Appeal No. 2003-0957 Page 2
Application No. 09/074,074
Messages are included with each bill. The space available on a standardized
billing statement limits, however, the number of such messages that can be included.
When all messages will not fit in the available space, the appellants explain, some
messages are omitted "regardless of priority or importance." (Id at 2.) They assert,
"[t]here is no known system for prioritizing the universe of messages that could appear
on a bill and then print them on the available space according to their priority." (Id.)
In contrast, the appellants' "bill messaging system . . . prints . . . messages on a
customer billing statement according to a predetermined priority in the space allocated
on the billing statement for such . . . messages." (Id.) More specifically, billing
personnel use the system to define a universe of available messages for a billing cycle.
The personnel assign a priority to each message. (Id. at 4.)
Using data about each customer, the system qualifies each message; only
messages relevant to a particular customer qualify for that customer. The system then
arranges all the qualifying messages according to priority. Only those that fit on the bill
are eventually printed. (Id.)
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