Appeal No. 2001-2051
Application 08/923,293
of a requested item as a positive vote (col. 6, lines 41-42). A
collaborative filtering system acts on the subscriber profiles
and predicts which of the available items the subscriber may be
interested in and request, and produces a list of those
recommended items for each subscriber (col. 5, lines 12-16). A
number of different collaborative filtering algorithms may be
used (col. 9, lines 4-61).
Analysis
The examiner finds that "Robinson does not expressly
disclose a database containing information pertaining to goods
and/or services purchasing history of previous customers, but
Payton teaches a database of ratings by previous customers
(column 5, lines 6-10)" (FR2; EA4). Appellant notes that the
final rejection acknowledges that Robinson does not disclose the
claimed database of customer purchase history (Br8). The
examiner responds that although Robinson does not expressly
disclose such a database (EA9):
Robinson discloses the use of a database pertaining to the
goods and/or services of previous users; since the previous
users would in many cases have purchased the movies, books,
or other goods and services they rated, Robinson's data in
fact would pertain to their purchasing history, contrary to
Appellant's assertion. Examiner wishes to note that
"pertain" is a broad word, and that independent claims 1 and
7 specify only "information pertaining to goods and/or
services purchasing history," without limitations to
detailed information on which prior users have purchased
which goods and/or services.
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