Ex Parte Deshmukh et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Dec 13, 2016

12718335 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 13, 2016)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
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Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
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APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
12/718,335 03/05/2010 Om D. Deshmukh YOR920090638US1 4657
35526 7590 12/15/2016
DTTKFW YFF
EXAMINER
YEE & ASSOCIATES, P.C. CHOY, PAN G
P.O. BOX 802333
DALLAS, TX 75380 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3624
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/15/2016 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):
ptonotifs @yeeiplaw.com
mgamez @ yeeiplaw. com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte OM D. DESHMUKH, CHITRA DORAI, SHAILESH JOSHI,
MAUREEN E. RZASA, KARTHIK VISWESWARIAH,
GARY J. WRIGHT, and SAI ZENG
Appeal 2014-0011621
Application 12/718,3352
Technology Center 3600
Before PHILIP J. HOFFMANN, BRADLEY B. BAYAT, and
MATTHEW S. MEYERS, Administrative Patent Judges.
MEYERS, 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—25. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.
1. Our decision references Appellants’ Appeal Brief (“Appeal Br.,” filed
May 20, 2013) and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed October 14, 2013), the
Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed September 18, 2013), and the Final
Office Action (“Final Act.,” mailed November 6, 2012).
2. Appellants identify International Business Machines Corporation as the
real party in interest (Appeal Br. 2).
Appeal 2014-001162
Application 12/718,335
CLAIMED INVENTION
Appellants’ claimed invention relates to “monitoring and analyzing an
office process” (Spec. 11).
Claims 1, 14, and 25 are the independent claims on appeal. Claim 1,
reproduced below, with minor formatting changes and added bracketed
notations, is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal:
1. A method in a data processing system for
monitoring and analyzing an office process, comprising:
[a] a computer inferring events to derive delimiters of a
transaction activity, wherein the delimiters delimit the
transaction activity by transaction ID, agent input, references to
digital documents related to the transactions, and combinations
thereof;
[b] the computer, responsive to inferring the events to
derive delimiters of the transaction activities, starting an activity
timer, wherein the activity timer tracks end-to-end activities for
the transaction activity, the transaction activity is selected from
the set consisting of: a set of process activities an agent
conducted, and the duration of the set of process activities an
agent conducted, and combinations thereof;
[c] the computer, responsive to starting the activity timer,
inferring events to derive delimiters of the set of process
activities, wherein the delimiters delimit the set of process
activities by transaction ID, agent input, references to digital
documents related to the transactions, or combinations thereof;
[d] the computer, responsive to inferring the events to
derive delimiters of the set of process activities, starting a system
timer for automatic capture and tracking of desktop interaction
activities of an agent, wherein the system timer automatically
detects switching of computer applications, an amount of time
spent on a particular application, and computes related metrics;
[e] starting a set of time volume trackers, wherein the set
of time volume trackers is used to track a volume of transactions
for the set of process activities, the set of time volume trackers
allowing an agent to manually log a set of non-desktop activities
of the agent;
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[f] the computer, collecting information relating to
desktop interaction activities of the agent and non-desktop
activities of the agent to form collected information;
[g] the computer, computing metrics and key performance
indicators relating to a behavior of the agent, a behavior of the at
least one transaction, a behavior of the at least one application
and a behavior of the office process to form computed
information; and
[h] the computer, storing the collected information and the
computed information into a data store.
REJECTION
Claims 1—25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over McLean et al. (US 8,078,486 Bl, iss. Dec. 13, 2011) and Ricketts
(US 2009/0049394 Al, pub. Feb. 19, 2009).
ANALYSIS
Appellants argue claims 1—25 as a group. We select independent
claim 1 as representative. The remaining claims stand or fall with
independent claim 1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv).
We are not persuaded by Appellants’ argument that McLean, upon
which the Examiner relies, fails to disclose or suggest “a computer inferring
events to derive delimiters of a transaction activity, wherein the delimiters
delimit the transaction activity by transaction ID, agent input, references to
digital documents related to the transactions, and combinations thereof,” as
recited by limitation [a] of independent claim 1 (Appeal Br. 11—15; see also
Reply Br. 2—5).
Instead, we agree with the Examiner that McLean discloses the argued
limitation (see Final Act. 3—7; see also Ans. 22—23 (citing McLean, col. 3,11.
29-42; col. 8,11. 26-A7; col. 9,11. 48-58; col. 11,11. 5-21; col. 14,11. AA6;
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col. 18,1. 20-22; Fig. 13), and adopt the Examiner’s response to Appellants’
arguments as set forth at pages 22—23 of the Answer.
In this regard, we note that McLean is directed to a system for
providing workforce optimization which, inter alia, provides “[qjuality
monitoring scores, including insights from analytics and/or analytical
analysis of structured, unstructured, or aggregated data” (McLean, col. 4,
11. 4—6). McLean’s system operates in a contact center environment “staffed
by agents who handle incoming and/or outgoing contacts,” e.g., phone, text
chat, web collaboration, email, fax {id. at col. 6,11. 7—12). McLean discloses
its “tracking component (355) provides a contact center supervisor or
manager with information about agent activities and agent-customer
interactions, both historical and real-time” {id. at col. 8,11. 10—13). McLean
further discloses “contact recorder 370” captures “[a]ll data related to a
customer interaction—including navigation of automated systems, agent
keystrokes and desktop activities—[which] can be stored automatically in
folders for search and retrieval” {id. at col. 8,11. 44-47), “quality manager
320 stores the interactions in an interactions database 375, which may
include descriptive information as well as recorded content” {id. at col. 8,11.
