Appeal No. 2002-2174
Application No. 09/263,166 Page 6
value that depends on the consumer meeting one or more match
criteria. Appellants maintain (brief, pages 15 and 16) that the
claim requires that the match criteria are met by the consumer.
We note at the outset that appellants' invention is directed
to a method for distributing incentives such as discount coupons,
sweepstakes, frequent program mileage, premiums, free samples,
and product tie-ins, over a network, preferably the Internet.
From our review of Johnson, the sole reference applied against
the claim by the examiner, we find that Johnson is not directed
to the distribution of incentives such as coupons. Rather,
Johnson is directed to bidding for telecommunications traffic.
Specifically, Johnson discloses that telecommunications switches
route calls in accordance with least call routing, resulting from
a bidding process between different Carriers. The process is
administered by a bidding service provider through operation of
central processor, referred to as a Moderator (col. 1, lines
46-54). Each of the Carriers transmits to the Moderator the rate
it is willing to charge for service between two specific points.
This bid rate may be lower than the Carrier's established rate,
for any number of reasons, such as the Carrier has excess
capacity on that route at that time. The Carrier may change its
bids as often as it likes during the day as traffic patterns
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