Appeal No. 2005-2642
Reexamination Control No. 90/005,841
deposit account” reads on such automated, inflation-indexed accounts regardless of
how the deposit account is paid out. Likewise, the claimed means for retiring loan
principal component over the term, the claimed means for retiring the fixed interest
component by a first schedule over the term, and the means for retiring the variable
interest component by a second schedule over the term are broad enough to read on
inflation-indexed loan accounts of the type disclosed by Mukharjee no matter how or
when those components are retired.
Appellant’s argument that Mukherjee’s inflation-indexed deposit accounts are not
“directly responsive to the rate of inflation” (Brief at 16) is unconvincing for the reasons
given above in the discussion of claim 24. Appellant’s similar argument (Brief at 16)
with respect to Mukherjee’s inflation-indexed loan accounts is unpersuasive for the
following reasons. First, claim 36 as construed in light of the definition at column 3,
lines 11-14, requires no more than that the amount in the loan accrual component be (a)
“responsive to the rate of inflation” and (b) “directly responsive to” (i.e., based on) a
market indicator of prior actual inflation, which may represent inflated prices levels
rather than the inflation rate. Second, even assuming for the sake of argument that
there must be continuous (i.e., nonstepped) relationship the loan accrual component
and the rate of prior actual inflation, Mukherjee’s initially proposed accounts (at 50, last
para.) were to operate in that manner, as were the loans offered by the Post Office
Bank, which tied its loans to 25 per cent of the cost-of-living index:
Banks started to make indexed charges on loans when their
indexed deposit business became of appreciable size. . . .
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