Appeal No. 2001-1461
Application 08/921,130
The relevant contents of Gardner are adequately summarized
by appellants (Br6-7).
Appellants argue that Gardner discloses only a single type
of request and therefore does not teach: (1) "automatically
determining a type of the request" and then "automatically
determining a designated number of approvals required for
authorization of the request based on the type of the request"
(emphasis added), as recited in claim 1 (Br7); (2) "automatically
determining a type of the request" and then "automatically
interrogating a set of rules based on the type of the request, to
determine approval processing information for authorization of
the request" (emphasis added), as recited in claim 16 (Br8); and
(3) "the workflow engine further operable to determine a type of
the request" and "a validation module operable to determine a
designated number of approvals required for authorization of the
request based on the type of the request" (emphasis added), as
recited in claim 19 (Br8).
The examiner refers, without explanation, to column 6,
lines 27-42, column 7, lines 53-57 (FR3; FR5; EA4; EA6), and
column 7, lines 49-63 (FR6; EA7). In the Response to Arguments
section of the examiner's answer, the examiner states (EA10):
Gardner clearly recites in col. 7, lines 12-43 of a purchase
request to be approved by a company or a division. The
company or division in Gardner is equivalent to the claimed
"type of request" and that once the system determines the
company or division then it applies the rules for that
particular company or division.
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