Appeal No. 2006-1934
Application No. 09/798,833
The term Intrinsic Customer Value (ICV) is defined by appellants in the
originally filed specification. As identified by the examiner on page 3 of the answer,
appellants’ specification, on page 5, provides the following definition:
The term "Intrinsic Customer Value" as used herein is defined as a particular
customer's (or group of customers with the same or similar characteristics)
expected value based on the historical value of other similar customers.
Page 5 of appellants’ specification also states that while value in most cases refers to
money it may also refer to other values of a customer. Further, the definition does not
mention relation to merchants, we note that page 12 identifies that the historical data may
be mined for just customers of a single merchant (one casino) or customers from all
merchants in a group (all casinos). Thus, while appellants’ specification clearly suggests
that the scope of claim 1 includes the ICV, being monetary value to one merchant, we do
not find that the term ICV is limited to exclude non-monitory value or that the value
represents only value to one merchant. Thus, we concur with the examiner’s holding that
the term ICV is limited to the customer’s expected value based upon the historical value
of other customers, where value is value to one or more merchants and is monetary or
other value to the merchant(s).
The term Historic Customer Value (HCV), is not specifically defined in
appellants’ originally filed specification. However, based upon the discussion of the ICV
being created from historical values (on page 5 of appellants’ specification), and the
discussion of mining data (on page 12 of appellants’ specification) we consider the term
HCV to be the past (historical) value of the customer to the merchant(s). As discussed
above with respect to ICV, we do not find that the term HCV is limited to exclude non-
monitory value or that the value represents only value to one merchant. Thus, we
consider the term HCV to be historical value of the customer, where value is value to one
or more merchants and represents monetary or other value to the merchant(s).
Claim 1 recites computing the ICV "based on an HCV of said customers from
said set of customers that are similar to said customer of interest” and comparing “said
HCV and ICV of said customer of interest to develop a comparison result” and
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