Appeal No. 2004-1981 Page 6
Application No. 09/404,692
a supply curve,” and that the final auction price is the “point
where the supply curve 62 meets the demand curve.” Using this
calculated price (col. 6, lines 48-50), “the central workstation
50 (auctioneer) transmits a signal to each respective room taking
place in a consummated sale.” Finally, Clearwater discloses
(col. 7, lines 52-55) that “should there be a net selling or
buying of a resource, such as cold air, the total amount of
temperature supplied by the HVAC plant (or other resource
supplier) can be adjusted.”
From this disclosure of Clearwater, we find, for the
reasons which follow, that Clearwater does not teach the first
element at issue, the marketwire, as asserted by the examiner.
We agree that in appellants’ claims 1, 5 and 8, (brief, page 4)
“the same control signal and/or circuit represented by the
marketwire is connected to each of the producing units and
consuming units.” Therefore, the disclosure in Clearwater of
control signals being sent from the central workstation and
thermostats during the auction process does not teach the
marketwire. We also agree with appellants (brief, page 5) that
“the signal provided in Clearwater is a control signal that does
not inherently represent a market price,” because the signals
sent by the thermostats in Clearwater represent buy and sell bids
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