Appeal No. 2006-1817 Page 13
Application No. 09/851,514
campaign-planning systems (such as those taught in Gerace and Deaton) based on
the strategic planning methodology taught in Harhen.
As such, we agree with the Examiner that a person of ordinary skill in the art
at the time of the invention, possessed with the understandings and knowledge
reflected in the prior art, and motivated by the general problem facing the inventor,
would have been led to apply the teachings of Harhen and Deaton to the system
and method Gerace to make the combination recited in the claims, including
automatically detecting contradictions between business constraints and objectives
in planning a campaign, automatically identifying resolutions to such
contradictions, and implementing the resolutions in the campaign plan in order to
provide more advanced modeling and, therefore, better optimization of Gerace’s
optimization system and method.
With regard to the reasonable expectation of success, we hold that a general
teaching in the prior art of using business management objectives and constraints
to solve strategic planning problems for a business enterprise, as taught by Harhen,
is sufficient without a specific teaching of the precise method steps of how it would
be incorporated into the specific marketing campaign planning methodology of
Gerace in view of the general understandings and knowledge of persons having
ordinary skill in the marketing campaign planning and computer programming arts.
Accordingly, we sustain the examiner’s rejection of claim 1.
IV. Claims 5-8, 10-15, 17, 18 and 20
The appellants did not separately argue the patentability of these claims.
Rather, they grouped these claims together and relied on the arguments of
patentability for independent claim 1. (Appellants’ Brief, p. 8.) Finding no
argument for the separate patentability of these claims, these claims are considered
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