Opinion ID: 813303
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Reexamination

Text: On April 30, 2009, the PTO granted a request for re- examination to determine whether the subject matter of the ’859 patent was patentable in light of U.S. Patent 5,278,752 (“Narita”). The Examiner rejected independent claims 20 and 29 and dependent claims 22, 25–28, 30–31, 33, and 36–38 as anticipated by Narita. However, the Examiner concluded that dependent claims 21 and 32 were patentable over Narita because Narita did not teach a method for processing debit transactions comprising entering a customer authorization code and a clerk authorization code. On June 10, 2010, in response to the rejection, CAT amended independent claims 20 and 29 and cancelled dependent claims 21 and 32. The amendSTORED VALUE v. CARD ACTIVATION 8 ments to the independent claims added the steps of entering the authorization codes that had been recited in the cancelled dependent claims. The issued claims 20 and 29, and all their dependent claims, thus contained a recitation of three authorization codes, a general authorization code and a customer and clerk authorization code. Original claims 20 and 29 only recited a general authorization code. In response, the PTO determined all claims in the reexamination to be patentable and on October 5, 2010, issued reexamination certificate 6,032,859 C1.