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Parties Involved:
Blake Bookstaff
Appellant

Document Text:

NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

United States Court of Appeals 

for the Federal Circuit ______________________ 

IN RE BLAKE BOOKSTAFF,

Appellant

______________________ 

2014-1463

______________________ 

Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark 

Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 12/392,192.

______________________ 

Decided: March 26, 2015

______________________ 

JEREMY COOPER DOERRE, Tillman Wright PLLC, 

Charlotte, NC, argued for appellant. 

JOSEPH MATAL, Office of the Solicitor, United States 

Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, argued for 

appellee. Also represented by FARHEENA YASMEEN 

RASHEED, NATHAN K. KELLEY, THOMAS W. KRAUSE. 

______________________ 

Before MOORE, SCHALL, and REYNA, Circuit Judges.

MOORE, Circuit Judge.

Blake Bookstaff appeals from the decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board affirming the examiner’s 

rejections of all pending claims in Mr. Bookstaff’s U.S. 

Patent Application No. 12/392,192 as anticipated by U.S. 

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2 IN RE: BOOKSTAFF

Patent Publication No. 2005/0071232 (Frater). For the 

reasons discussed below, we reverse and remand. 

BACKGROUND

The ’192 application is directed to a point-of-sale 

(POS) device that can be used by a merchant to complete 

an electronic transaction using a customer’s credit or 

other card. The specification describes a system that

improves the manner in which gratuities are calculated 

and added to the amounts charged. ’192 application ¶ 8. 

After a customer presents a card for payment for goods or 

services, the merchant utilizes the POS device to transmit 

information concerning the pending charge, including the 

amount owed, to the entity that issued the customer’s 

card. Id. ¶¶ 10, 175. The card issuer then sends back to 

the merchant (and ultimately the customer) data that is 

indicative of a gratuity. Id. ¶¶ 10, 176–79. The ’192 

application touts the advantages of this approach over 

prior art processes requiring the customer to calculate a 

gratuity and then add the gratuity to the subtotal. It 

states that these prior art processes were inefficient and 

caused stress to the customer. Id. ¶ 4. 

The examiner rejected all pending claims of the ’192 

application as anticipated by Frater. Frater discloses a 

method and apparatus for establishing payments, including gratuity, at the site of restaurant tables or bars. 

Frater ¶ 1. A preferred embodiment “includes a financial 

card reader and associated display and data input screen 

devices.” Id. ¶ 4. The display shows the customer the bill 

and allows the customer to input a gratuity and approve 

the total charge. Id. ¶ 5. The customer may then pay for 

her order, including gratuity, and the screen will display 

relevant information such as the total amount owed by 

the customer. Id. ¶¶ 6, 31. A receipt may be printed that 

includes the total gratuity paid and the total amount 

paid. Id. ¶¶ 6, 54. 

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IN RE: BOOKSTAFF 3

Mr. Bookstaff argued to the Board that Frater does 

not disclose “data that is indicative of a gratuity to be 

charged” received from a “card issuer,” as is required by 

each of the pending claims of the ’192 application. The 

Board disagreed and affirmed the examiner’s rejection. 

The Board found that Frater discloses transmitting the 

total charge to the card issuer, who then transmits that 

information back to the merchant. J.A. 7. The Board 

concluded that the total charge information sent back 

from the card issuer is indicative of a gratuity because it

can be compared to the original bill presumably in the 

customer’s possession to determine the gratuity amount. 

Id. The Board found that this was within the scope of the 

“data that is indicative of a gratuity to be charged” limitation recited in the pending claims. Id. The Board alternatively concluded that Frater anticipates the pending 

claims because Frater teaches a system that has structures capable of being operated to perform the function of 

transmitting data indicative of a gratuity from a card 

issuer. Id. 7–8. Mr. Bookstaff appeals. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4). 

DISCUSSION

The parties’ dispute centers on the construction of 

“data that is indicative of a gratuity to be charged.” In 

this case, we review the Board’s claim construction de 

novo.1 Mr. Bookstaff argues that no reasonable person 

would conclude that a total value (the data returned by 

the Frater card issuer), which represents the sum of two 

smaller values (the original bill plus gratuity), can be 

characterized as indicative of one of those smaller values 

(the gratuity) where additional information (the original 

1 Nothing in this case implicates the deference to 

fact findings contemplated by the recent decision in Teva 

Pharmaceuticals USA, Inc. v. Sandoz, Inc., 135 S. Ct. 831, 

841–42 (2015).

 

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4 IN RE: BOOKSTAFF

bill amount) is required to determine the two smaller 

values. The PTO responds that the Board correctly 

construed the term to encompass total charge information, which indicates the amount of the gratuity when 

compared to the original bill. 

We hold that the Board erred in affirming the examiner’s rejection because it incorrectly construed “data that 

is indicative of a gratuity to be charged” as a total value 

which may or may not include a gratuity and because

there is no way from the data transmitted by the card 

issuer to ascertain the amount of the total that is indicative of the gratuity. “Indicative” is a common word with a 

well-known meaning. “Indicative” means “serving to

indicate,” and the PTO agrees that “indicate” means “to 

be a sign, symptom, or index.” Appellee’s Br. 13. It would 

be inconsistent with the plain meaning of the term “indicative” to conclude that a given value is “indicative” of 

another value where an entirely separate set of information, not transmitted by the card issuer, is necessary to 

determine that other value. Mr. Bookstaff used the term 

“indicative” consistent with this plain meaning throughout the specification. Each embodiment describes the 

data transmitted from the card issuer as a sign or index of 

what the gratuity should be. See, e.g., ’192 application 

¶¶ 176–78, 189–90, 203–06. Nothing in the specification 

suggests that the term “indicative” is broad enough to 

encompass a scenario where the data must be compared 

to the original bill amount presumably known by the 

patron to determine the gratuity. The Frater card issuer 

returns only the total charge. 

Anticipation requires every element of the claim to be 

present in a single prior art reference. See Am. Calcar, 

Inc. v. Am. Honda Motor Co., 651 F.3d 1318, 1341 (Fed. 

Cir. 2011). There is no dispute that Frater only discloses 

transmission of the total charge from the card issuer; thus 

one of the claim elements, that “data that is indicative of 

a gratuity to be charged” is transmitted by the “card 

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IN RE: BOOKSTAFF 5

issuer,” is not present in Frater. We must therefore 

reverse this anticipation rejection. There was no obviousness rejection here.

We also reverse the Board’s alternative ground that 

Frater anticipates because it teaches a system that has 

structure capable of being operated to perform the function of transmitting data indicative of a gratuity from a 

card issuer. The Board’s conclusion that Frater teaches a 

system that has structures capable of performing the 

claimed function depended in part on the Board’s finding 

that the Frater card issuer’s transmission of the total bill

information is data indicative of a gratuity. As we have

concluded that the Board erred in finding that Frater 

discloses transmitting data indicative of a gratuity from a 

card issuer, we reverse on this ground as well. 

CONCLUSION

Because the Board incorrectly construed the term at 

issue, and its rejections are not supported under the 

proper construction, we reverse and remand. 

REVERSED AND REMANDED 

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