Appeal 2007-1554
Application 10/844,387
(Fed. Cir. 2002). Alternatively, the merchant in Robinson who is connected to a
customer via the customer’s ISP offers his merchant services, including digital
receipt services, to another internet application, namely, the customer’s ISP,
thereby meeting the example of “web services” posed on page 3 of the
Specification.
2. The term “web service” is recited only once in the preamble of claim 34
and is not repeated or used as part of the claim thereafter to effect the recited
process. Since the body of claim 34 fully and intrinsically sets forth the complete
process without reference to web service, the term is not construed as if in the
balance of the claim. See, e.g., Rowe v. Dror, 112 F.3d 473, 478, 42 USPQ2d
1550, 1553 (Fed. Cir. 1997); Corning Glass Works v. Sumitomo Elec. U.S.A., Inc.,
868 F.2d 1251, 1257, 9 USPQ2d 1962, 1966 (Fed.Cir. 1989).
3. Appellants list other independent web based payment options for
e-commerce transactions (web services) as by, e.g., “credit card accounts, debit
card accounts, a PayPal account, or another method of transferring funds
electronically” (Specification 3:18-20). Thus, independent public network, web
based services, such as PayPal, existed at the time of Appellants’ filing.
Appellants argue the separate patentability of claim 35 reciting the feature of
a party to the transaction being able to compare the transaction details to any
previously stored version of the transaction details that that party possesses is
allowable (Br. 12-13). However, nothing in Robinson prohibits the customer from
reviewing the contents of the receipt. The restriction in claim 34 only applies to
the altering of the receipt contents. That is, in Robinson, the customer may present
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