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Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jan 18, 2022

2021002748 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 18, 2022)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE United States Patent and Trademark Office Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450 www.uspto.gov APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 14/807,167 07/23/2015 Ayeshaseerin Shahulhameed ES2015022-1 1760 126105 7590 01/18/2022 Duke W. Yee Yee & Associates, P.C. P.O. BOX 6669 MCKINNEY, TX 75071 EXAMINER NOVAK, REBECCA R ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3629 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/18/2022 ELECTRONIC Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding. The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address(es): ptonotifs@yeeiplaw.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte AYESHASEERIN SHAHULHAMEED ____________ Appeal 2021-002748 Application 14/807,167 Technology Center 3600 ____________ Before JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, BIBHU R. MOHANTY, and NINA L. MEDLOCK, Administrative Patent Judges. MEDLOCK, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1-25. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 We use the term “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Our decision references Appellant’s Appeal Brief (“Appeal Br.,” filed September 16, 2020) and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed March 17, 2021), and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed February 5, 2021) and Final Office Action (“Final Act.,” mailed March, 2020). Appellant identifies Automatic Data Processing, Inc., Roseland, New Jersey, as the real party in interest (Appeal Br. 2). Appeal 2021-002748 Application 14/807,167 2 CLAIMED INVENTION The Specification states, “[i]n particular, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for identifying and displaying employment verification information” (Spec. ¶ 1). Claims 1, 12, and 22 are the independent claims on appeal. Claim 1, reproduced below with bracketed notations added, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method for displaying proof of employment, the method comprising: [(a)] receiving, by an employment verification computer system, payroll data from an employment services provider that provides payroll management services for an employer, wherein the payroll data relates to financial records that relate to the employment of an employee by the employer; [(b)] storing, by the employment verification computer system, the payroll data within the employment verification computer system as verified employment data; [(c)] receiving, by the employment verification computer system, a request from the employee for the proof of employment of the employee by the employer; [(d)] in response to receiving the request, generating, by the employment verification computer system, a badge link, wherein the badge link includes an identifier comprising an encrypted string of login information of the employee and a group of variables that uniquely identifies the verified employment data of the employee within the employment verification computer system; [(e)] posting, by the employment verification computer system, the badge link to a social media profile of the employee within a social media system; [(f)] in response the social media system subsequently referencing the badge link, retrieving, by the employment verification computer system, the verified employment data of the employee from within the employment verification computer system based on the identifier; Appeal 2021-002748 Application 14/807,167 3 [(g)] dynamically generating, by the employment verification computer system, an employment badge based on the verified employment data retrieved from within the employment verification computer system, wherein the employment badge comprises a graphic image that uniquely identifies the employer and a timestamp that indicates when the employment badge was created; and [(h)] sending, by the employment verification computer system, the employment badge to the social media system, wherein the social media system displays a badge image of the employment badge in a graphical user interface for the social media system, wherein the badge image provides a graphical attestation to a veracity of the employment of the employee by the employer. REJECTIONS Claims 1-5, 7-11, 13-16, and 22-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Malin et al. (US 2014/10353369 A1, published Dec. 4, 2014) (“Malin”), Kremen et al. (US 8,533,110 B2, issued Sept. 10, 2013) (“Kremen”), Norton et al. (WO 2016/044543 A1, published Mar. 24, 2016) (“Norton”), Borgen et al. (US 8,595,148 B1, issued Nov. 26, 2013) (“Borgen”), and Shin et al. (US 2013/0066796 A1, published Mar. 14, 2013) (“Shin”). Claims 12 and 18-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Malin, Kremen, Norton, and Shin. Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Malin, Borgen, Kremen, Norton, Shin, and Zagami (US 6,394,356 B1, issued May 28, 2002). Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Malin, Kremen, Norton, Shin, and Zagami. Appeal 2021-002748 Application 14/807,167 4 ANALYSIS Independent Claims 1 and 22 and Dependent Claims 2-5, 7-11, and 23-25 We are persuaded by Appellant’s argument that the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claims 1 and 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 at least because Kremen, on which the Examiner relies, does not disclose or suggest “generating, by the employment verification computer system, a badge link, wherein the badge link includes an identifier comprising an encrypted string of login information of the employee,” i.e., limitation (d), as recited in claim 1, and similarly recited in claim 22 (Appeal Br. 11-12). Kremen is directed to a method and system for verifying user- represented data, e.g., a user’s current employment, educational status, or the like (Kremen 2:45-48), and describes that in some embodiments, a user provides the name of his or her employer, via an electronic application, to a verification server; the user also authorizes the