Appeal No. 97-1931
Application 08/364,826
been obvious to the artisan for reasons discussed above. Even
though Dworkin may require user interaction in its preferred
embodiment, the artisan would have appreciated the obviousness of
making decisions automatically.
Thus, when claim 1 is given its broadest reasonable
interpretation consistent with the specification, and when the
teachings of Dworkin are collectively combined with the skill of
the artisan, we are of the view that the invention as recited in
claim 1 would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in
this art. Therefore, we sustain the rejection of claim 1.
With respect to claim 2, appellants argue that the single
database of Dworkin contains shared information offered by all
the warehouses, and therefore, does not teach the respective
relationships recited in claim 2. In our view, however, this is
not what claim 2 recites. Claim 2 recites that the means (A) is
a plurality of computers, and that is suggested by the vendor
computers 9a to 9d of Dworkin in combination with the database.
With respect to claim 3, appellants argue that Dworkin
does not select items based on the criterion of net price per
unit item. Although this point of appellants is correct, the
argument fails to address the obviousness of the limitation. Any
purchaser of goods would have found it obvious to select goods
16
Page: Previous 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007