Appeal 2007-2451
Application 10/694,925
1 combination of their clearly expressed elements, doing no more than yield
2 predictable results, would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill.
3 As to the Appellant’s contention that this motivation is a user’s motivation and
4 not a designer’s, we find that a designer of sales systems such as those in Blossom
5 and Cameron would have considered how a user would use these systems.
6 As to the Appellant’s argument that one of ordinary skill would not have
7 applied Cameron’s graphical interface for remote order entry to a point of sale
8 device, we find that entering an order with a credit card payment, as in Cameron, is
9 entering a sale. How local or remote the terminal is has nothing to do with the
10 technology, only with the placement of the terminal. Thus one of ordinary skill
11 would have immediately envisaged the use of any credit, debit, or gift card, such as
12 Blossom’s, upon reading Cameron’s discussion of entering such cards.
13 Finally, as to the claim limitation regarding the stored-value account and the
14 credit account being linked substantially contemporaneously with issuance of the
15 instrument to the customer, we make the following findings:
16 1) Any card linking two such accounts is functionally equivalent
17 irrespective of the timing of when the linking occurred, so long as the
18 linking occurred in the past, and therefore little patentable weight is
19 afforded to the limitation regarding contemporaneous linking;
20 2) The card itself is a physical link between itself and the two accounts, and
21 such linkage is created when the accounts are linked to the card, which is
22 generally contemporaneous with the issuance of the card.
18
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