1. “Must the presumption of validity, 35 U.S.C. § 282, be applied to claims involved in reexamination proceedings?” 2. “Did the board err in affirming the examiner’s rejection?”
1. No. “We hold . . . that § 282 has no application in reexamination proceedings.” 2. No. “The examiner and the board correctly determined that: (1) Ambrosio discloses all features of Etter’s claims, except ‘input information electronic storage means [for accumulating] customer profile information for a plurality of customers;’ (2) Azure discloses that feature; (3) the overall result of the inventions of Ambrosio, Azure, and Etter is the same; and (4) Etter’s claimed inventions would have been obvious in view of the collective teachings of Ambrosio and Azure which would have provided ‘a much stronger suggestion for combining the teachings to provide the subject matter of claim 1’ than would the prior art cited during the original prosecution.”
