Appeal No. 2004-0391
Application No. 08/724,315
the references in order to provide the noted customer “with the
most accurate data,” and “to keep the customer better informed of
the status of his requisition” by providing “backorder data” to
the customer, we find that the statement a “JIT[1] BACKORDER WILL
OCCUR” would not have necessarily conveyed to the skilled artisan
the “expected arrival date” of the inventory as stated by the
examiner. Stated differently, the mere fact that inventory is on
backorder in Johnson does not necessarily mean that the time
frame in which it will be available would be made known to the
person using the system to place an order for a component. The
only mention of a time frame is appellant’s disclosed and claimed
invention, and such a time of availability of the component is
not available to the examiner in an obviousness rejection. For
this reason, and for the additional reason that Johnson probably
would not be concerned with a time of availability of the
backordered component in view of the availability of the
component at other inventory locations (Abstract; column 3, lines
23 through 28; column 5, lines 4 through 8; column 10, lines 49
through 55; column 14, lines 25 through 29), the obviousness
rejection of claims 2 through 5 is reversed.
1 JIT is the acronym for Just-In-Time Inventory (column 3,
lines 54 through 61; Appendix VIII).
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