Appeal 2007-0610
Application 09/766,357
necessary for a court to look to interrelated teachings of multiple patents; the
effects of demands known to the design community or present in the
marketplace; and the background knowledge possessed by a person having
ordinary skill in the art, all in order to determine whether there was an
apparent reason to combine the known elements in the fashion claimed by
the patent at issue.” Id. at 1740-41, 82 USPQ2d at 1396. The Court noted
that “[t]o facilitate review, this analysis should be made explicit.” Id., citing
In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2006)
(“[R]ejections on obviousness grounds cannot be sustained by mere
conclusory statements; instead, there must be some articulated reasoning
with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of
obviousness”). However, “the analysis need not seek out precise teachings
directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for a court
can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of
ordinary skill in the art would employ.” Id.
D. Analysis
The patentability of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (2002) depends
on whether the claimed subject matter is obvious over Kent and Cornuejols
The Examiner found that Kent shows all the steps and limitations of
the claimed method except the use of one of a transportation model, network
model, or generalized network model as the model to optimize
customization of the layout area. FF 1 and 2. Appellant did not traverse
these findings. FF 4. Accordingly, we find that Kent shows (a) developing
models to predict customer purchases; (b) scoring customers for each
predictive model; (c) determining specific layout areas; and (d) determining
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