Ex Parte Angle et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jun 19, 2017

14044170 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 19, 2017)

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.
14/044,170 10/02/2013 Colin Angle 225899-343897 2194
108858 7590 06/21/2017
Fish & Richardson PC (iROBOT)
P.O. Box 1022
Minneapolis, MN 55440-1022
EXAMINER
KONG, SZE-HON
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3661
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/21/2017 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):
patdoctc@fr.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte COLIN ANGLE, CLARA VU, MATTHEW CROSS,
and TONY L. CAMPBELL
Appeal 2016-007754
Application 14/044,1701
Technology Center 3600
Before THU A. DANG, JAMES R. HUGHES, and SCOTT B. HOWARD,
Administrative Patent Judges.
HOWARD, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 1—4, 7, 8, and 10, which constitute all of the claims
pending in this application. Claims 5, 6, and 21—31 have been withdrawn.
App. Br. 9-12. Claims 9 and 11—20 have been cancelled. App. Br. 9. We
have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 Appellants identify iRobot Corporation as the real party in interest. App.
Br. 2.
Appeal 2016-007754
Application 14/044,170
THE INVENTION
The disclosed and claimed invention is directed to a companion robot
for personal interaction “and, more specifically, to autonomous mobile
robots for assisting persons with various tasks.” Spec. 12.
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject
matter:
1. A mobile robot comprising:
a robot body;
a drive system having one or more wheels supporting the
robot body to maneuver the robot across a floor surface;
a riser having a proximal end and a distal end, the proximal
end disposed on the robot body; and
a head disposed on the distal end of the riser, the head
comprising:
a display;
a teleconferencing camera disposed adjacent the
display; and
a navigation camera separate from the
teleconferencing camera; and
a controller in communication with the drive
system, the display, the teleconferencing camera, and the
navigation camera, the controller configured to command
the drive system to navigate the robot to a target location
using image data received from the navigation camera and
initiate a video teleconferencing session at the target
location.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner as evidence in rejecting the
claims on appeal is:
Morita et al. US 2004/0102166 A1 May 27, 2004
(“Morita”)
Sandbeg et al. US 2007/0064092 Al Mar. 22, 2007
(“Sandbeg”)
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Appeal 2016-007754
Application 14/044,170
REJECTIONS
Claims 1—4, 7 and 8 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Sandbeg. Final Act. 3—5.
Claim 10 stands rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Sandbeg and Morita. Final Act. 5—6.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellants’
arguments that the Examiner erred. In reaching this decision, we have
considered all evidence presented and all arguments made by Appellants.
We are persuaded by Appellants’ arguments regarding claims 1—4, 7, 8, and
10 that, on the current record, the Examiner erred.
Appellants argue that the Examiner erred in finding that a person of
ordinary skill in the art would have modified the single camera robot taught
by Sandbeg to include separate navigation and teleconferencing cameras.
App. Br. 5—6; Reply Br. 2—\. More particularly, Appellants argue Sandbeg
does not teach “a robot having a navigation camera that is different from his
video camera.” App. Br. 5. Additionally, according to Appellants, Sandbeg
does not teach to suggest a control that receives image data from a
navigation camera for commanding the drive system to navigate the robot to
a new location. Id.', see also Reply Br. 3 (“Sandbeg provides no disclosure
that his controller (807) uses image data from the teleconferencing camera
when providing the high level motion commands to the drive system
(819).”). Because “Sandbeg fails to even suggest that his robot has the
ability to analyze obstacles for navigations,” Appellants argue there would
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Appeal 2016-007754
Application 14/044,170
be no motivation to add a navigation camera. App. Br. 6; see also Reply Br.
2 (Sandbeg only teaches using the camera for teleconferencing, not for using
in controlling the robot.).
The Examiner notes that “Sandbeg does not explicitly disclose a
navigation camera separate from the teleconferencing camera for
navigation.” Final Act. 4. However, the Examiner determines that a person
of ordinary skill in the art would have known that more than one camera can
be used to provide the same or different function and that it would have been
obvious to modify Sandbeg “to hav[e] one camera for performing the
teleconferencing and navigation functions or having two or more cameras
for performing the functions separately having the advantages of weighting
between costs and convenience.” Id.', see also Ans. 3.
Rejections based on obviousness must be supported by “some
articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal
conclusion of obviousness.” In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006),
cited with approval in KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418
(2007). We agree with Appellants that Sandbeg only teaches a single
camera and that the Examiner did not provide a sufficient explanation as to
how or why Sandbeg would be modified “to produce the claimed invention.”
See Trivascular, Inc. v. Samuels, 812 F.3d 1056, 1066 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
Moreover, we agree with Appellants that Sandbeg teaches having a
remote user send movement commands to the robot. See Sandbeg Fig. 9,
11 57—59. The Examiner has not provided a sufficient reason why the
person of ordinary skill would modify Sandbeg’s remote control navigation
so that a controller would use the image from the navigation camera to
control the drive system.
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Appeal 2016-007754
Application 14/044,170
Accordingly, we are constrained on this record to reverse the
Examiner’s rejection of claim 1, along with the rejections of dependent
claims 2-4, 7, and 8.
Moreover, because the Examiner has not shown that Marita cures the
foregoing deficiencies regarding the rejection of the independent claim 1, we
will not sustain the obviousness rejection of dependent claim 10 for similar
reasons.
DECISION
For the above reasons, we reverse the Examiner’s decisions rejecting
claims 1—4, 7, 8, and 10.
REVERSED
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