Appeal No. 2002-1846
Application 09/146,199
event. Consequently, the features required by independent claims 20 and 36 have not all been
shown by the examiner as disclosed by Mindrum. Thus, the rejection of dependent claims 21, 22
and 37 as being unpatentable over Mindrum and Bracthl is not supported by sufficient evidence
and cannot be sustained.
C. The Rejection of Claims 23, 25 and 38 as
Unpatentable over Mindrum and Schultz
Claims 23, 25 and 38 are reproduced below:
23. A system according to claim 20 further comprising means for
uniquely identifying the customer based upon a scannable identification card.
25. A system according to claim 20 further comprising customer
purchase file means for storing data pertaining to the customer’s purchase of
products.
38. A process according to claim 36 further comprising the step of
uniquely identifying the customer based upon a scannable identification card.
With regard to claims 23, 25, and 38, the examiner relies on Schultz to meet the specific
limitation of these claims additional to those in the base claim and on Mindrum to meet the
limitations of the independent base claims 20 and 36. The examiner and the appellant are in
agreement that independent base claims 20 and 36 require only one of four types of system test
data to be collected and stored: (1) loop error events; (2) terminal reload events; (3) price change
at the terminal events; and (4) item-not-on-file events. In that regard, the examiner has
acknowledged on page 7 of Paper No. 17 that Mindrum does not explicitly teach a method that
logs event data such as loop errors, terminal reload, and items not-on-sale, and also has not
asserted any “implied” teaching from Mindrum in that regard. Moreover, we have already
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