Ex Parte FrancoDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 28, 201612236535 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 28, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR 12/236,535 09/24/2008 Lucas G. Franco 45095 7590 06/30/2016 HOFFMAN WARNICK LLC 540 Broadway 4th Floor 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 ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. CA920070020US 1 8093 EXAMINER PURI,VENAY ALBANY, NY 12207 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3624 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/30/2016 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): PTOCommunications@hoffmanwarnick.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte LUCAS G. FRANCO Appeal2014-005892 1 Application 12/236,535 Technology Center 3600 Before MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, PHILIP J. HOFFMANN, and BRUCE T. WIEDER, Administrative Patent Judges. CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner's final decision rejecting claims 1-21. We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 "International Business Machines Corp. is the real party in interest." Appeal Br. 1. Appeal2014-005892 Application 12/236,535 Claim 1 is illustrative: 1. A computer-implemented method of optimizing a manufacturing process to increase usage of recycling in said manufacturing process, comprising: describing the manufacturing process using a plurality of nodes, each node representing a component or a process, wherein the nodes include a plurality of nodes representing a component and a plurality of nodes representing a process; connecting the plurality of nodes with directed edges to form a directed graph, the directed graph representing possible manufacturing process flows from a begin node to an end node; assigning to each edge a value representative of a benefit resulting from usage of recycling in a component or process; building a cost matrix representing an array of the plurality of nodes, with values in the cost matrix representing the edge values between nodes; inverting the edge values in the cost matrix; and determining, using a computer device, a longest path from the begin node to the end node in the directed graph, based on the inverted edge values in the cost matrix, to identify a manufacturing process flow maximizing usage of recycling in the manufacturing process. Appellant appeals the following rejections2 : 1. Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Poppen (US 5,893,081, iss. Apr. 6, 1999), Tang et al., Disassembly Modeling, Planning, and Application: A Review, Proceedings of the 2000 2 The Examiner rejects claims 8-21 on the same bases as claims 1-7. See Final Action 15. 2 Appeal2014-005892 Application 12/236,535 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation, IEEE (Apr. 2000), Lecture Notes from George A. Constantinides, Professor of Digital Computation, Imperial College (Jan. 15, 2007) (available at http://cas.ee.ic.ac.uk/people/gacl/Synthesis/Lects5to8.pdf.) (referred to as "ICL"), and Kobayashi (US 2005/0216249 Al, pub. Sept. 29, 2005). 2. Claims 1 and 3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Thierauf (US 2008/0077266 Al, pub. Mar. 27, 2008), Sbihi et al., Combinatorial optimization and Green Logistics, 40R: A Quarterly Journal of Operations Research, 99 (June 1, 2007) (hereinafter "Sbihi"), ICL, and Kobayashi. 3. Claims 2 and 4--7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Thierauf, Sbihi, ICL, Kobayashi, and Fusaro (US 5,561, 790, iss. Oct. 1, 1996). ANALYSIS Appellant argues that "ICL fails to teach or suggest inverting the edge values in the cost matrix to calculate the longest path in a graph." Appeal Br. 8. The Examiner relies on ICL for this subject matter and directs our attention to Lecture 8 at p. 4. See Final Action 8. We agree with Appellant. Specifically, the cited portion of ICL states that "[a] shortest path can then be achieved by inverting all weights." ICL, Lecture 8, p. 4. There is no indication that determining a longest path is based on the inverted edge values, as required by claim 1. Further, regardless of the level of skill in the art (see Answer 6-7), the Examiner does not persuasively establish why it would have been obvious to determine a longest path based on inverted edge values. 3 Appeal2014-005892 Application 12/236,535 Based on the foregoing, we will not sustain the rejection of claim 1 as unpatentable over Poppen, Tang, ICL, and Kobayashi; nor will we sustain the rejection of claims 1 and 3 as unpatentable over Thierauf, Sbihi, ICL, and Kobayashi, which suffers from the same deficiency. We also will not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 2 and 4--7 as unpatentable over Thierauf, Sbihi, ICL, Kobayashi, and Fusaro because the Examiner does not rely on Fusaro in any way that cures the deficiency in the rejection of claim 1. Independent claims 8 and 15 each contain a limitation similar to the above-discussed limitation of claim 1. Because the Examiner determines that claims 8 and 15 and their respective dependent claims are unpatentable for reasons similar to those advanced regarding claims 1-7 (see Final Action 15), we also will not sustain the rejections of claims 8-21. DECISION The decision of the Examiner is reversed. REVERSED 4 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation