Appeal Number: 2006-1650
Application Number: 09/903,500
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is the second appeal from a final rejection of claims 12 and 14-20. The
appeal as to claims 21-36 has been dismissed.
The claimed invention is both a method for delivering billing statements and
a billing system for delivering billing statements. The method and system deliver a
recipient’s bill either by printing and mailing or by furnishing an electronic copy.
A bill recipient’s preferences for billing are stored on a computer and are utilized
to determine the manner of billing.
The references of record relied upon by the examiner as evidence of
obviousness are:
Hogan 5,699,528 Dec. 16, 1997
Comesanas 5,802,498 Sep. 1, 1998
Claims 12, 14, 15, 17-23, 25-27, 29-34, and 36 stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Comesanas.
Claims 16, 24, 28, and 35 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
unpatentable over Comesanas in view of Hogan.
Appellant has not argued the rejections on appeal separately. Although the
Appellant has set forth portions from two different claims remaining in this appeal
for argument in the Brief at 8, the Appellant consolidated the argument for all
claims based upon their common elements on the following page.
ISSUE
The sole issue for our consideration is whether the examiner, by a
preponderance of the evidence, has established the prima facie obviousness of the
independent claims 12 and 18.
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