Appeal No. 2006-1523
Application No. 09/793,687
time. See Column 7, lines 29 through 35. If as discussed supra there is no match for the
given round the system moves to the next round and the parties are notified. In the
situation where the first party enters all three offers at once and the second party enters
the offers at the beginning of each round, the first party’s offers, will be stored in the
computer, at the beginning of the second or third round, the computer will be generating
an offer from the first party’s previously entered data, to the second party on behalf of the
first party. Thus, we find that Burchetta does generate a complaint remedy offer as
required by claim 21 and we sustain the examiner’s rejection of claim 21.
Rejection of claims 22 through 24.
Appellant’s arguments, on pages 19 and 20 of the brief, group claims 22 through
24. Appellant states that Sloo teaches a “Request a Judge/Jury” option and that the
monitoring of compliance teaching is directed to monitoring compliance with the
judgments entered by the “Request a Judge/Jury” option. Appellant argues that a
judgment is not an agreement that is voluntarily entered into and as such Sloo does not
teach the limitation of “monitoring, at the computer, compliance by at least one of the
complainer and the respondent with terms of the agreement.”
While we concur with the appellant that Sloo teaches a “Request a Judge/Jury”
option we do not find that one skilled in the art would consider Sloo’s monitoring
compliance as limited to just judgments from the judge and jury. Sloo states, in column
11, lines 45 through 53:
For example assume that a dispute was resolved using any of the previous
routines described above, a judgment was rendered that required the subject to
reimburse the complainant for damaged merchandise, and the subject failed to
comply with the judgment. (emphasis added)
However, Sloo identifies one of the routines as “Negotiate the Complaint” as discussed
supra. We consider that one skilled in the art would recognize that Sloo in referring to
monitoring compliance with a “judgment” also includes monitoring compliance with a
negotiated settlement from the “Negotiate the Complaint” routine. Thus, we find that
Sloo does teach the limitation of “monitoring, at the computer, compliance by at least one
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