Appeal No. 2002-2174
Application No. 09/263,166 Page 10
a particular incentive, as required by claim 1. From all of the
above, we find that the examiner has failed to establish a prima
facie case of anticipation of claim 1. The rejection of claim 1
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b), and claims 2 and 4-11, dependent
therefrom, is reversed.
We turn next to independent claim 12. We note at the outset
that claim 12 does not include the selection mechanism of claim
1. The examiner's opinion is set forth on page 8 of the
examiner's answer. Appellants assert (brief, page 26) that the
claim adds that one or more parameters of the same incentive (the
incentive whose existence message or a selection mechanism for
which is published at one or more network locations) depend on
one or more characteristics of the consumer. Appellants argue to
the effect that the value (discount amount) depends on some
property of the consumer, and that the portion of Johnson cited
by the examiner does not teach this feature. It is argued (id.)
that in Johnson, a particular incentive, e.g, the cost of
carrying communications traffic from point A to point B does not
in any way depend on any characteristic of the consumer.
At the outset, we note that the language regarding the value
being based on meeting a set of one or more match criteria only
requires one match criteria, and we find this limitation to be
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