Appeal No. 2004-2085
Application 09/272,542
examiner states that a national best bid/offer is only recited in
claim 69 and is merely a "best bid" to one in the art (EA20).
Appellants reply that the claim limitations describe a
"dormant" situation (RBr8-9).
It is true that claim 40 does not expressly recite the term
"dormant" as in claim 71. Nevertheless, the limitation of
"predefined relative indications specifying a quantity and being
undisclosed to participants in the market until and unless
matched with an order" describes a situation where the relative
indications are dormant. We fail to see how this limitation is
taught or suggested by Harrington. Although the claimed
"predefined relative indications" do not recite that the
indications are "relative to a generally accepted indicator of a
prevailing current market price" as in claim 1, this is a matter
of breadth. The examiner finds the "predefined relative
indications" to correspond to the bids in Harrington, but this
does address the complete limitation of "predefined relative
indications specifying a quantity and being undisclosed to
participants in the market until and unless matched with an
order." Moreover, claim 40 calls "for entering predefined
relative indications ... and responses to orders for the
product." The examiner's interpretation would apparently read
both the "relative indications" and the "responses to orders" on
the "bids" in Harrington, which is unacceptable since they are
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