Appeal 2006-3387
Application 09/385,489
These articles demonstrate that in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the
industry improved scanner technology to an extent that the scan data from POS
transactions began to be more reliable. Once the industry had solved this problem,
the innovations in applications using this data to facilitate trade promotions rapidly
developed and those skilled in the art were sophisticated in the ways to use this
data.
The undisputed evidence indicates that there existed a felt need to
independently audit the number of promoted products sold during a trade
promotion.
The evidence also demonstrates that Jones created a system to meet this
need prior to Appellants’ invention. Any long-felt need to independently audit
trade promotions was satisfied by the prior art.
All that the claimed invention arguably provided in the way of unmet needs
over the Jones system was a way for a third party system to automate the
calculation of the amount owed by the manufacturer and initiate a payment or
generate an invoice for the amount.
Appellants’ objective evidence, however, does not demonstrate a long-felt
need for automation of this function and further does not show that manufacturers
and retailers were not already calculating and processing this amount with an
automated system of their own.
We find no support for the Declarant’s statement that at the time of the
invention, there was no system available to independently account for sales of
promoted product. Appellants failed to provide any objective evidence to
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