Appeal No. 2004-0094
Application No. 09/181,658
The Invention
The invention relates to a computerized system to combine the billings from
multiple vendors into a single statement for a customer. (See appellants’ specification
page 3). The system is implemented by a financial institution, which through contracts
with billers, has bill data electronically transmitted to the financial institution (see
appellants’ specification page 5). The financial institution obtains ownership of the
receivables for each of the bills. The financial institution provides a bill to the customer
for the services provided by the vendors working with the financial institution (see page
6 of appellants’ specification).
Claim 1 is representative of the invention and is reproduced below.
1. A method of combined billing for at least one customer on a
plurality of customer accounts, comprising:
receiving account data for the plurality of customer accounts
electronically from time-to-time by a service provider from each of a
plurality of billers;
acquiring ownership of receivables represented by the account
data by the service provider under contractual arrangements with the
plurality of billers upon receipt of the account data;
automatically calculating account charges for the plurality of
customer accounts from the account data;
aggregating the account charges for at least one customer on the
plurality of customer accounts;
automatically formatting a combined bill for the customer from the
aggregated account charges; and
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