Appeal 2007-2173
Application 09/682,701
supplier, such that the output appears to be a cost estimate reflecting costs
associated with design and/or manufacture of an item to be supplied by a supplier,
and is thus but one link in the overall value chain (Finding of Fact 4).
Accordingly, it is unclear what the claim is referring to when it states that the
system outputs “a value chain.”
Similarly, the claim recites a “supply tier” but the Specification fails to
clearly explain or define a supply tier (Finding of Fact 5). While the Appellants’
Specification does not use the phrase “supply tier,” it does refer in several
instances to a “supplier tier” (Id.). The Specification describes generally that
Figure 3 shows an example interface for viewing a detailed supply chain for a
particular item or assembly by supplier tier, but it does not clearly explain what
constitutes the supplier tier(s) in Figure 3 (Id.). We are not aware of any
definitions of “supply tier” or “supplier tier” in the business art (Finding of Fact 6).
The closest definitions we could find related to supply chain, but the Specification
appears to distinguish between a supply chain and a supply tier. We are not sure
how these two concepts relate. Further, the Appellants’ use of supply chain in the
Specification appears to be inconsistent with the accepted use of the term in the
business art (Finding of Fact 7). In particular, the definitions of “supply chain”
that we found in the art describe a network of entities (e.g., manufacturers,
wholesalers, distributors, and retailers) who turn raw materials into finished goods
and services and deliver them to consumers (Id.). We see no representation of
such a supply chain in Figure 3. Rather, Figure 3 appears to show a breakdown of
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