Appeal 2006-3387
Application 09/385,489
The program data collector 23, located in the retail store 20, stores
redemption records 30 for the rewards certificates 18 and the central management
firm 3 periodically receives these redemption records and uses the records to audit
the amount reimbursed to the retail store (Schultz, col. 9, ll. 3-7).
The manufacturer pays the central management firm 3 based on the number
of rewards earned and paid to consumers 19.
The only difference between Schultz and the invention of claim 1 is that the
settlement in Schultz occurs between the manufacturer and the customer based on
the number of promoted products purchased by the consumer, instead of between
the manufacturer and retailer based on the number of promoted products sold by
the retailer.
We find that a hypothetical person of ordinary skill in the art would be
presumed to know the prior art, including Jones and Schultz.
We also find that a hypothetical person of ordinary skill in the art would be
presumed to know of the advances in scan technology and the rapid development
of applications using POS transaction scan data for trade promotions at the time of
the invention.
This rapid development is demonstrated by considering several prior art
commercial systems, which used POS transaction data in a variety of trade
promotion applications, described in the following articles:
Anonymous, “Nielsen introduces new tracking systems, opens training
centers,” Marketing News, January 4, 1988, p. 33 (Appendix A) describes prior art
systems that use POS transaction data to monitor the effectiveness of marketing
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