Appeal 2006-2109
Application 10/680,678
1 claim 1. (Answer 5). To this, the Appellant responds that claims 1 and 11 are
2 argued separately. (Reply Br. 1).
3
4 Helbling and Burke
5 The Examiner finds that Helbling lacks the specific teaching of the customer
6 providing a unique identifier, tracking customer donations across multiple sales,
7 and providing the customer with a summary of donations over a predetermined
8 period. To overcome this deficiency, the Examiner finds that Burke teaches a
9 similar means for facilitating charitable contributions including the use of a
10 magnetic stripe donor card that tracks customer donations and prints out periodic
11 reports. (Final Rejection 4).
12 The Examiner concludes that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
13 skill in the art to modify Helbling to have the customer provide a unique identifier,
14 track customer donations across multiple sales, and provide the customer with a
15 summary of donations over a predetermined period, as taught by Burke, in order to
16 provide the customer with accurate records for tax purposes. (Final Rejection 5).
17 The Appellant contends that Helbling discloses a self-sufficient system that
18 does not need and would not benefit from the elaborate network disclosed in
19 Burke. Furthermore, Helbling, taken as a whole, makes it clear that customers are
20 enticed to contribute to charities by the offer of a free beverage by the restaurant,
21 not any tax deduction. The Appellant further argues that the suggested minimum
22 donation amount of $0.25 strongly suggests that most customers would not
23 consider the minuscule tax savings to be worth the effort of receiving and
24 processing a statement of their token contributions. The Appellant also contends
7
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