Appeal No. 2004-2110
Application No. 09/910,654
rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Accordingly, we
reverse. We enter a new rejection, however, using our authority
under 37 CFR § 41.50(b).
We consider first the rejection of claims 1-15, 17 and
18 based on the examiner’s finding that appellant did not invent
the subject matter of the claimed invention. The examiner’s
finding results from the examiner’s consideration of the prior
art submitted by appellant representing events involving the
Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC). It is essentially the
examiner’s position that the claimed invention represents nothing
more than the recitation of a new policy proposed by ARC in which
agent coupon data could be stored electronically rather than in
paper form (answer, pages 3-5).
Appellant argues that independent claims 1 and 15 recite
the storage of agent coupon data electronically whereas ARC only
describes the storage of agent coupon data as an actual image of
the agent coupons. Appellant argues that there are several
disclosures within ARC that indicate that ARC was only proposing
the storage of an image of an agent coupon and not the electronic
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