Appeal No. 2004-0044
Application No. 09/375,214
After reviewing Honarvar, we agree with Appellants’
assertion that the claimed feedback mechanism is absent in the
reference. Honarvar relates to a decision management system for
creating strategies to control movement of clients across
different client categories (col. 1, lines 25-31). What the
Examiner characterizes as the claimed feedback mechanism in
Honarver (answer, page 4), is actually a description of the
representation of client categories in a matrix format (col. 16,
lines 40-55) or the movement of the clients across categories
(col. 17, lines 1-20). Furthermore, contrary to the Examiner’s
position (answer, page 6), storing the client observation points
(col. 11, lines 20-25), actually relates to the history of the
client category when the previous decision was made, not a
feedback mechanism.
Taricani, on the other hand, relates to a database system
for identifying the interstate sales transactions on which a
taxpayer did not pay the sales tax (abstract). Therefore, the
database of Taricani is arranged according to untaxed sales
transactions although the taxpayer and the related information
are also included in data fields. Although the reference
mentions categories of sales (col. 9, lines 20-30), they relate
to the agencies that collect the tax for that particular purchase
category (col 9, lines 30-33). Therefore, we agree with
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