Appeal 2006-1601
Application 09/828,579
Consistent with our construction of claim 6 above, we conclude
that this selecting step merely requires that anyone or anything at any
time selects a specific effective date of the rate change.
(8)
The Board’s analysis of Appellant’s Arguments with respect to claims 6 and 9
As discussed above, Appellant argues Ehlers does not teach a billing system
as claimed. We disagree. As we have already noted, a billing system is broader
than a system that sends out bills. By Appellant’s own example a billing system
includes accounting, reporting, billing, record collection, and/or service and tariffs
modules (Specification 9:22-10:1). As pointed out by the Examiner, such is
described in Ehlers at column 23, lines 24-28.
Appellant also argues that Ehlers fails to provide for future rate changes at
some effective date. We disagree for two reasons. First, by Appellant’s own
definition “future” includes immediately (Specification 10:4-6). Also, Ehlers
explicitly describes “future rate changes” in the more limited sense of at some later
time as follows (emphasis added):
column 3, lines 59-61 (“projected energy unit prices”);
column 6, lines 15-16 (“schedule of projected energy unit prices”):
column 7, lines 52-55 (“future energy unit price schedules”);
column 20, lines 37-40 (“energy supplier asking prices for energy units to
select the energy supplier offering the lowest possible price from the
available energy suppliers for current and future time periods”);
column 23, lines 31-37 (“[a]n energy price increase may result in a
communication to all potential purchasers of the energy units for
upcoming time periods that a price change has occurred, causing
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