50-52), and “[a]n analytics component (385) can analyze interactions in
various ways, including the use of speech analytics” {id. at col. 8,11. 58—60;
see also id. at col. 13,11. 58—61).
More particularly, McLean discloses
the term “interaction” refers to a record of the content of agent
activities related to a call. Note that agent activities are not
limited to audio of the call itself. Other forms of media are
included. Examples of other types of interactions are: video
recording of the agent; application activity on the agent’s
workstation 120; web pages delivered to the agent and/or
customer during collaborative sessions; messages delivered
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Application 12/718,335
through e-mail, instant messaging, or other messaging
technologies.
(Id. at col. 9,11. 48—58). McLean further discloses
tracking component 355 of the WFM 310 provides information
about agent activities to the WFM adherence component 360.
Agent activities, which describe work activities performed by
agents, are collected from various sources. The call router 140
(FIG. 1) reports agent call states (Available, After-Call-Work,
etc.). An application monitor on agent workstation 120 tracks
agent activity on the workstation (e.g., switching between
applications, screen data, keyboard input, etc.).
(Id. at col. 9,11. 59-67). In this regard, McLean discloses
analytics function 385 also uses a pattern recognition module
1050 to pull meaning out of the results generated by speech
recognition. The pattern recognition module 1050 discerns the
call’s pattern and automatically places the call into one or several
categories once the call is ingested into the speech engine, based
on the context the pattern recognition module 1050 is able to
extract from the speech mining function. The patterns are used
not only to classify calls but also to determine if a particular
activity has occurred during the call, or to automatically score
individual evaluation or survey questions based on this data.
(Id. at col. 14,11. 22—32). McLean also discloses other indicators can be
used by its tracking component 355 to provide “a supervisor or manager
with information about agent activities and agent-customer interactions, both
historical and real-time” (id. at col. 17,11. 36—39). “For instance, on-screen
activity can be monitored. That is, a screen capture engine can be used to
acquire information corresponding to the workstation activity of the agents,
thereby providing an indication of whether the agent is at the workstation”
(id. at col. 17,11. 52-57).
Appellants argue that “[t]he Examiner admits that McLean in view of
Ricketts does not disclose the claim feature at issue. Instead, the Examiner
mistakenly characterizes the claim limitations as ‘nonfunctional descriptive
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material’” (Appeal Br. 11—12). However, as the Examiner points out
(Ans. 22—23), “the Examiner did not admit or agree that McLean in view of
Ricketts does not disclose the claim feature as issue; however, regardless of
whether the subject matter is functional or nonfunctional, McLean et al.
discloses” the argued limitation.
Appellants also observe, in their Reply Brief, that the Examiner
“attempts to shoehorn in the new reference by pointing to familiar portions
of McLean relied upon in the final office action, as well as” new citations to
McLean at column 3, lines 34-42 and column 8, lines 31—49 (see Reply
Br. 3). However, Appellants do not present any substantive arguments on
the merits of the Examiner’s rejection based on these citations. Instead,
Appellants merely reproduce the cited portions, and argue that the newly
cited portions fail to disclose or suggest “a computer inferring events to
derive delimiters of a transaction activity, wherein the delimiters delimit the
transaction activity by transaction ID, agent input, references to digital
documents related to the transactions, and combinations thereof,” as recited
by limitation [a] of independent claim 1 (see Reply Br. 3—5).
Appellants last argue
Appellants are not claiming that a transaction ID, agent input,
references to digital documents related to the transactions are in
themselves new. Instead, the Appellants claim a novel method
for deriving delimiters of a transaction activity. Transaction ID,
agent input, references to digital documents related to the
transactions are simply some of the delimiters used to delimit the
transaction activity. While the cited paragraphs may make
mention of some of these activities, none of the activities are used
to “derive delimiters of the transaction activity.”
(Reply Br. 5). However, we agree with the Examiner that McLean discloses
indicators such as “transaction ID, agent input, references to digital
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documents related to the transactions, and combinations thereof’ (see
Ans. 23) which “derive delimiters of a transaction activity,” as called for in
limitation [a] of independent claim 1, under a broad but reasonable
interpretation (see Ans. 22—23). We note this interpretation is reasonable in
light of Appellants’ Specification, which discloses
[t]he process begins by deriving delimiters of an activity that are
specific to a transaction (Step 1002). This may be done by
detecting delimiters of activities belonging to a single transaction
or to a group of transactions. The details (including
input/output/intermediate artifacts) are then correlated for each
transaction activity (Step 1004), for example, by transaction ID,
agent input, references to digital documents related to the
transactions, etc.
(Spec. 169). Thus, Appellants’ argument is not persuasive to show error in
the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1.
In view of the foregoing, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of
independent claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). We also sustain the
Examiner rejection of claims 2—25 that were not separately argued by
Appellants, and, as such, fall with independent claim 1.
DECISION
The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—25 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) is
sustained.
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
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