Ex Parte Brown et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardAug 29, 2014

12324183 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 29, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE 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. 12/324,183 11/26/2008 Jeremy Ray Brown 26530.150 (IDR-1476) 9139 47699 7590 09/02/2014 HAYNES AND BOONE, LLP IP Section 2323 Victory Avenue Suite 700 Dallas, TX 75219 EXAMINER PATEL, CHIRAG R ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2454 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 09/02/2014 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 JEREMY RAY BROWN, JASON ALLEN SABIN, and DANIEL ROBERT TIMPSON ____________ Appeal 2012-004932 Application 12/324,1831 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before MICHAEL C. ASTORINO, NINA L. MEDLOCK, and BRADLEY B. BAYAT, Administrative Patent Judges. BAYAT, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1, 2, 4–9, 11–15, and 17–20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). STATEMENT OF THE DECISION We AFFIRM.2 1The real party in interest is NOVELL, INC. (App. Br. 3). 2 Our decision makes reference to Appellants’ Appeal Brief (“App. Br.,” filed Sept. 14, 2011), Appellants’ Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed Jan. 31, Appeal 2012-004932 Application 12/324,183 2 THE INVENTION The Appellants’ claimed invention is directed to a system for implementing a wireless query and display interface for managing and monitoring the status of remote machines (Spec. para. 2). Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the subject matter on appeal (App. Br. 20, Claims Appendix). 1. A system for providing a wireless query and display interface in a computer environment, the system comprising: a machine to be monitored; an end-point associated with the machine and comprising an interface, the end-point for connecting to the machine to be monitored via the interface; a consolidator comprising an identity service and a Global Device Identity Listing ("GDIL"), the GDIL for maintaining a list of machines to be monitored using the system; and a wireless device for viewing the list maintained by the GDIL and for issuing commands and queries related to one or more of the machines on the list; wherein the end-point, the consolidator, and the wireless device are capable of wirelessly communicating with one another; and wherein the end-point further comprises a visual indicator for indicating a status of the machine based on a query from the wireless device. THE REJECTIONS The following rejections are before us for review: 1. Claims 1, 4–8, 11–14, and 17–20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Hoerl (US 2006/0285514, pub. Dec. 21, 2012), the Examiner’s Advisory Action (“Adv. Action,” mailed on June 23, 2011), and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed Dec. 2, 2011) . Appeal 2012-004932 Application 12/324,183 3 2006), Guo (US 2009/0300744 A1, pub. Dec. 3, 2009), and Ketari (US 2010/0019920 A1, pub. Jan. 28, 2010). 2. Claims 2, 9, and 15 are rejected as under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Hoerl, Guo, Ketari, and Bork (US 6,246,376 B1, pub. June 12, 2001). FINDINGS OF FACT We have determined that the findings of fact in the Analysis section below are supported at least by a preponderance of the evidence.3 ANALYSIS Appellants argue claims 1–2, 4–9, 11–15, and 17–20 as a group (App. Br. 18). We select claim 1 as being representative. The remaining claims stand or fall with claim 1. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37 (c)(1)(vii) (2007). The Appellants argue Hoerl does not disclose “a wireless device for viewing the list maintained by the GDIL and for issuing commands and queries related to one or more of the machines on the list” (App. Br. 11–13). In particular, the Appellants assert that Hoerl only shows that the wireless device “performs a single act, namely, sending a connection request,” but fails to send both “commands and queries related to one or more machines on the list,” as recited in claim 1. Id. In contrast, the Examiner maintains that the rejection of record is proper (Ans. 4–6). In rejecting claim 1, the Examiner determined that “‘WUSTs 115 [i.e., the wireless devices] send broadcast messages that 3 See Ethicon, Inc. v. Quigg, 849 F.2d 1422, 1427 (Fed. Cir. 1988) (explaining the general evidentiary standard for proceedings before the Patent Office). Appeal 2012-004932 Application 12/324,183 4 request responses from WCIMs 105. Upon receipt of the broadcast messages[,] WCIM 105 responds with identification information about its associated remote device 101. WUST 115 updates the list of available servers utilizing the identification information’” (Id. at 18, citing Hoerl, para. 100). Further, the Examiner found that “WUST 115 displays a list of available remote devices 101 to the user, which is updated upon detection of any WCIM 105 entering or leaving the network” (Id. at 5, citing Hoerl, para. 101). The Examiner thus concluded that Hoerl discloses that the wireless device sends broadcast message requests (queries) in addition to the connection request (command), i.e., both commands and queries, as recited in claim 1 (Ans. 17–18). We agree with the Examiner. Appellants