Appeal 2007-1867
Application 09/864,113
1 Appellants’ Argument (1) that the art omits all the claimed elements
2 The Appellants summarize this argument as that “[t]he question then turns on
3 to whether or not Odigo users are ‘previously disassociated’ with each other, as we
4 have claimed.” (Br. 8:¶2.)
5 The Appellants contend that Odigo users are not disassociated with each other
6 because
7 The other pages from the Odigo archive are clearly disclosing a
8 "community" of users formed by installing and joining or using
9 the Odigo product. These users have profiles, and even pictures,
10 previously associated with their Odigo member ID numbers. As
11 such, all users of Odigo are "previously associated" (not
12 previously disassociated) with each other, before they visit a
13 common web site, even if they have not actually communicated
14 with each other yet.
15 (Br. 8: Last ¶.)
16 Thus, whether the users in Odigo are disassociated with each other depends on
17 whether the mere fact that those users are registered with Odigo renders them
18 associated with each other.
19 Claims are construed in their broadest reasonable interpretation during patent
20 prosecution. Clearly, the environment of the invention is a shopping environment,
21 an inherently social environment. Thus, the ordinary and usual meaning of the
22 claim limitation “shoppers being otherwise disassociated with each other” is that of
23 shoppers not spending time socially or keeping company (FF 04).
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