Appeal No. 2006-1429
Application No. 10/437,995
request includes an identifier of the business entity” and “responding to the data request,
wherein the response includes at least one of the surface material samples and associated
label information.” We note that appellants’ specification, on pages 3 and 4 state:
Content in the form of surface material samples includes a representation
of any material that can be applied to an object to change its physical
appearance (e.g. fabrics, finishes, carpets, laminates, paints, stains,
textures, etc). Typically, surface materials are applied to furniture,
counter-tops, tables, walls, floors, ceilings, and the like to enhance their
appearance. [emphasis added]
Thus, the scope of claim 1 is that the surface material sample is a representation,
including a picture, of a material that can be applied to an object to enhance its physical
appearance.
We find that Eddie Bauer discloses the system described in claim 1. Eddie Bauer,
as appellants’ admit on page 5 of the brief, teaches a web site with hyperlinks; some of
these pages include general listings of products for sale and provide a picture of the
products, see e.g. page 38. Other pages such as 52 are limited to one product and
provide links to view the products in different colors. We note that each of these pages
are linked by hyperlinks. We consider a web page which presents a picture of a product
or a picture of the product with options to change the product’s color, to a be a surface
material sample, i.e. we consider either the teaching of different categories of products or
of the same product in different color, to meet the claim limitation of a surface material
sample. We note that the web pages shown in the cited art sites provide both names of
the product and names of the colors that the product can be displayed, see e.g. page 52
where the product is labeled “Satin-Stitch Tee” and the colors are labeled “dark
charcoal”, “Boysenberry”…etc., we also note that the address/URL contains identifiers.
Clearly, these labels and identifiers are specified by Eddie Bauer as they are displayed on
Eddie Bauer’s web site. We consider these labels to meet the claimed labels. One skilled
in the art would recognize that the hyperlinks on these pages have an address associated
with the link. As shown in pages, 38 and 52 the address or URL of all of these pages
includes the name Eddie Bauer (the name of the merchant) and an identifier of the
product. Thus, by selecting a hyperlink to one of these products/product of a different
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