Appeal No. 2004-0403
Application 09/100,684
the examiner, or with any kind of bill. McNatt discloses that
AT&T attempted to attract new customers by mailing checks which,
if cashed, authorizes switching the long-distance provider to
AT&T. McNatt does not disclose that the offer is sent with the
user's phone bill, as stated by the examiner, or with another
kind of bill. Since AT&T is trying to attract new customers it
obviously would not send out such an offer in a phone bill to its
existing customers. Linnen teaches the same thing as McNatt.
Therefore, the combination of McNatt and Linnen does not
teach sending out an offer in a bill to pay money for switching
long distance telephone service.
The only reference that teaches sending out anything with a
bill is Bucci, which discloses including "hard-copy material in
the nature of advertising or bill-breakdown information" (col. 3,
lines 58-59) with the billing statement to save postage by
combining mailings from different entities. Some of the
advertisements in Bucci may possibly be offers, such as an offer
to sell a product or service. While, perhaps, the offer could be
the AT&T-type offer, this is not taught in Bucci. Moreover, even
assuming that it would have been obvious to include an AT&T-type
offer in Bucci, the combination would not meet the claim language
because there is no teaching that the offer would be to pay at
least a portion of an amount due on the billing statement, as
opposed to the individual directly. This offer by a second
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