Appeal No. 2005-1644
Application 09/400,583
"data mining." It is disclosed that "[t]hese spatial
relationships may be integrated with the data relationships
discovered through data mining to determine additional
information concerning purchases by customers" (spec. at 30,
lines 3-6), which again implies that spatial relationships are
generated by "spatial analysis," not "data mining." Claim 39
requires that the two spatial relationships being claimed, in
particular, the "relative placement of products within the retail
space," have to be generated using data mining techniques. In
summary, it appears that "generating spacial relationships using
data mining techniques, wherein the spatial relationships include
relative placement of products within the retail space" lacks
written description support and is misdescriptive because
relative placement of products is not accomplished by data
mining, but by measurement with a position identifying system.
Claim 39 further recites "wherein the spatial relationships
further include associations of customer paths through the retail
space with product placement within the retail space," which
modifies the limitation of "generating spatial relationships
using data mining techniques." The specification indicates that
customer paths are stored along with purchase information (spec.
at 34, lines 11-17) and with the position of products within the
retail space (spec. at 36, line 11, to 37, line 4), which
indicates that "associations of customer paths through the retail
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