Appeal No. 2003-0961
Application No. 09/298,782
mail pieces to generate a product usage profile which is
periodically communicated to the post office (see column 7, lines
23 through 35). The post office counts mail pieces as they are
received and predicts the cost of a discrete mail batch by
multiplying the piece count by the mailer’s product usage profile
(see column 7, line 42, through column 8, line 38). Disparities
between the predicted cost of the mail batch and the actual funds
previously credited to the mailer are indicative of fraud and the
need for further investigation (see column 8, lines 39 through
67). According to Berson (see column 2, line 54, through column
3, line 35), the use of this statistical inference or sampling to
audit for postage meter fraud is superior in terms of cost and
practicality, with essentially similar results, to so-called 100%
verification systems wherein every piece of mail arriving at a
post office is checked for proper postage.
As indicated above, independent claim 1 recites a system
comprising mailer’s digital units that store unique information
contained in postal indicia affixed to each mail piece
identifying the mail piece and its amount of postage, “a
plurality of postal units that captures and stores the unique
information contained in the postal indicia,” and a data center
that receives the information stored by the mailer’s units and
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