Appeal 2007-3540
Application 09/946,616
1 customer has not transferred a cash balance into the auctioneer’s payment
2 accounts, from which payments are transferred to sellers (Br. 20:Second full ¶).
3 We find that claim 1 is broader than such a narrow construction. As we
4 construed above, an account is a record of a customer having a business or credit
5 relationship. Therefore a payment account is such a record that is used to record
6 payments by a customer. By the terms of element [1] of claim 1, the payment
7 accounts must be maintained by the auction system and be capable of storing funds
8 and being used for transactions. Those customers who sign up for using Amazon
9 1-click have payment accounts so maintained (FF 16). Storing a credit card
10 number inherently stores funds as construed supra, a source of supply of money or
11 other financial resource, and thus is capable of storing funds. The transactions
12 employed using Amazon 1-click demonstrate that the payment accounts are
13 capable of being used for transactions (FF 17).
14 The Appellants have not sustained their burden of showing that the Examiner
15 erred in rejecting claims 1 and 32.
16 Claims 11-13
17 The Appellants argue claims 11-13 separately as a group. Accordingly, we
18 select claim 11 as representative of the group. Claim 11 is directed towards
19 automatically transferring funds withdrawn from a user’s payment account to an
20 auctioneer’s account when some amount is owed the auctioneer.
21 The Examiner found that Bogosian’s col. 5 anticipates claim 11 (Answer 5:Top
22 ¶).
23 The Appellants repeat their contention from claim 1 that Bogosian does not
24 anticipate automatically deducting funds from a payment account corresponding to
15
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Last modified: September 9, 2013