Appeal 2007-0518
Application 90/006,969
Smithwick’s account is the type of data that is typically used to determine
one’s tax liability. For example, a monthly bank report showing direct
deposits from an employer is a snap shot of what occurred in a given month
and would not be a complete accurate summary of a taxpayer’s total net
income for a year, information that would be found on a W-2 form, e.g., the
type of data that the Specification describes as being “tax data.” Even if the
direct deposit salary amount on a bank statement is assumed to be passed to
a tax preparation program that does not turn it into “tax data” without any
demonstration that the tax preparation software indeed uses that data to
determine one’s tax liability.
The Examiner’s response to Simplifications’ argument is not
sufficient to refute the Appellants’ arguments. The Examiner is silent with
respect to Simplification’s specific argument that Beamer describes a
monthly bank statement that would only include a direct deposit amount
from an employer, and that such information would not be enough or helpful
to determine a taxpayer’s tax liability. Instead, the Examiner merely repeats
what was stated in the rejection, e.g., that Beamer ultimately utilizes the
downloaded bank statement information to electronically prepare a tax
return. However, the Examiner has failed to direct attention to where in
Beamer that conclusion finds support, or explain how Beamer necessarily or
inherently describes the feature. Such a conclusory response is not sufficient
to overcome the argument made by Simplification and what Beamer
describes in paragraph 3.
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