Ex Parte Brady et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardOct 31, 201211138170 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 31, 2012) 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. 11/138,170 05/26/2005 Kenneth A. Brady JR. P2252US 8478 20792 7590 10/31/2012 MYERS BIGEL SIBLEY & SAJOVEC PO BOX 37428 RALEIGH, NC 27627 EXAMINER HUYNH, AN SON PHI ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2426 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 10/31/2012 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte KENNETH A. BRADY, Jr. and DAVID REICHERT ____________ Appeal 2010-006306 Application 11/138,170 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, DAVID M. KOHUT, and LARRY J. HUME, Administrative Patent Judges. SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1-3, 5-10, 12-15, and 17-23. Claims 4, 11, and 16 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. Appeal 2010-006306 Application 11/138,170 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants’ Invention Appellants’ invention relates to an in-flight entertainment (IFE) system including display devices for viewing by passengers. The IFE system uses an encryption system allowing transmission of the signal to authorized devices (see generally Spec. ¶¶ [0007] – [0009]). Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and reads as follows: 1. A system for providing multimedia content to a passenger on an aircraft, the system comprising: a plurality of network clients including wireless interfaces; a local area network; a content server connected to the local area network, the content server communicating broadcast and on-demand multimedia content to the plurality of network clients; a cockpit interface connected to the local area network, the cockpit interface streaming messages from a cockpit crew to the plurality of network clients; a wireless router connected to the local area network, the wireless router establishing a wireless network for communicating the broadcast and on- demand multimedia content and the messages from a cockpit crew wirelessly with the wireless interfaces of the plurality of network clients; and a management unit connected to the local area network, the management unit controlling the wireless router to turn off the wireless network during a critical aircraft flight phase; wherein each network client has a video display unit in a position viewable from a seat of the aircraft passenger and each network client is adapted to communicate with the local area network through the wireless router; Appeal 2010-006306 Application 11/138,170 3 the system further comprising an authentication server that assigns an encryption key to the video display unit and to the content server, the content server distributing the selected content to the network address corresponding to the video display unit only if the encryption key has been assigned to both the content server and the video display unit; wherein at least one of cockpit interface messages, overhead video data, and overhead audio data is distributed using a streaming network protocol that does not perform error checking, while the selected content is distributed using a guaranteed delivery protocol. The Examiner’s Rejections The Examiner relies on the following prior art in rejecting the claims: Lipsanen US 2002/0059614 A1 May 16, 2002 Parrott US 2002/0062197 A1 May 23, 2002 Peace US 6,574,272 B1 Jun. 3, 2003 Sellars US 2003/0187799 A1 Oct. 2, 2003 Weinberger US 6,813,777 B1 Nov. 2, 2004 Veeck US 2005/0039208 A1 Feb. 17, 2005 Grosse US 2005/0210288 A1 Sep. 22, 2005 Claims 1, 2, 5-9, 12, 13, and 19-23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Lipsanen, Weinberger, Sellars, Parrott, and Peace. (See Ans. 4-24). Claims 3 and 10 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Lipsanen, Weinberger, Sellars, Parrott, Peace, and Grosse. (See Ans. 24-26). Claims 14, 17, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Lipsanen, Weinberger, Sellars, Peace, Veeck, and Parrott. (See Ans. 26-31). Appeal 2010-006306 Application 11/138,170 4 Claim 15 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Lipsanen, Weinberger, Sellars, Peace, Veeck, Parrott, and Grosse. (See Ans. 31). Appellants’ Contentions Regarding the rejection of claim 1, Appellants do not dispute the teachings of Lipsanen, Weinberger, and Parrott and merely focus their arguments on the teachings of Sellars and Peace (App. Br. 14-18). Appellants specifically contend that: 1. Paragraphs 65 and 66 of Sellars relate to a conduit through which the requested license is obtained, which is not sufficient to show that the encrypted license is assigned to the provider to further determine whether to distribute the selected content (App. Br. 13-16). 2. While there is concern for security, there is no motivation for the Examiner’s proposed combination because the disclosure of Sellars with respect to the two-way communication with a content provider and broadcasts by satellites is not relevant to the use in a passenger entertainment system (App. Br. 16-17). 