Appeal No. 2002-1846
Application 09/146,199
event, claims 20 and 36 each requires the collecting and storing of only one type of system data,
not all four enumerated types. Thus, as far as these claims are concerned, Mindrum does not
need to disclose the logging of a loop error event, a terminal reload event, or an item-not-on-sale
event.
Based on the foregoing, it would seem that the appellants’ application should be
remanded to the examiner for a clear and specific finding on the differences between each
rejected claim and the Mindrum reference. In the particular circumstances here, however, a
remand is not necessary for two reasons. First, we disagree with the examiner’s position that
Mindrum’s disclosure of applying a discount at the checkout terminal constitutes a price change
at terminal event as is recited in the appellants’ claims. Secondly, we disagree with the
examiner’s conclusion that in light of the disclosure of Bass one with ordinary skill in the art
would have been led to monitoring, collecting, and storing of the system test data specified in the
appellants’ claims, whether it is one, two, three, or all four types of the enumerated system test
data.
The appellant has submitted the testimony of Mr. Gary Katz, who stated that he was
“involved in retail marketing database work since the late 1980's,” and that he “was familiar in
1992 with the state of the art POS [point of sale] systems, how they were used, and in a more
general way how their hardware elements functioned.” Mr. Katz’s declaration, in ¶ 3, states:
In 1992, I knew that “price change at the terminal” in the context of a POS system
meant changing a scan price almost in real time. That is, “price change at
terminal” meant a change in the price that would be displayed on any terminal.
The change could be made from any terminal, including a POS terminal used by a
sales clerk to process a customer’s purchase transaction. The change was made in
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