Appeal 2006-1601
Application 09/828,579
With respect to Appellant’s “the supplier side” argument, the Examiner
responds at pages 8-9 of the Answer that such a limitation is not claimed.
(5)
Appellant’s Rebuttal in the Reply
Appellant rebuts the Examiner’s response at pages 2-4 of the Reply.
With respect to the billing system of the claims, Appellant points out
“[t]here simply is no disclosure in Ehlers that he sends out a ‘bill’ in any
conventional sense of the word.”
With respect to future rate changes and their effective date, Appellant points
out:
Respectfully, the passage quoted by the Examiner only indicates that
purchasers are informed that “for upcoming time periods that a price
change has occurred . . .” Appellants [sic] urge that this concept is
completely different from the specifically claimed concept of
identifying that a future rate plan is to be changed, as opposed to “has
occurred.” Moreover, the claimed concept of “selecting the future
rate plan” at least suggests that there is more than one possibility from
which to “select.” The portion of Ehler [sic] cited by the Examiner
reflects only that the potential purchaser is informed of the single
price plan structure and that is [sic] “has occurred.”
With respect to Appellant’s earlier “the supplier side” argument in the Brief,
Appellant’s Reply does not address the Examiner’s rebuttal of this argument.
(6)
Representative claims 6 and 9
We select claim 6 as representative of claims 1, 6, 11, and 16 for the
purposes of our decision, and we select claim 9 as representative of claims 9, 14,
and 19 for purposes of our decision.
6
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