Appeal No. 2004-2085
Application 09/272,542
claim 1. The obviousness rejection of claims 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 13,
24, 25, 27-32, 74, and 75 over Harrington is reversed.
With respect to claims 5, 13, 26, and 73, the examiner finds
that Harrington does not teach a method of determining a best bid
and finds that Silverman teaches an anonymous matching system
that matches bids with orders based on quantity, price, and time
(oldest response) (EA10-11). The examiner concludes that it
would have been obvious to combine the teaching of Harrington and
Silverman to increase system efficiency (EA11). The rejection
does not explain away the deficiencies of Harrington. Silverman
appears to be a much closer (or at least easier to apply)
reference to the claims. Silverman discloses "offers" ("sell"
orders) and "bids" ("buy" orders or "contra side orders") in the
context of an auction market, where bids and offers are
automatically matched (col. 1, lines 18-26; example of bidding
for ten million Yen and offering fifteen million Yen, col. 13,
lines 27-28 and col. 13, line 56, to col. 14, line 15). The
orders are compared against the oldest response where the price
is the same (e.g., col. 17, lines 7-18). However, the claimed
"orders" and "contra-side orders" have specified exposure times,
which is not suggested by Silverman. Nor does Silverman teach
specifying a relative price with a price improvement. The
rejection of claims 5, 13, 26, and 73 over Harrington and
Silverman is reversed.
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