3. The relied-on portions of Peace describing “time critical data” and “bulk data” do not disclose the claimed delineation of data and how different elements of in-flight entertainment system require guaranteed delivery in contrast with elements requiring use of protocol (App. Br. 17- 18). With respect to the rejections of the remaining claims, Appellants present no separate argument and rely on the arguments provided for claim 1, allowing those claims to fall with representative claim 1 (App. Br. 18-19). Appeal 2010-006306 Application 11/138,170 5 Issue on Appeal Did the Examiner err in rejecting claim 1 as being obvious because the combination of Lipsanen, Weinberger, Sellars, Parrott, and Peace fails to teach or suggest the recited features? ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’ arguments that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellants’ conclusions. We adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer (see Ans. 31- 35) in response to Appellants’ Appeal Brief. We concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner. Regarding claim 1, as stated by the Examiner (Ans. 32-33), Sellars discloses generating and distributing encrypted license 52 to service providers and consumers such that the requested content is distributed only if the encrypted license is valid. In particular, Sellars discloses that the content provider encrypts content with a set of keys maintained by the provider or the authenticator 28 which also provides a number of mutating IDs as the content provider 22 needs (¶ [0055]) and tracks which service provider 24 the content came from and notifies the content provider 22 (¶¶ [0056], [0060]). As shown in Figure 5, Sellars describes the process of obtaining the encrypted license 52 by the customer’s hardware, sending the doubly encrypted license to the authenticator 28, which checks the license for validity and informs the service provider to send the content to the customer (see ¶¶ [0065] – [0066]). Appeal 2010-006306 Application 11/138,170 6 We disagree with Appellants (Reply Br. 4-5) that sending the encrypted license 52 in Sellars is different from assigning the encryption key to the display unit and the content server. In fact, the authenticator 28 of Sellars keeps track of the mutating IDs and distributing them to the content providers and service providers (¶ [0060]). Therefore, sending by the service provider 24 the encrypted license associated with the content, which was received from the content provider 22, to the customer implies that the license was assigned to the customer display unit and the content provider for the requested content before the license was sent. In other words, even if the encryption keys or the mutating IDs are sent to the content provider and then to the service provider, which sends the license to the customer, Sellars’ disclosure meets the claimed “authentication server that assigns an encryption key to the video display unit and to the content server” because direct assignment of the encryption key is not required by the claim. We also agree with the Examiner’s proposed rationale for combining the references based on the improvements one of ordinary skill in the art would have obtained from the known encryption techniques of Sellars (see Ans. 33-34). It appears to us that Appellants take the Examiner’s proposed combination as using the encryption process of Sellars in the system described by the combination of Lipsanen, Weinberger, Peace and Parrott, while the functionality of Lipsanen and Weinberger with respect to content delivery is followed (see App. Br. 17). We specifically note that Appellants’ challenge to the references individually is not convincing of error in the Examiner’s position because all of the features of the secondary reference need not be bodily incorporated into the primary reference, but consideration should be given to what the combined teachings, knowledge of one of Appeal 2010-006306 Application 11/138,170 7 ordinary skill in the art, and the nature of the problem to be solved as a whole would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art (see In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981)). Furthermore, the artisan is not compelled to blindly follow the teaching of one prior art reference over the other without the exercise of independent judgment (see Lear Siegler, Inc. v. Aeroquip Corp., 733 F.2d 881, 889 (Fed. Cir. 1984)). The Examiner explains (Ans. 34-35) that the two-way communication of Lipsanen and Weinberger is modified to include the encryption scheme of Sellars, where additional security is provided for content delivery. We agree with the Examiner’s analysis. We further note that Peace is relied on by the Examiner to show distributing the claimed “selected content” as bulk data which is sent as TCP/IP protocol using a streaming network protocol or a guaranteed delivery protocol (see Ans. 35). Additionally, the Examiner finds that one of message, video data, or audio data as the time critical data is distributed using a streaming delivery protocol such as UDP and/or RTP without error correction (id.). Therefore, Peace teaches different data distribution types recited in claim 1. CONCLUSIONS 1. The Examiner did not err in rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over the combination of Lipsanen, Weinberger, Sellars, Parrott, and Peace. 2. Claims 1-3, 5-10, 12-15, and 17-23 are not patentable. Appeal 2010-006306 Application 11/138,170 8 DECISION The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-3, 5-10, 12-15, and 17-23 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)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED msc Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation