Appeal 2006-3387
Application 09/385,489
advances in scan technology and the rapid development of applications using POS
transaction scan data in 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,
including, (1) to determine quickly whether a promotion is working or a particular
product is selling poorly, (2) to monitor the effectiveness of marketing activities
and help manufacturers and retailers make marketing promotion decisions for
consumer products, (3) to merge the POS transaction data with store-specific
promotional data to evaluate the effects of displays, ads and temporary price
reductions and to plan for future promotions, (4) to plan new promotions by
looking back at POS transaction data collected during old promotions, (5) to
tabulate salespeople’s bonuses, and (6) to award retailers trade promotion dollars
after consumers buy the product1. These articles demonstrate that in the 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.
As such, we find that a hypothetical person of ordinary skill in the art,
having the independent third party audit system of Jones for facilitating auditing of
incremental sales volume increases during trade promotions, and having the
independent escrow service model of Schultz for facilitating administration of a
1 See Findings of Facts supra and Appendices A-F.
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