Ex Parte Bedi et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 24, 201711459654 (P.T.A.B. May. 24, 2017) Copy Citation 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. 11/459,654 07/25/2006 Bharat Veer Bedi GB920040127US1 1743 05/26/201784986 7590 GRAS SO PLLC 1818 LIBRARY STREET, SUITE 500 RESTON, VA 20190 EXAMINER BELANI, KISHIN G ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2443 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/26/2017 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): admin@grassoip.com vromme @ grassoip. com fgrasso@grassoip.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte BHARAT VEER BEDI and ANDREW JAMES STANFORD-CLARK Appeal 2015-002002 Application 11/459,654 Technology Center 2400 Before: ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, JASON V. MORGAN, and JOHN A. EVANS, Administrative Patent Judges. MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2015-002002 Application 11/459,654 STATEMENT OF CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a rejection of claims 1— 20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. THE INVENTION The claimed invention is directed to managing subscription requests in a publish/subscribe messaging system. Clients register a subscription at a message broker via one protocol and receive messages matching that subscription on another protocol. Abstract. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method of communication in a publish/sub scribe messaging system, the messaging system comprising a plurality of publishers publishing messages to a broker and a plurality of subscribers subscribing to messages received from one or more publishers via the broker, the method comprising the steps of: receiving at a broker a single subscription request as a unilateral transmission from a requesting subscriber via a first communication protocol the subscription request indicating a topic for messages published by one or more publishers in which the requesting subscriber is interested; determining at the broker and after receipt by the broker of the subscription request if said received single subscription request includes an indicator requesting published messages from one or more publishers to be sent by the broker via a second communication protocol; responsive to said determining step, the broker transmitting one or more messages, previously received by the broker from a publisher to the requesting subscriber, via said second communications protocol if said single subscription request does include said indicator; and 2 Appeal 2015-002002 Application 11/459,654 the broker transmitting one or more messages previously received from a publisher to the requesting subscriber via said first communication protocol if said subscription request does not include said indicator, wherein output communication protocol is parsed from said subscription request, wherein the message received by the broker is a message previously published by a publisher. REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Bird et al. Diwan Sekaran Darugar et al. McNamara US 2003/0236856 Al US 2005/0114884 Al US 2006/0271686 Al US 7,349,980 B1 US 7,549,096 B2 Dec. 25, 2003 May 26, 2005 Nov. 30, 2006 Mar. 25, 2008 June 16, 2009 REJECTIONS The Examiner made the following rejections: Claims 1, 7, and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C §112 first paragraph as failing to comply with the written description requirement. Claims 1, 2, and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Darugar in view of Diwan. Claims 3—6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Darugar in view of Diwan and Sekaran. Claims 7, 8, 12, and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Darugar in view of Diwan and McNamara. 3 Appeal 2015-002002 Application 11/459,654 Claims 9-11 and 14—17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Darugar in view of Diwan in view McNamara and furter in view of Sekaran. Claims 18 and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Darugar in view of Diwan and Bird. ISSUES The pivotal issues are whether the Examiner erred in finding that: 1. The Specification does not have adequate written description support for the term “unilateral” and 2. Darugar in view of Diwan teaches or suggests the limitation of “determining at the broker and after receipt by the broker of the subscription request if said received single subscription request includes an indicator requesting published messages from one or more publishers to be sent by the broker via a second communication protocol” as recited in claim 7. ANALYSIS We adopt the Examiner’s findings in the Answer and Final Action and we add the following primarily for emphasis. We note that if Appellants failed to present arguments on a particular rejection, we will not unilaterally review those uncontested aspects of the rejection. See Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential); Hyatt v. Dudas, 551 F.3d 1307, 1313—14 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (The Board may treat arguments Appellants failed to make for a given ground of rejection as waived). 4 Appeal 2015-002002 Application 11/459,654 Claims 1, 7, and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112 first paragraph Appellants argue that there is explicit and implicit description in their Specification for support of the term “unilateral” wherein the subscriber making requests unilaterally, with no other actor as formulating or sending the requests from the subscriber to the broker (App. Br. 22). Appellants provide a number of definitions but highlight that unilateral is defined as “ONE-SIDED” (App. Br. 21). Appellants further provide numerous citations from the Specification indicating that the subscriber requests the delivery protocol and address (App. Br. 21—22). We agree with Appellants to the extent that the term unilateral is defined as one-sided but we do not agree to the extent that the term means “no other actor as formulating or sending the requests from the subscriber to the broker” (see App. Br. 21). In other words, “unilateral” does not mean directly, and it could involve more than one intermediate one sided actors. To the extent that Appellants are contradicting the term “unilateral” to mean not just one-sided, but also directly, then there is confusion of what the term means in light of the Specification since we cannot find anything in the Specification limiting or excluding multiple one sided actors.1 However, we do agree with Appellants that there is support in the Specification for the “unilateral” recitation given its ordinary meaning as one-sided. Thus, we disagree with the Examiner, that there is no disclosure in Appellants’ Specification of the term unilateral. 