expensive automobile may weigh attributes such as comfort or prestige, but neglect
attributes such as economy, whereas a consumer considering an inexpensive
automobile may evaluate attributes such as economy rather than prestige or sportiness
(pages 1 and 3).
The examiner argues that Cooper’s table 2 discloses a vehicle brand-attribute
matrix based on customer-oriented market research (answer, page 11). That table
discloses attributes, such as price, length and engine size, of various categories of cars
such as subcompact/domestic and luxury domestic. The categories are not brands and
there is no grouping of attributes in response to customer-oriented market research.
The examiner argues that each of the attributes at the top of Cooper’s table 2 is
an attribute class because each attribute may have many values, e.g., there may be
many car lengths and engine sizes (answer, page 12). Each of the numbers in
Cooper’s table 2 is a particular value of the attribute set forth at the top of the table. The
particular numbers themselves are not attributes.
The examiner argues that Cooper’s disclosures that consumers have different
consideration sets of car brands and that a market can be divided into submarkets in
which homogeneous consumers consider a distinctive subset of brands with a particular
rule of attribute evaluation and reference to a specific ideal point (page 3) is a disclosure
of generating preferred vehicle brand positions (answer, pages 13-14). The relied-upon
portions of Cooper pertain to what consumers consider when they select a car. Those
portions do not disclose generating a preferred brand position of a new car among
competing cars.
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Last modified: November 3, 2007