Appeal No. 2004-0199
Application No. 09/385,489
page 2 of Appellants' specification. One of the more prevalent
type of trade promotions is known in the industry as or referred
to as "scan-based trade promotions" or "scan-pay trade
promotions." They are referred to as "scan-based" or "scan-pay"
because the performance of the promotion can be tracked by
reviewing the participating stores' conventional point-of-sale
system data or information. See page 3 of Appellants'
specification. Either manually, or sometimes with systems
support, the retailer uses the data collected by the point-of-
sale system to determine the amount of money the manufacturer
owes the retailer under the terms of the scan-based promotion.
See page 8 of Appellants' specification. There are several
problems with this system of administering scan-based trade
promotions. The main problem for the retailer is that the
retailer may wait a significant period of time for reimbursement.
The retailer must also spend a significant number of man-hours
processing the paperwork for the manufacturer. The main problem
for the manufacturer is that the manufacturer has no effective
way of verifying the retailer's paperwork. See pages 9 and 10 of
Appellants' specification.
Referring to Figure 1, the system of the present invention
includes a retailer system 20, a manufacturer system 22 and an
22
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