further argue that Guo fails to disclose the limitation of claim 1 wherein “the end-point, the consolidator, and the wireless device are capable of wirelessly communicating with one another,” because “all of the communication [in Guo] occurs via LAN/WAN wires” (App. Br. 12–13). Appellants conclude that because Guo is directed to wired LAN/WAN networks, “the Examiner has failed to show that the combination of Hoerl and Guo teaches or suggests” this limitation (Reply Br. 7). The arguments presented by Appellants attack the references individually. Here, the Appellants fail to address the Examiner’s actual rejection to establish an insufficiency in the combined teachings of the references. Nonobviousness cannot be established by attacking the references individually when the rejection is predicated upon a combination of prior art disclosures. See In re Merck & Co. Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir. 1986). The primary reference, Hoerl, is directed to a wireless management system for accessing and controlling remote devices (para. 2). As indicated Appeal 2012-004932 Application 12/324,183 5 by the Examiner, Guo discloses that “the invention is not limited to a particular type of communication device. . . or any . . . type of communication device for establishing communications over the wide area network 52” (Ans. 19 citing Guo, paras. 58–59). We agree with the Examiner that “[t]he communication network of Guo as mentioned in the above passages does not exclude wireless communication and is [therefore] combinable with the wireless remote device management system as taught by Hoerl.” Id. With regards to the limitation “the end-point further comprises a visual indicator for indicating a status of the machine based on a query from the wireless device” of claim 1, Appellants argue “the fact that a Bluetooth device which is found has a setting that makes it discoverable to other Bluetooth devices merely teaches a setting of the Bluetooth device and fails to teach that ‘[t]he visual indicator [LED], is used by the devices to indicate availability of the bluetooth device in response to the search query’” (Reply Br. 10). Thus, the Appellants conclude that the Examiner has failed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness because Ketari, on which the Examiner relies, fails to teach this limitation. Id at 11. We disagree (see Ans. 20–21). Ketari teaches that Bluetooth-enabled wireless devices facilitate communication with each other by “sending out inquiry packets (inquiry state) and then receiving the inquiry reply.” (Ketari, para. 80) The visual indicator center of each device includes one or more LEDs “to indicate availability of the bluetooth device in response to the search query [and] ‘[t]he color and frequency of the LEDs can indicate different events such as normal mode, pairing mode, alarm mode, low battery mode, voice mode, etc.’” (Ans. 20 citing Ketari, para. 83). Appeal 2012-004932 Application 12/324,183 6 We find that the teachings of Hoerl, Guo, and Ketari disclose familiar elements that, when combined, perform their ordinary functions to predictably result in a system for wirelessly monitoring and managing the status of remote devices, as recited in claim 1. Therefore, the combination would have been obvious at the time of Appellants’ invention to a person of ordinary skill in the art. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007) (“The combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results”). Appellants contend that the Examiner failed to provide a “rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness” for combining these known elements as proffered in the rejection in order to arrive at the claimed rejection (App. Br. 15–17). Therefore, Appellants assert that this alleged failure vitiates the Examiner’s prima facie case of obviousness. Id. We do not agree. In this case, the Examiner provided more than just a mere conclusion of obviousness. The Examiner articulated, on pages 5, 6, 16, and 22 of the Answer, rationales for the combination of the references, i.e., that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to modify the wireless management system of Hoerl for monitoring and controlling remote devices to include the account authority service of Guo to “provide a more robust authentication mechanism that is convenient to the user and effective across enterprise boundaries” and to include a Bluetooth inquiry procedure and visual indication center as disclosed in Ketari “to discover which devices are in range” (Ans. 6, 16). Appeal 2012-004932 Application 12/324,183 7 We find that the Examiner’s rejection includes adequate reasoning with rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness. In view of the foregoing, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 2, 4–9, 11–15, and 17–20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). CONCLUSIONS OF LAW We conclude that Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting the claims as listed in the Rejections section above. DECISION The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 2, 4–9, 11–15, and 17–20 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). See 37 C.F.R.1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED Klh/rvb