Appeal No. 2002-0819
Application No. 09/047,533
Claim 304 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Morrill in view of Shannon.
We make reference to the answer (Paper No. 15, mailed
September 10, 2001) for the Examiner’s reasoning, and to the
appeal brief (Paper No. 14, filed June 26, 2001) for Appellant’s
arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
With respect to the rejection of claims 1-3, 5-7, 11-16, 18,
19, 21, 27, 29, 31-34, 36-40, 42, 44-80, the Examiner asserts
that Morrill teaches all the claimed features except for
determining if the customer mobile station and a merchant
terminal are within a predetermined geographical proximity
(answer, page 4). However, the Examiner characterizes the
process of checking the time it takes for a customer to reach a
facility location of Hall as determining if the customer mobile
station is within a predetermined proximity of the merchant
terminal (id.). By pointing to the completion of transaction
based on a determination that the customer order may be
4 The Examiner includes claim 30 in the rejection of the other claims
while in the rejection over Morrill and Shannon, claim 30 is replaced with
claim 21 in the answer. We assume that this change is inadvertent because the
Examiner should be aware that it can constitute a new ground of rejection and
is not permitted. We note that although the explanation of the rejection
matches the limitations recited in claim 21, the examiner has consistently
rejected claim 30 over Morrill and Shannon in all the Office actions including
the final Office action (Paper, No. 10, mailed November 2, 2000).
4
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