Appeal 2006-3387
Application 09/385,489
What Schultz describes is an escrow service provided by the central
management firm on behalf of the manufacturer and consumer to settle the
amounts (i.e., reward certificates) owed by the manufacturer to the customer under
the terms of a trade promotion. In this case, Schultz captures and stores the terms
of the trade promotion (i.e., the number of products that must be purchased by the
customer in order to receive an award). Schultz uses the POS transaction data to
determine if the customer has met the terms of the deal. When the reward goal has
been met, Schultz calculates the amount owed by the manufacturer (i.e., the
amount of the reward for which the customer has qualified) and facilitates payment
of the amount owed by sending the customer a reward certificate. 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 it would have been obvious, in view of the teaching of Schultz
to use an independent third party escrow agent to administer a trade promotion
between a manufacturer and a customer, to have enhanced the offerings of Jones’s
independent third party audit service to add an escrow service as between the
manufacturer and 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
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