Appeal 2007-0647
Application 10/421,366
The Examiner disagrees. The Examiner notes that reservation
systems associated with restaurants are well known throughout the world
(Answer 15).
After carefully considering all of the evidence before us, we find the
Examiner’s proffered combination of August and Visconti reasonably
teaches and/or suggests Appellants’ claimed invention in terms of familiar
elements (e.g. menu displays, wireless communications, and restaurant
reservation systems) that would have been combined by an artisan having
common sense using known methods to achieve a predictable result. See
KSR, 127 S. Ct. at 1739-40. In particular, we note that August discloses
alternate embodiments that depart from a first-in-first-out (FIFO) queue
ordering system; including an embodiment that gives priority (i.e.,
suggesting “reservations”) to preferred customers, as follows:
It should be noted that although the invention has been
described in FIG. 10 with respect to a customer ordering queue
which is based on a first-in-first-out basis, the queue can also be
arranged in the invention in other queue ordering, such as time
to fulfillment, customer distance from fulfillment station,
preferred customer, or other order priority sequence [emphasis
added].
(August, ¶0063).
Moreover, we agree with the Examiner that reservation systems
associated with restaurants are notoriously well known, as evidenced by
Visconti. We find Visconti expressly mentions fast-food restaurants in the
last paragraph of page 1. Even in the setting of a fast-food restaurant, we
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