Appeal No. 2004-1176 Page 4
Application No. 09/232,751
Williams’ system permits advertisers to target coupon distribution and associated
advertisements in a manner that reduces advertising costs and reduces junk mail.
With respect to claim 1, the examiner determined that Williams fails to
“specifically disclose monitoring the changes of active customers in a geographical area
in which customers are to receive promotions and updating the changes of the active
customers” (answer, page 3) and fails to “specifically disclose tracking data
corresponding to changes in operating environment for the plurality of goods and
determining which of the plurality of goods are to be promoted based on the changes in
operating environment and selecting one or more of the plurality of target groups based
upon changes in the operating environment” (answer, page 4). The examiner relies on
the teachings of Tso for a suggestion to modify Williams so as to provide the former
and on the teachings of Teicher for a suggestion to provide the latter.
Teicher discloses a sales promotion data processor system that takes into
account a variety of predetermined criteria, such as sales volume of particular products,
traffic volume in the outlet, current inventory status and category of purchaser, as
identified by a portable unit carried by the respective purchaser, for example, to adjust
prices dynamically and automatically. Teicher specifically teaches that
[s]ales promotion is a well-known retail technique for
increasing revenues, attracting customers, encouraging
purchase at certain hours, accelerating the sales of
manufacture-promoted products, reducing the inventory of
rapidly-ageing or slow-selling products, and the like [column
1, lines 16-20].
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