Appeal No. 95-4383
Application 08/110,456
It is of course apparent that other techniques may
be employed for entering discount information. The
responses to the prompts are preferably simple in form,
such as Y(es) or N(o) to questions that have two choices,
or numeric entries based upon items listed in the various
menus, in accordance with conventional practice.
The system of the invention stores data
corresponding to previous transactions with each carrier
and/or class, so that it can determine the cost of the
current shipment on the basis of any discounts that are
applicable. The discounts are of course not applied to
the other carriers/classes, unless they have been so
programmed.
In a further aspect of the invention, the system may
print reports to enable the user to determine how much
use had been made of the various discounts, thereby
enabling the user to take as much advantage of the
discounts as possible. For example, the menu 501a may
enable the selection of a subroutine 512 for printing
such reports. [Col. 6, lines 25-61.]
Although Barns-Slavin states that "the computer comprises
means responsive to operation of the selection keys for
applying discounts stored in the second memory means to any
carrier and/or class to which they are applicable "(col. 1,
line 68 to col. 2, line 3), it does not provide any details
about how this is accomplished.
Barns-Slavin does not mention a discount for sending a
group of parcels to the same consignee or assigning the
parcels in such a group with the same identification number
and different suffixes, as required by claim 1. Although
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