Appeal No. 95-2004
Application 07/597,370
share the responsibility for handling a collective event load.
The examiner answers that the appellants’ claims do not
positively recite "working in a cooperative manner." That is
true, but the claims require a plurality of management units
to service the event load, and it is recited that the expected
event load is allocated among the different management units.
Thus, the management units must cooperate at least in that
manner. The use of a central authority or station to make the
individual schedules of many store units whose individual
event loads and personnel resources are separate from each
other does not satisfy the appellants’ claims.
We reject the appellants’ other argument that Fields does
not disclose for each store a constantly varying event load by
time of day and by the day of week. In our view, because the
tasks to be serviced in each store varies by the time of day
and by the day of week, Fields does disclose, for each store
unit, a constantly varying event load.
The examiner relied on AT&T Names to try to account for
the "reallocating" step required by the appellants’ claim 13
(answer
6
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