Appeal 2007-0770
Application 09/752,330
1 a) Double Patenting Rejection
2 ISSUES
3 Appellants contend that the Examiner’s rejection based upon obviousness-
4 type double patenting is in error. Appellants assert that the Examiner has
5 improperly applied the printed matter doctrine and as such ignored the limitation of
6 an entitled price which is not taught by the claims of the Mantena patent.
7 Appellants argue that the “printed matter case law is inapplicable to computer-
8 based inventions.” (Br. P. 12). Further, Appellants argue that Mantena does not
9 teach obtaining the entitled price in “real time.”
10 The Examiner contends that the rejection based upon obviousness-type
11 double patenting is proper. The Examiner states, that there is no functional
12 relationship between the claimed “entitled price” and the method. Further, the
13 Examiner interprets the term real time as being a relative term that includes some
14 delay, and concludes any the response of Mantena’s system to be in real time.
15 Initially we note that Appellants’ arguments directed to the obviousness-type
16 double patenting rejection, group claims 1 through 48 together. Thus, we group
17 claims 1 through 48 together and select claim 1 as the representative claim.
18 Appellants’ contentions present us with three issues, first whether the printed
19 matter doctrine applies to computer based inventions such as claimed, second
20 whether the claims of the Mantena patent teach or make obvious the claim
21 limitation of an “entitled price” and third whether the claims of Mantena teach
22 providing the “entitled price” in real time.
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