Appeal No. 2005-2643
Reexamination Control No. 90/005,842
[e] paying the deposit accounts; and
[f] receiving repayment of the loan account by said financial
institution in a manner where the funds in the loan account
obtain a rate of return responsive to a rate of inflation.
For the reasons given above, the term “function,” which appears in steps b and d,
is broad enough to encompass a step function. As also explained above, the phrase
“responsive to the rate of inflation,” which appears in step f, does not require that the
rate of return on the loan account be a continuous function of the rate of inflation. As
will appear, even assuming the claim should be given this narrow construction, it would
be satisfied by Mukherjee.
Before comparing the other language of claim 1 to Mukherjee, we will address
the examiner’s reliance on Musmanno as evidence that “it was notoriously well-known
to employ data-processors to manage plural accounts,” Final Action at 5, and the
examiner’s assertion that it therefore would have been obvious to “automate
MUKHERERJEE [sic] et al. on a data-processor such as MUSAMANNO [sic] et al. in
order to facilitate account management.” Id. at 5-6 (underlining omitted). We agree that
it would have been obvious in view of Mukherjee and Musmanno, prior to appellant’s
August 27, 1985, effective filing date, for a bank to offer inflation-indexed deposit and
loan accounts and to service the accounts with a data processor in order to obtain the
speed and accuracy offered by automated (as opposed to manual) processing.
Appellant’s argument that Musmanno’s software is “totally inapplicable to the issue at
hand: the management of indexed accounts,” Brief at 16, is unconvincing because the
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