Appeal No. 2005-2686
Application No. 09/879,823
monitoring the redemption of coupons such that each coupon may be used a
predetermined number of times [reply brief, pages 6-11].
We will sustain the examiner’s rejection of independent claims 47, 52, 57, 61 and
62. Although the examiner may not have cited the best passages of Von Kohorn in
support of the rejection, we agree with the examiner that the entirety of the Von Kohorn
disclosure provides the evidence necessary to support the examiner’s rejection.
Specifically, we note that one of the many embodiments disclosed by Von Kohorn is an
embodiment in which a user can select a product area of interest and, subsequently,
receive an award in the form of a coupon allowing him to purchase a product in the area
of interest [column 98, lines 41-44]. This embodiment suggests that the total audience
is targeted into subsets based on the selection of a product area of interest made by the
user. Thus, not only is a target audience for a given coupon determined, but the
targeting is based on a selection made by the user which would be stored on the user’s
device. Note that these coupons are only sent to the targeted user which results in a
higher rate of redemption of the coupons [id., lines 60-64]. With respect to the recitation
that each coupon may be used a predetermined number of times, we agree
with the examiner that Von Kohorn clearly teaches that each coupon may be used only
one time, such that the predetermined number is one.
With respect to dependent claims 48, 49, 53, 54, 58, and 59, appellants simply
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