriptive material and the substrate. In the instant case on
appeal, we find that the invention of all claims on appeal recites non-
functional descriptive material which does not provide a patentable
distinction to the data or to the process of the claimed methods. In other
words, we find that the meaning relating to facts about an advertisement
and/or details of a plurality of advertisements cannot be used to distinguish
the claimed invention from prior art data/facts/details. Therefore, we
conclude that the invention of claims 1 through 42 and 44 is not patentably
distinguishable from the teachings of the applied prior art.
In accordance with the hearing panel’s questioning of Appellant’s
representative at oral hearing, patentability of the claimed subject matter of
the claims on appeal was said to be dependent on the nature of the
information recited. Consistent with those arguments in the Brief and Reply
Brief, patentability was predicated to be based upon the characterization or
labels attributed to the information content per se not to any variations or
improvements or novelty associated with the actual processes set forth in the
method claims on appeal. We will add our correlations here to those the
Examiner already did in the Answer to correlate some teachings of the
references to the particular characterizations of the information of the claims
on appeal. The two references relied upon convey to the artisan the same
teaching concepts of the processes that are recited.
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