Ex Parte Iyer et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 25, 2016

13246940 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 25, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 13/246,940 09/28/2011 45113 7590 04/27/2016 Siemens Corporation Intellectual Property Department 3501 Quadrangle Blvd Ste 230 Orlando, FL 32817 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Niran jan K. Iyer 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. 2011P09323 USOl 1680 EXAMINER OBISESAN, AUGUSTINE KUNLE ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2156 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 04/27/2016 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): IPDadmin.us@siemens.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte NIRANJAN K. IYER, MATTHEW J. INSKO, and ROBERT HAYDEN Appeal2014-004986 Application 13/246,940 Technology Center 2100 Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, NATHAN A. ENGELS, and NORMAN H. BEAMER, Administrative Patent Judges. BEAMER, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134(a) the Examiner's Final Rejection of claims 1-21. We have jurisdiction over the pending claims under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b). We affirm. 1 Appellants identify Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc. as the real party in interest. (App. Br. 4.) Appeal2014-004986 Application 13/246,940 THE INVENTION Appellants' invention is directed to receiving and processing lock requests for data of a specified type. (Abstract.) Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method performed by a product data management (PDM) data processing system, comprising: receiving a lock request for data of a specified type; processing the lock request in response to the lock request, including locking the data of the specified type for a plurality of data objects in response to the lock request; receiving at least one change to data of the specified type for at least one of the plurality of data objects; and updating and saving the at least one of the plurality of objects according to the received change by changing the data of the specified type. REJECTIONS The Examiner rejected claims 1--'3, 6-10, 13-17, 20, and 21under35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Walker (US 2007/0282966 Al, pub. Dec. 6, 2007) and Elza et al. (US 7,849,401 B2, issued Dec. 7, 2010) ("Elza"). (Final Act. 3-7 .) The Examiner rejected claims 4, 5, 11, 12, 18, and 19 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Walker, Elza, and Hemess et al. (US 2008/0082761 Al, pub. Apr. 3, 2008) ("Hemess"). (Final Act. 7-9.) 2 Appeal2014-004986 Application 13/246,940 ISSUE ON APPEAL Appellants' arguments in the Appeal Brief present the following dispositive issue:2 Whether the combination of Walker and Elza teaches or suggests the independent claim 1 limitation, "receiving a lock request for data of a specified type," and the similar limitation recited in independent claims 8 and 15. (App. Br. 15-22, 29-33, 38--42.) ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellants' arguments the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellants' arguments and we adopt as our own: ( 1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken (Final Act. 3-9); and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner's Answer in response to Appellants' Appeal Brief (Ans. 2-14). We concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner, and emphasize the following. For the claim limitation, "receiving a lock request for data of a specified type," the Examiner relies on the disclosure in Walker of requests to lock resources, and the disclosure in Elza of requests to lock XML document nodes. (Final Act. 3-5; Walker Fig. 8, i-fi-f 10, 174, 251; Elza col. 6, 11. 23-28, col. 8, 11. 13-29.) The Examiner finds: Although locking of resources as disclose by walker [sic] may be interpreted as locking of data of a specified type[,] Elza 2 Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellants and the positions of the Examiner, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed Aug. 26, 2013); the Reply Brief (filed Dec. 11, 2013), the Final Office Action (mailed Feb. 26, 2013); and the Examiner's Answer (mailed Nov. 6, 2013) for the respective details. 3 Appeal2014-004986 Application 13/246,940 et al (US 7,849,401 82) in an analogous art discloses, receiving a lock request for data of a specified type ( col.6 lines 23 - 28; "A node identity may be either system-unique or document-unique", and col.8 lines 13 - 25; "DDOM system provides a node locking mechanism. This mechanism provides a client or group of clients with exclusive access to portions of a document by locking the portions"). (Final Act. 4--5.) Appellants argue the disclosure in Walker of sending lock requests to a resource, such as "'memory, disk drives, fiber optic channels, etc.,'" does not teach a lock request for data of a specified type. (App. Br. 16-17 (quoting Walker i-f 10).) Appellants further argue that the node identity of Elza "simply refers to the way in which a specific node is identified," and "is not taught or suggested to be a specified data type or to refer to a specified data type." Id. at 21. We are not persuaded that the Examiner errs in relying on the disclosure in Elza of locking nodes. As stated in the Specification, examples of specified data types include "schedule data, task scheduling data, assignments, dependencies, Schedule and Task deliverables, Task costing information, Task Execution Information, schedule membership, notifications, calendars, or otherwise," and more generally, "information of different types (x)." (Spec. i-f 26.) Similarly, the nodes described in Elza relate to specific portions of documents containing data, which encompass the foregoing examples. (Elza Fig. 7D, col. 3, 11. 44--50, 4:43--44 ("providing a locking mechanism for controlling access to portions of documents"), col. 20, 11. 5-8 (describing Fig. 7D and "requests for replacing data relating to nodes"); accord Spec. i-f 25 (describing embodiments in which locks can be applied to generically described "data of type (x)").) We 4 Appeal2014-004986 Application 13/246,940 agree that the combination of Walker and Elza at least teaches or suggests the claimed "receiving a lock request for data of a specified type." (Ans. 3.) CONCLUSION For the reasons discussed above, we sustain the obviousness rejection over Walker and Elza of independent claims 1, 8, and 15. Because Appellants' arguments with respect to the remaining dependent claims raise the same issues as discussed above, we also sustain the obviousness rejectionofclaims2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, and21 over Walker and Elza, and of claims 4, 5, 11, 12, 18, and 19 over Walker, Elza, and Hemess. DECISION We affirm the Examiner's rejections of claims 1-21. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. Â§ 1.136(a)(l )(iv). AFFIRMED 5