Appeal No. 2005-2686
Application No. 09/879,823
given to one user can be used a predetermined number of times. This interpretation is
the one accepted by the examiner and appears to be the interpretation initially argued
by appellants. This interpretation is not supported by the specification because the
specification, as argued by the examiner, suggests that each printed coupon is to be
used only one time to avoid fraud. In the reply brief, appellants assert the second
interpretation. This interpretation suggests that the predetermined number recited in the
claims refers to the total number of coupons issued to all the targeted users. Although
this interpretation might be consistent with the claim language, it appears to be
completely unrelated to anything found in the
disclosure. That is, we can find nothing in appellants’ specification to suggest that the
total number of issued coupons is monitored to prevent fraud. Thus, this second
interpretation appears to be an interpretation recently devised by appellants in an
attempt to render these claims patentable. Given these two completely different
interpretations of the claim language, we decline to accept an interpretation which lacks
any support or recognition in the specification as filed. Therefore, we accept the
interpretation used by the examiner, and apparently by appellants initially, and conclude
that the claim language so interpreted is unsupported by the specification.
With respect to the examiner’s second objection noted above, appellants argue
that the specification supports the feature of storing preferences of a user (e.g.,
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