Appeal No. 2006-1229
Application No. 09/800,690
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
appellants’ specification and claims, to the applied prior art reference, and to the
respective positions articulated by appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations that follow.
Claims 1 and 3 to 21 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable as
obvious over Alnwick in view of Ahluwalia, Furphy and Pritchard.
Appellants confine their arguments to the elements of claim 1 and our analysis
below addresses Appellants’ arguments accordingly.
The Examiner applies four prior art references, and to make the combination more
understandable, we note that the examiner relies on Alnwick and Furphy as sources of
teachings for generic order systems that provide details for back ordering, and on
Ahluwalia and Pritchard for specific application of back ordering to automobile orders by
way of example. Thus, the Examiner’s argument is essentially that the claimed subject
matter reads on generic back ordering as would be applied to ordering of automobiles,
as evidenced by the applied art. We note, and the Examiner indicates, that the general
order and back order features of such ordering systems are shown by Alnwick and the
inventory updating feature on incoming inventory is shown by Ahluwalia, the aspects
related to a time period for back orders are shown by Furphy, and of notifying and
acknowledging for delivery shown by Pritchard.
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