Appeal No. 2006-1854 Application No. 09/867,174 We hold that the claim necessarily requires the steps to be performed in the order recited. The alternative fulfillment plans are constructed in response to receipt of an order, the evaluation of the fulfillment plans can not occur until after the fulfillment plans are constructed and the selection of the fulfillment plans can not occur until they are evaluated against the criteria. Further, claim 11 recites “the selected one of the plurality of alternative fulfillment plan being used to position the item at one of the plurality of geographic locations within the supply chain,” thus claim 11 recites a system that determines the location for an ordered item to be moved to in response to evaluating and selecting a plan to move the ordered item from a sourcing point to more then one location. We do not find that, either Altendahl or Landvater teach or suggest such a feature. We find that Altendahl teaches a system which evaluates a plurality of methods of shipping a package and selects the appropriate shipping method based upon a set of rules. While Altendahl does teach that the rules may cover a plurality of locations (see for example, figure 6 and discussion in column 12, lines 19 through 39), we do not find that Altendahl teaches or suggests that in response to an order, more then one destination is evaluated for the same order and a determination is made as to which destination the item ordered is to be shipped. We find that Landvater teaches a system for forecasting a retail store’s needs for items. See abstract. While Landvater does teach the items may be shipped to different locations in the supply chain, we do not find that Landvater, in response to an order, constructs alternative fulfillment plans to ship the ordered item to different locations and then select the location based upon an evaluation of the fulfillment plan. Thus, we do not find that the combination of Altendahl and Landvater teach or suggest the invention as claimed in independent claim 11. Claims 12 and 14 through 20 depend upon claim 11. Accordingly, we will not sustain the examiner’s rejection of claim 11, 12, 14 through 20 under 35 U.S.C. � 103 as being unpatentable over Altendahl in view of Landvater. 6Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007