Appeal No. 2005-2643
Reexamination Control No. 90/005,842
invention itself, to make the new combination. See In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d
1350, 1355-56 [47 USPQ2d 1453, 1456] (Fed. Cir. 1998).
Appellant has not submitted any declarations or affidavits addressing the level of
ordinary skill in the art. Therefore, the level of skill in the art must be ascertained from
the references themselves. See In re Oelrich, 579 F.2d 86, 91, 198 USPQ 210, 214
(CCPA 1978) ("the PTO usually must evaluate both the scope and content of the prior
art and the level of ordinary skill solely on the cold words of the literature"); In re GPAC
Inc., 57 F.3d 1573, 1579, 35 USPQ2d 1116, 1121 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (Board did not err in
adopting the approach that the level of skill in the art was best determined by the
references of record).
In the absence of any indication to the contrary by the examiner, we assume the
rejected claims are entitled to the benefit under 35 U.S.C. § 120 of the August 27, 1985,
filing date of Application 06/770,493, the earliest of the chain of “continuation”
applications that led up to the application which issued as the patent under
reexamination.
In claim 1, steps a, b, and e relate to indexed deposit accounts and the remaining
steps
relate to indexed loan accounts:
1. A method of managing financial accounts comprising:
[a] providing a plurality of deposit accounts with a financial
institution;
[b] adjusting the amount in each deposit account as a function of a
rate of inflation;
[c] providing at least one loan account with said financial institution
using funds deposited with the financial institution;
[d] adjusting the amount in the loan account as a [f]unction of a rate
of inflation using an account data processor,
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