1 Should there be further prosecution, the Examiner is encouraged to consider whether the respective claims should be rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph. 5 Appeal 2015-002002 Application 11/459,654 Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 7, and 12 under 35U.S.C. § 112 first paragraph. Claims 1, 2, and 19 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 Appellants argue that Darugar does not teach or suggest “a broker” as required by claim 1 because a broker cannot be represented by two different processes such as a Network Services engine 52 handling a publication process and a Web Services Network Manager 90 that handles subscriptions (App. Br. 6—9). We do not agree with Appellants’ argument. We give claims their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification. In re Am. Acad. ofSci. Tech Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2004). Appellants’ own Specification recites that “[bjroker 70 may be a process, a set of processes or other executing component” (emphasis added) (para. 19, last sentence). Thus, we agree with the Examiner that a broker is a software entity made up of computer-executable routines that perform different functions and the routines may be collectively called a broker or split in two or more groups such as the Network Services Engine handling publication functions and the Web Services Network Manager handling subscription functions (Ans. 27). Appellants further argue that Diwan does not teach or suggest a subscriber providing an indicator in the subscription request regarding a communication protocol (App. Br. 10—12). We do not agree with Appellants’ argument. We agree with the Examiner (Ans. 30), as we previously determined, in the Opinion dated 07/02/2013 (Dec. 5—6), that Diwan teaches use of different protocols for receiving subscription requests (i.e., HTTP, VoIP, SMTP, and TELNET) 6 Appeal 2015-002002 Application 11/459,654 and for delivering requested information (i.e., broadcast or multicast with specified group ID or unicast) (Dec. 5 citing paras. 20, 24, 35, and 43). Accordingly, Diwan does disclose a second communication protocol. Id. The Examiner found, and we agreed, that Diwan teaches “delivering the customized bundles to the subscribers according to the delivery rules specified by the subscribers,” which the Examiner equated to an indicator specifying how to deliver the requested information (Dec. 5 citing Ans. 27, Abstract, para. 10). Furthermore, Diwan describes different protocols in use, both for receiving subscription requests and distributing requested information (Dec. 5 citing paras. 20, 24, 35, and 43). Specifically, Diwan teaches that the rules field 316 may store rules that control the manner in which the agent 190 bundles and distributes the information it receives from the information providers (para. 35, Dec. 5—6). Figure 3 shows a subscriber database used to store subscriber ID, subscription request, and delivery rules specified/selected by a subscriber (Dec. 6). So, unless it was determined that the subscription request included one or more delivery rules, the rules field would not exist in the subscriber database shown in Figure 3 (Dec. 6 citing Ans. 27). We further note that, contrary to Appellants’ argument (App. Br. 14), a motivational statement to combine was provided by the Examiner in page 7 of the Final Action for claim 1, and Appellants have not provided an explanation as to why this motivational statement is inadequate. Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of claim 1 and for the same reasons the rejections of claims 2 and 19. 7 Appeal 2015-002002 Application 11/459,654 Claim 7 Appellants argue that McNamara does not process subscription requests, only messages and it parses data that is then converted to a different protocol rather than parsing an output protocol (App. Br. 14—15). Appellants further argue that there is no motivation found in the prior art and the motivational statement was based on Appellants’ own Specification (App. Br. 17). Appellants’ claim 7 essentially adds to the limitations of claim 1, the limitation of “parsing output communication protocol from said subscription request” (claim 7). We do not agree with Appellants’ argument. The Examiner finds, and we agree, that Diwan teaches or suggests subscription requests wherein the requested topics 314 and delivery rules 316 (i.e., indicator) are extracted from subscription requests and stored in a subscriber database (Fig. 3 and paras. 33—35; Ans. 33—34). The Examiner relied on McNamara for the teaching of parsing data (i.e., extracting data from a message) (Ans. 34). Thus, one skilled in the art at the time of the invention would realize that when Diwan is extracting data relating to topics or delivery rules, in essence parses the data as described by McNamara. In other words, the parsing of the output protocol is already taught by Diwan teaching extracting the delivery rules which would indicate the type of protocol to use for delivery. We agree with the Examiner that to the extent that the only limitation of claim 7 that Diwan does not explicitly recite is “parsing”; the Examiner relied on McNamara for the explicit teaching of “parsing” data. Thus, the combination teaches the limitation of “parsing output communication protocol from said subscription request” as recited in claim 7. Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claim 7. 8 Appeal 2015-002002 Application 11/459,654 Claims 1, 3—6, and 8—20 We also affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1, 3—6, and 8—20 for the same reasons as stated above, and for the findings in the Final Action, and the Examiner’s Answer. CONCLUSIONS 1. The Examiner erred in finding that Appellants’ Specification does not have adequate written description support for the term “unilateral”. 2. The Examiner did not err in finding that Darugar in view of Diwan teaches or suggests the limitation of “determining at the broker and after receipt by the broker of the subscription request if said received single subscription request includes an indicator requesting published messages from one or more publishers to be sent by the broker via a second communication protocol” as recited in claim 7. DECISION For the above reasons, the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—20 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). AFFIRMED 9 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation