Appeal No. 2004-0403
Application 09/100,684
Goldberg.2 As noted by appellants (brief, p. 28), the examiner's
failure to mention all of the references used to reject
independent claims 1 and 22 in rejecting the dependent claims
appears to be an oversight. Thus, the statement of the rejection
should also mention Schumacher and Wall Street Access.
We refer to the final rejection (Paper No. 20) and the
examiner's answer (Paper No. 26) for a statement of the
examiner's rejection, and to the appeal brief (Paper No. 24) and
the reply brief (Paper No. 28) for a statement of appellants'
arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
New grounds of rejection pursuant to 37 CFR § 1.196(b)
Claim 28 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph, as indefinite and/or incomplete. Claim 28 recites
"providing with the billing statement an offer to the customer to
become a customer of the third party." This does not specify the
nature of the offer as an offer to pay part of the amount due, as
in the other independent claims. The offer to become a customer
could simply be an advertisement for a product; if the individual
bought the product he or she would become a customer. However,
claim 28 ends by reciting "applying the minimum amount due to the
credit card account in response to the received acceptance
2 The examiner's rejection mistakenly refers to
claims 2-10, 23-27, and 30.
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