Appeal No. 2003-0961
Application No. 09/298,782
Attention is directed to the brief (Paper No. 9) and answer
(Paper No. 10) for the respective positions of the appellants and
examiner regarding the merits of these rejections.1
DISCUSSION
Berson, the examiner’s primary reference, discloses “a
system for ensuring proper payment by mailers for the amount of
postage that is printed in the form of postage indicia printed on
envelopes and labels during operation of their mailing machines”
(column 1, lines 7 through 10). The system employs a product
usage profile, i.e., a running or moving statistical average of
the characteristics of the mail produced by the mailer, to
calculate an expected cost for a discrete batch of mail pieces
which can then be checked against actual funds credited to the
mailer. The mailing machines generate and maintain a variety of
information relating to each piece of mail such as its postage
amount, dimensions and weight, mail classification, destination,
piece count number, and date and time of processing (see column
7, lines 12 through 23). From this data, the machines utilize
the postage amount and mail piece count for a discrete batch of
1 In the final rejection (Paper No. 5), claims 14 and 16
through 18 also stood rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being
anticipated by Berson. As the examiner has not restated this
rejection in the answer, we assume that it has been withdrawn.
See Ex parte Emm, 118 USPQ 180, 181 (Bd. App. 1957)
3
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