Appeal No. 2006-2376
Application No. 09/877,612
Appellants argue, on pages 5 and 7 of the brief, that while King teaches three
catalogs, supplier master catalog, public catalog and private catalog, King does not teach
that any of the catalogs are searched by the customer for the purpose of creating a
downloadable sub-catalog as claimed. Further, appellants argue that King does not teach
the claimed step of aggregating the data into a sub-catalog. Additionally, on pages 7 and
8 of the brief, appellants argue that Jebens does not teach or suggest:
the claimed combination of receiving a request from a customer to
search an electronic catalog maintained by a supplier where products identified
using the customer search request are aggregated into a sub-catalog with the
aggregated product data being formatted, using a customer specified electronic
file format, to create a single machine readable electronic file version of the sub-
catalog that is downloadable, via a network connection, to a customer computer.
The examiner’s response is on pages 3 through 9 of the answer. On page 5 of the
answer, the examiner states that the claim does not recite:
that a catalog is "searched by a customer for the purpose of creating a
downloadable sub-catalog," only that in creating a customized product catalog, a
customer would request to search an electronic catalog for products having at
least one customer-specified attribute. As previously noted, the Public catalog
permits multiple customers to access and identify products from a variety of
suppliers. The Public catalog contains Catalog Query/Display to guide requestors
through available data (King: Column 2, lines 25-29). Each Supplier creates a
Public Catalog and/or a Private Catalog and sends it to the Public Database (King:
Column 3, lines 47-49). A Private catalog can be created and maintained by the
Customer (King: Column 4, lines 25-33).
Further, on page 7 of the answer, the examiner finds that Jebens teaches a system that
aggregates identified products into a sub-catalog to create a single customer specified
electronic file (relying upon Jebens column 12, lines 36 through 40).
Independent claim 1 recites “receiving a request from a customer to search …
examining the data to identify the products … aggregating the identified products into a
sub-catalog… formatting the sub-catalog … to create a single machine readable
electronic file version of the sub-catalog having a customer-specified electronic file
format.” Thus, we hold that the scope of independent claim 1 includes that a search is
performed, the results of the search are used to create a data set (sub-catalog), this data
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