Appeal No. 2002-1844
Application 08/975,428
Appellants have provided a definition of "e-commerce" as "[d]oing
business online, typically via the Web" and "e-commerce implies
that goods and services can be purchased online" where a heading
"The First E-Commerce?" discusses sales of watches using the
telegraph (TechEncyclopedia definition in Exhibit A). We agree
with the examiner that the definition of e-commerce is not so
limited that it absolutely requires goods or services to be
purchased online, as opposed to advertised online, or purchased
using the telephone (see EA17 ¶ 11b). The "service provider" in
Hyodo analyzes access information relating to user access to
advertising system 21 of the service provider (col. 3,
lines 38-43; col. 4, lines 4-7), to provide, for example, a
calculation of "hit rate" (col. 5, lines 45-47) and corresponds
to the claimed "electronic commerce service provider." Thus, we
find that Hyodo discloses a "method of supporting and analyzing
electronic commerce data for electronic commerce service
providers using a computer" as broadly recited in the preamble.
The access log on the server in Hyodo (Fig. 4, steps S1 &
S2; Fig. 5; col. 3, lines 38-47; col. 5, lines 1-21) contains
data elements which someone has determined to be "required for
analyzing the Internet and/or electronic commerce over the World
Wide Web," as recited in step (a). For example, the data
elements in the access log are shown in Fig. 5; Hyodo calls this
the "1st access information." Appellants argue that there are no
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