Appeal No. 2002-2256
Application 09/286,304
The examiner stated (EA7):
Deaton also teaches referring to a purchase history file in
providing/generating coupons when a purchase[] transaction
is initiated. A purchase transaction involves the
purchasing of many items. The purchase of an item involves
considering a first item and the price of that first item.
All other items being purchased at that instant are
considered as second items. Some of these second items may
also be viewed as competitive items.
Although we are not persuaded by the examiner's reasoning
about the second items being competitive items, we interpret the
examiner's statement to mean that an incentive based on a
purchase transaction involving two or more items meets the
independent claims and agree with this reasoning. As stated in
our decision (D9):
The independent claims are extremely broad and do not recite
any relationship between the first and second items, e.g.,
that they are competitive items as in claim 16, or between
the price of the first and second items, e.g., based upon a
difference in price between the first and second items as in
claim 15. That is, the second item can be completely
unrelated to the first item. It is sufficient that some
other item than the first item is used to meet the dollar
amount limit.
Importantly, claim 10 does not recite that the "purchase of a
first item" is the purchase of a particular item, such as a
competitive product. The "purchase of a first item" is broad
enough to read on the purchase of any item. In our original
decision, we made the mistake of reading in a requirement, not
expressly called for by the claims, that the item had to be some
preselected item, which caused us to combine two incentive
systems. We realize now that this is unnecessary. In the
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