Appeal No. 2004-1484
Application 09/438,396
for the recitations in claim 20 regarding the specially
programmed processor using profit margin information, our views
on the examiner’s position are the same as they were above in
regard to independent claims 1 and 7 on appeal.
We additionally note that the examiner has not addressed how
the system of Fernandez, even if modified by Dorf, would provide
response for the specially programmed processor of claims 19 and
20 and would perform steps © through (e) noted therein regarding
the recited “combined signal” and derived reward signal resulting
from a comparison of the combined signal with a predetermined
value. Moreover, we agree with appellant that Fernandez
indicates that the read/write units generally seen in the value
storage system of Figure 1 of that patent each maintain a log of
information relating to transactions from each card (col. 2,
lines 38-44), and thus belies the examiner’s conclusion that the
last clause of claim 19 requiring the processor memory to never
store a combined signal for more than one item is somehow to be
inherently found in Fernandez. As for the examiner’s further
conclusion that it would have been obvious to merely temporarily
store the points/purchase data for one customer using the system
of Fernandez and not maintain such data from customer to
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