Appeal No. 2001-0280
Application No. 08/890,398
payment to an entity such as an insurance company to pay a
premium for funding an annuity which is ultimately payable to the
customer. Apparently recognizing Cohen’s lack of explicit
disclosure of purchasing transactions involving automatic loan
repayment as claimed, the Examiner takes Official Notice of such
a feature (Answer, page 4) by asserting “. . . it is well known
within the finance arts that automatic deductions can be made to
pay outstanding debts, such as loans, mortgages, insurance, etc.”
The Examiner’s line of reasoning combines the automatic loan
repayment feature asserted to be well known in the art with the
teachings of Cohen. According to the Examiner (id.), the skilled
artisan “. . . would have been motivated to transfer a portion of
the transaction to a loan payment receiver in view of Cohen
disclosure of transferring the portion to an insurance company
and in view of the widespread use of automatic payments for
paying mortgages (which are one type of loan).”
A review of the arguments in the Brief reveals that
Appellant has not specifically contested the Examiner’s taking of
Official Notice of the asserted well known aspects of automatic
loan repayment features in purchasing transactions. Despite this
fact, we are constrained to reverse the outstanding rejection
before us since there is no evidence of this feature among the
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007