Appeal No. 2005-2643
Reexamination Control No. 90/005,842
Appellant also faults Mukherjee for failing to disclose “a loan account and a
deposit account, where both are directly responsive to a rate of inflation – this is the so-
called ‘fully hedged’ program where the inflation-based cash flows in[to] and out of the
accounts mirror one another to achieve an inflation hedge for the institution.” Brief at 14.
This argument is unconvincing because (1) the claim does not require that the “out”
cash flow due to indexing of the deposit accounts be equal the “into” cash flow due to
indexing of the loan accounts and (2) in any event, Mukherjee describes equalizing
these cash flows when he explains (a) that “[t]he amount of the surcharge [on all loans]
was usually fixed according to the proportion of the bank’s deposits benefitting by index
adjustment, so that the bank could just balance its commitments,” Mukherjee at 50, last
para., and (b) that “The Post Office Bank usually tied its loans 25 per cent to the cost-of-
living index. All other banks operated on the principle of calculating an index surcharge
on all loans at rates just sufficient to cover indexed payments to depositors.” Id. at 68,
1st full para.
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that claim 1 reads on Mukherjee as
modified in view of Musmanno and are affirming the rejection of that claim.
The rejection of claims 2 and 3, which are dependent on claim 1, rejected over
the same prior art as claim 1, and not separately argued, is affirmed for the same
reasons as the rejection of claim 1. 37 CFR § 1.192(c) (2001).
Dependent claim 4 calls for the loan account to have a principal loan component
and a loan accrual component. Claim 5, dependent on claim 4, calls for “determining
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