Appeal No. 2002-1865
Application 09/452,678
Although this is the same general reading that we have of this
reference, we do not see any patentable distinction as to this
claimed feature since it appears that this would have been an
obvious enhancement or incentive for the customer to be offered
this by an individual retailer as well as our view expressed
earlier in this opinion that Baker appears to teach a current
benefit anyway. However, the paragraph bridging specification
pages 1 and 2 indicates a current benefit is available in the
prior art for current purchases.
The examiner's recognition at page 5 of the answer that
the references do not appear to teach a purchase requirement
comprising a subset of a plurality of items as set forth in
dependent claims 4 and 31 overly limits the art. This aspect of
the present claims appears to be known in the art in accordance
with the discussion we outlined earlier in this opinion as
admitted by appellants in the paragraph bridging pages 1 and 2 of
the specification as filed. The discussions in Baker as well
appear to indicate that there is a tiered system in which more
benefits are provided to customers the more the total cost of
purchases have been increased by the consumer. We do not
construe the database arrangement in Figure 1 of Baker
(customers, enabling organizations and benefit correlation data)
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