verification server to access selected data, e.g., the employer’s name, from the user’s social profile in one or more social networks (id. at 2:49-54). The verification server compares the employer name on the user’s application to the employer name on the user’s social network profile to determine whether they are the same employer and, depending on the degree of matching, the verification server returns an employment verification score and/or provides a user interface for viewing the verification score (id. at 2:54-61). Kremen describes that, in various embodiments, when a user desires to enter into a financial agreement (e.g., a loan, a credit card, a mortgage, a rental) with a risk-taker, the risk-taker may wish to verify or validate one or more assertions that the user has made in a user application (e.g., regarding employment and employment history, educational status, schools attended, Appeal 2021-002748 Application 14/807,167 5 residential address), and may request, as part of the application process, that the user authenticate him or herself, via one or more social networks (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn) (Kremen 9:22-10:3). As one example, during the application process, the user may click on a social network icon, e.g., Facebook; in response, a login interface, provided by the social network, prompts the user for his or her authentication data, e.g., username and password (id. at 10:14-19). The user submits the requested data to the social network, and upon successful verification by the social network, the social network authenticates the user within the application process (id. at 10:19-22). Kremen discloses that, in addition to this authentication step, the user typically also authorizes what types of data the risk-taker will be allowed to retrieve from the social network, e.g., employer names, employment dates, address data (id. at 10:23-31), and describes that social networks typically associate the user authentication and data authorization with a token or cookie that is provided to the risk-taker (id. at 10-32-37). In rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the Examiner, in the Final Office Action, cited column 10, lines 17-19; column 3, lines 40-67; and column 4, lines 1-17 of Kremen as disclosing the argued limitation (Final Act. 7-8). In doing so, the Examiner specifically noted that Kremen, at column 10, lines 17-19, discloses “a login interface for user authentication data (username/password)” (id. at 7).2 Responding to Appellant’s argument, i.e., that the “mere disclosure that a login interface exists in Kremen fails to teach or suggest that a badge link includes a string of login information[,] let alone that such a string is 2 The Examiner relied on the same rationale in rejecting claim 22 (see Final Act. 29-31). Appeal 2021-002748 Application 14/807,167 6 encrypted as claimed” (Appeal Br. 12), the Examiner, in the Answer, additionally cites column 10, lines 32-40 of Kremen as supporting the obviousness determination (Ans. 8). The Examiner notes that Kremen teaches associating the user authentication and data authorization with a token or cookie that is provided to the risk-taker, and opines that “a token is a form of encryption known in the art” (id.). The Examiner then concludes, “[a]s taught in Kremen, encrypted authentication and data authorization is provided by a token to a user for login security, therefore Appellant’s remarks are found unpersuasive” (id.). Appellant argues, and we agree, that “token” is a far more general term in computing than the Examiner suggests (Reply Br. 5). Thus, although, in some applications, a token may involve encryption, encryption is not required simply by virtue of being a “token” (id.). The Examiner notes, as described above, that Kremen teaches associating the user authentication and data authorization with a token or cookie that is provided to the risk-taker, and the Examiner takes the position that “a token is a form of encryption” (Ans. 8). Yet, we find nothing in the cited portions of Kremen that discloses or suggests, expressly or implicitly, that the token that Kremen uses in its login interface necessarily involves encryption of the user’s login information and data authorization. We are not persuaded, on the present record, that the Examiner properly rejected independent claims 1 and 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Therefore, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1 and 22. For the same reasons, we also do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of dependent claims 2-5, 7-11, and 23-25. Cf. In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, Appeal 2021-002748 Application 14/807,167 7 1266 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (“dependent claims are nonobvious if the independent claims from which they depend are nonobvious”). Independent Claim 12 and Dependent Claims 18-21 Independent claim 12 includes language substantially similar to the language of independent claims 1 and 22, and stands rejected based on the same rationale, with respect to Kremen, applied with respect to claims 1 and 22 (see Final Act. 37-39). Therefore, we do not sustain the rejection, under 35 U.S.C. § 103, of independent claim 12, and claims 18-21, which depend therefrom, for the same reasons set forth above with respect to claims 1 and 22. Dependent Claims 6 and 13-17 Dependent claims 6 and 13-17 depend from independent claims 1 and 12, respectively. The rejections of these dependent claims do not cure the deficiency in the rejection of independent claims 1 and 12. Therefore, we do not sustain the rejections, under 35 U.S.C. § 103, of dependent claims 6 and 13-17 for the same reasons set forth above with respect to the independent claims. CONCLUSION In summary: Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1-5, 7-11, 13-16, 22-25 103 Malin, Borgen, Kremen, Norton, Shin 1-5, 7-11, 13-16, 22-25 12, 18-21 103 Malin, Kremen, Norton, Shin 12, 18-21 Appeal 2021-002748 Application 14/807,167 8 Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 6 103 Malin, Borgen, Kremen, Norton, Shin, Zagami 6 17 103 Malin, Kremen, Norton, Shin, Zagami 17 Overall Outcome 1-25 REVERSED