Appeal No. 2005-1959
Application No. 09/729,394
Claims 61 and 16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Sansone in view of Walker and Engel.
Reference is made to the Examiner's Answer (Paper No. 16,
mailed November 24, 2004) for the examiner's complete reasoning
in support of the rejections, and to appellants' Brief (Paper
No. 13, filed December 9, 2003) for appellants' arguments
thereagainst.
OPINION
We have carefully considered the claims, the applied prior
art references, and the respective positions articulated by
appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we
will reverse the anticipation rejection of claims 1, 3, 4, 10,
14, and 15 and the obviousness rejections of claims 2, 5 through
9, 12, 13, and 16 through 18.
Regarding the anticipation rejection, each of independent
claims 1 and 10 recites that the rebate value is based on the
postage refill amount. Appellants argue (Brief, page 7) that the
rebate amounts in Sansone are "based upon prior postage meter
1 We note that the rejection of claim 6 on page 5 of the Answer is only
over Engel. However, since claim 6 depends from claim 5, which required
Sansone and Walker, and since the explanation of the rejection of claim 6
refers to Walker, we assume that the examiner meant to include Sansone and
Walker in the rejection of claim 6.
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007