Appeal No. 95-3433
Application No. 07/812,982
The system includes an input device which is located at
the shipper’s (or other buyer’s) premises and a central
data processing facility. The input device receives
information defining a shipment sufficiently so that
the cost of that shipment may be determined in
accordance with the rates of a carrier (or other
seller), and uploads the information to the central
data processing facility. Preferably, the input device
includes rate information and software for determining
shipment costs locally. The central data processing
facility maintains accounts for a shippers and
carriers, appropriately debits and credits costs for
each shipment and periodically issues statements of
their accounts to all shippers and carriers. In a
preferred embodiment [Figure 3], shippers may maintain
a payment account with a trustee bank and the system
may from time to time issue instruction to the trustee
bank to make appropriate payments to each carrier.
Any rate changes are automatically communicated by the data
processing system to all shippers (column 8, lines 58 through
65). When the new rates are received by a shipper, an
acknowledgment signal is sent by the shipper to the system
(column 11, lines 50 through 63). Sharpe is completely silent
concerning a shipper sending a coded request to the system for
access to another rate.
We agree with the examiner (Answer, pages 3 and 4) that
Haines “fails to specify the type of information stored within
the memory means,” that Sharpe “teaches another system for the
centralized processing of shipment accounts that stores rate
information in the data base . . . of a data processing center,”
and that Sharpe “teaches storing several files to accommodate
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Last modified: November 3, 2007