Ex Parte Aubry et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 29, 2017

13113008 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 29, 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.
13/113,008 05/20/2011 Jean-Philippe Aubry PT1124US00 8688
132326 7590
Thompson Hine LLP
10050 Innovation Drive
Suite 400
Dayton, OH 45342-4934
EXAMINER
VETTER, DANIEL
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3628
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/03/2017 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):
ipdocket @ thompsonhine. com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JEAN-PHILIPPE AUBRY, BENOIT JANIN,
RUDY DANIELLO, LUC ISNARDY,
and CLAUDINE REYNAUD
Appeal 2016-008329
Application 13/113,008
Technology Center 3600
Before HUNG H. BUI, JOYCE CRAIG, and AARON W. MOORE,
Administrative Patent Judges.
Opinion for the Board filed by Administrative Patent Judge CRAIG.
Opinion Dissenting filed by Administrative Patent Judge MOORE.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 1, 3—8, 10-13, 15—18, and 20-22, which are all of
the claims pending in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b).
We affirm.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Amadeus S.A.S. (Biot,
France). App. Br. 3.
Appeal 2016-008329
Application 13/113,008
INVENTION
Appellants’ invention relates to a method and system for an improved
reservation system optimizing repeated search requests. Abstract. Claim 1
reads as follows:
1. A method for generating responses to travel queries received
at a computer having access to a travel database, the method
comprising:
receiving first and second travel queries at the computer,
each travel query being associated with a different user,
including one or more parameters, and having one or more
degrees of freedom;
pre-processing the first and second travel queries with the
computer by:
decomposing the first and second travel queries into
a plurality of simple request elements each having no
degrees of freedom;
sorting the plurality of simple request elements
according to at least one of the one or more parameters to
identify at least one duplicated simple request element;
deleting the at least one duplicated simple request
element from the plurality of simple request elements to
generate a plurality of unduplicated simple request
elements; and
grouping the plurality of unduplicated simple
request elements into subsets of simple request elements
according to a predetermined criteria;
forwarding the subsets of simple request elements to a
process module, the process module executing the simple request
elements by interrogating the travel database and receiving
results from the travel database; and
for each of the first and second travel queries, aggregating
the results from the process module corresponding to the one or
more parameters of the travel query into a response and issuing
the response to the user associated with the travel query.
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Application 13/113,008
REJECTION
Claims 1, 3—8, 10-13, 15—18, and 20-22 stand rejected under pre-AIA
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over the combination of Hirose et al. (US
8,463,627 Bl; issued June 11, 2013) (“Hirose”) and DeMarcken (US
2004/0078251 Al; published Apr. 22, 2004).
ANALYSIS
In rejecting claim 1, the Examiner found that Hirose teaches all of the
limitations recited in claim 1, except the queries having one or more degrees
of freedom, and that determining at least one simple request element is done
by decomposing the first and second travel queries into simple request
elements having no degrees of freedom. Final Act. 3^4. The Examiner
relied on DeMarcken as teaching or suggesting those missing limitations.
Id. at 4.
Appellants contend the cited portions of DeMarcken do not disclose
the limitation “decomposing the first and second travel queries into a
plurality of simple request elements each having no degrees of freedom,” as
recited in claim 1. App. Br. 10—12. Appellants also argue that DeMarcken
teaches away from the disputed limitation. Id. at 12. According to
Appellants, DeMarcken does not disclose any examples of a sub-query
having no degrees of freedom, and instead teaches that dividing the original
query into sub-queries having no degrees of freedom would be undesirable.
Id.
Appellants’ arguments do not persuade us of Examiner error. We
agree with the Examiner that, under the broadest reasonable interpretation,
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Application 13/113,008
claim 1 requires that the initial queries comprise only one parameter. The
Examiner found, and we agree, that DeMarcken teaches decomposing a
query comprised of an airport parameter into a plurality of request elements
each having no degrees of freedom. See Ans. 2 (citing DeMarcken || 21—
23). In particular, the cited portions of DeMarcken teach decomposing a
query for travel to “SFO or SJC” airports into two subqueries, one for SFO
[San Francisco International Airport] and one for SJC [San Jose
International Airport], in which the value of the airport is set. Id.
Appellants have not persuasively shown that the Examiner’s interpretation
of claim 1 is overly broad, unreasonable, or inconsistent with the
Specification.
Appellants’ argument that sub-query 1 in DeMarcken “includes at
least one degree of freedom in the selection of the departure date for the
outbound flight, and at least another degree of freedom in the selection of
the departure date for the return flight” (Reply Br. 2) is not persuasive at
least because, as the Examiner concluded, the queries in claim 1 require only
a single parameter. Thus, we agree with the Examiner that DeMarcken’s
teachings with respect to the decomposition of a query regarding airports
SFO and SJC teach or suggest the disputed limitation of claim 1. However,
as the Examiner explained, DeMarcken also teaches dividing queries into
requests with no degrees of freedom with respect to both airport and date.
