Appeal No. 2006-1128
Application No. 10/215,877
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
appellants’ specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations that follow.
We initially note that, of the two references applied in each of the rejections, one
(Bissonette in the first rejection and Caulfield in the second rejection) is directed to
dispute transaction processing in particular, and the second, Lynn, is directed to generic
workflow management. Therefore, the references are applied as a combined teaching
of workflow management of dispute processing transactions.
Claims 1-6 and 24-27 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable as
obvious over Bissonette in view of Lynn.
We note that the appellants argue claims 1-6 and 24-27 as a group. Accordingly, we
select claim 1 as representative of the group.
Bissonette describes receiving and storing a disputed payment
transaction [See col. 7 lines 32-43];
Lynn shows establishing a case identifier [See col. 12 lines 45-54]
and associating it with a work queue of cases to be worked [See Fig. 5
Ref. 122]; generating a second queue for working by an investigator and
disposing the cases in it [See Fig. 5 Ref. 126]; at least two cases to be
worked by said investigator [See col. 7 lines 55-61 – “The next case can
be retrieved…]; regulating execution of a workload of said investigator via
displaying only a partial listing of said second queue of cases for viewing
by said investigator so as to prevent said investigator from selectively
avoiding cases to work [See col. 1 lines 49-56 and col. 7 lines 55-65
describing a FIFO queuing discipline to control what a worker can work
on].
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