Appeal 2006-3387
Application 09/385,489
system described in Jones already solved the identified long-felt need. The
Windish Declaration identifies the problem in the industry as follows:
In trade promotions, since there is no coupon, the
manufacturer does not have a processed physical coupon
to rely on to verify the appropriate payment to the retailer
for the promoted product sold during the trade
promotion. Thus, trade promotions inherently create a
significant verification problem for manufacturers.
(Windish Decl. ¶ 25.)
The Windish Declaration then states (Windish Decl. ¶¶ 26) that prior to
Appellants’ invention, the known systems and methods for administering trade
promotions were inadequate to resolve this verification problem because, inter
alia,
The retailers had control of all of the point of sale data
and thus control of the promotion redemption. The
manufacturer could only make estimates for resulting
point of sale data. Processed point of sale data often
resulted in discrepancies. Such discrepancies were
difficult to resolve and often remained unresolved.
(Windish Decl. ¶ 34.)
…
[T]he manufacturer did not have the ability to readily or
independently verify:
(a) the retailer’s calculated performance total due
to the retailer,
(b) the number of promoted products sold by the
retailer during the trade promotion period, or
(c) the amount of the discounts given to the
consumers for the promoted products during the trade
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