Ans. 3. DeMarcken teaches dividing a query with a single date range into
up to “N” subqueries. See Ans. 2—3 (citing DeMarcken || 33—41).
DeMarcken further teaches “it may be desirable to split both the original
query’s time range and its destinations” simultaneously. DeMarcken | 57.
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Application 13/113,008
The test for obviousness is not whether the claimed invention is
expressly suggested in any one or all of the references, but whether the
claimed subject matter would have been obvious to those of ordinary skill in
the art in light of the combined teachings of those references. In re Keller,
642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981). Here, Appellants have not persuaded us
that the claimed subject matter would not have been obvious to an artisan of
ordinary skill in light of the cited portions of DeMarcken in combination
with the cited teachings of Hirose.
We are also not persuaded by Appellants’ argument that paragraph 38
of DeMarcken teaches away from dividing a travel query into sub-queries
having no degrees of freedom. See App. Br. 12. Appellants have not
identified where DeMarcken actually criticizes, discredits, or otherwise
discourages “decomposing the first and second travel queries into a plurality
of simple request elements each having no degrees of freedom.” See In re
Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195, 1201 (Fed. Cir. 2004). We agree with the Examiner
that paragraph 38’s teaching of an algorithm that will avoid dividing the
original query into ‘“unnecessarily many sub-queries’” in order not to waste
computing resources is insufficient to teach away from the disputed
limitation of claim 1. See Ans. 3.
For these reasons, we are not persuaded that the Examiner erred in
finding that the combination of Hirose and DeMarcken teaches or suggests
the disputed limitations of claim 1.
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection
of independent claim 1, as well as the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection of independent claims 8, 13, and 15, which Appellants argue are
patentable for similar reasons. App. Br. 12. We also sustain the Examiner’s
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Application 13/113,008
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of dependent claims 3—7, 10—12, 16—18, and
20—22, not argued separately. Id.
DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1, 3—8, 10-13, 15—18,
and 20—22 is affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). See C.F.R.
§ 41.50(f).
AFFIRMED
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Appeal 2016-008329
Application 13/113,008
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JEAN-PHILIPPE AUBRY, BENOIT JANIN,
RUDY DANIELLO, LUC ISNARDY,
and CLAUDINE REYNAUD
Appeal 2016-008329
Application 13/113,008
Technology Center 3600
Before HUNG H. BUI, JOYCE CRAIG, and AARON W. MOORE,
Administrative Patent Judges.
MOORE, Administrative Patent Judge, dissenting.
I agree with Appellants that DeMarcken does not teach dividing a
travel query into sub-queries having no degrees of freedom.
DeMarcken’s paragraph 21 shows the original query for a two part
trip. For part 1, both destination and departure date have multiple degrees of
freedom. For part 2, both origin and departure date have multiple degrees of
freedom. The reference then explains that this query can be divided into
sub-queries, for example by destination airport, as shown in paragraphs 23
through 28. Still, however, each of the sub-queries (and each of the parts of
the sub-queries) has at least one degree of freedom.
In my view, in order to show what is claimed (“decomposing the first
and second travel queries into a plurality of simple request elements each
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Application 13/113,008
having no degrees of freedom”), DeMarcken would have to divide the parts
of the sub-queries into sub-parts, such as BOS-SFO-8/17; BOS-SFO-8/18;
SFO-BOS-8/23; SFO-BOS-8/24; SFO-BOS-8/25; etc. The reference does
not describe such an approach.
I also do not believe the Examiner’s discussion of “parameters”
justifies the majority’s result. Although the claim does recite that a query
includes “one or more parameters,” meaning that the claim would cover a
query with a single parameter, DeMarcken does not describe a query with a
single parameter. I do not agree that the “one or more parameters” claim
language means that one may appropriately map the claimed query to just
one parameter of the DeMarcken multiple parameter queries, because I do
not believe that a skilled artisan would conclude that a single parameter of a
multiple parameter query is, on its own, also a query. All queries, sub­
queries, and parts described in DeMarcken include at least one degree of
freedom, contrary to what is claimed.
The Examiner found that “DeMarcken fully discloses queries divided
into requests with no degrees of freedom with respect to both airport and
date.” (Ans. 3; see also Final Act. 2, 4.) I would not address whether it
would have been obvious to modify DeMarcken by further dividing its parts
into sub-parts with no degrees of freedom because I do not think that is a
finding made by the Examiner.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from the decision to affirm the
Section 103 rejection of claims 1, 3—8, 10-13, 15—18, and 20-22.
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