Ex Parte Kennis et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 29, 2016

11307300 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 29, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 111307,300 0113112006 76444 7590 Setter Roche LLP 14694 Orchard Parkway Building A, Suite 200 Westminster, CO 80023 05/03/2016 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Peter H. Kennis 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. 314.000lcl 2299 EXAMINER NGUYEN, TAND ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3689 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/03/2016 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): uspto@setterroche.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte PETER H. KENNIS, DANIEL R. KUOKKA, CHARLES A. COOMBS, STAYTON D. ADDISON, ANDREW T. OTWELL, JEFFREY Z. JOHNSON, PATRICKJ.D. TAYLOR, and MICHAELE. LORTZ Appeal2013-008152 Application 11/307 ,300 Technology Center 3600 Before MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, MICHAEL W. KIM, and BRADLEY B. BAY AT, Administrative Patent Judges. CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE This is an appeal from the final rejection of claims 25--46. We have jurisdiction to review the case under 35 U.S.C. Â§Â§ 134 and 6. The invention relates generally to compliance monitoring of electronic enterprise transactions, and more particularly relates to extraction of electronic data transactions within enterprise computing systems for Appeal2013-008152 Application 11/307,300 enterprise policy compliance monitoring of enterprise transactions. Spec. 2 (para. 3). Independent claim 25, reproduced below, is further illustrative of the claimed subject matter. 25. A system for monitoring transactions of an enterprise stored in one or more enterprise systems associated with an enterprise, the transactions corresponding to one or more business transactions of the enterprise, to determine possible lack of compliance of a business transaction with one or more predetermined policies of the enterprise, comprising: a non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a monitoring database and a plurality of program instructions modules executable by a computer, wherein the program instruction modules comprise an extractor, a second extractor, a transaction analysis engine, and a user interface; and the computer configured to, when executing the extractor, extract an initial selected subset of information about monitored transactions from an enterprise system; the computer configured to, when executing the second extractor, responsive to changed data in the enterprise system, extract a second selected subset of information about the changed data wherein the second selected subset of information is extracted from a same field in a same record as the initial selected subset of information; the computer configured to, when executing the monitoring database, store the initial subset of information and the second subset of information as monitoring entities; the computer configured to, when executing the transaction analysis engine, execute one or more computer- executable policy statements against the monitoring entities in the monitoring database; and the computer configured to, when executing the user interface, responsive to a determination from execution of a policy statement of an exception to a predetermined policy, provide an output corresponding to the exception indicating a possible lack of compliance with the predetermined policy. 2 Appeal2013-008152 Application 11/307,300 Claims 25--46 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Dingman (US 6,820,135 Bl, iss. Nov. 16, 2004) and Stone (US 2003/0212617 Al, pub. Nov. 13, 2003). Claims 25--46 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Dingman and Stone or Reed (US 6,757,710 B2, iss. June 29, 2004). We AFFIRM. ANALYSIS We are not persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that the combination of Dingman and Stone renders obvious claims 25--46. Upon consideration of Appellants' assertions, we agree with the Examiner's findings, rationale and response to argument, set forth on pages 6-11 of the Examiner's Answer, as fully responsive to Appellants' assertions. Accordingly, we adopt them as our own. We add the following for emphasis only. We are unpersuaded of error on the Examiner's part by Appellants' argument that Dingman does not disclose a staging or monitoring database. We agree with the Examiner the addition of further databases in the Dingman device would have been a mere duplication of parts/services for storing data and would be of no patentable significance. We further agree with the Examiner that the Dingman database 214 may be considered a staging or monitoring database as broadly claimed. We are unpersuaded of error on the Examiner's part by Appellants' argument that Stone does not disclose a computer configured to identify an occurrence of a lack of compliance with a policy. We find that the teaching in Stone at paragraphs 134 and 135 that unmatched items are not approved 3 Appeal2013-008152 Application 11/307,300 for payment is a teaching of identifying an occurrence of a lack of compliance with policy. We are unpersuaded of error on the part of the Examiner by Appellants' argument that the prior art fails to teach extraction of data from the same field in the same record. We find that as Stone teaches at paragraph 100 that recurring invoices related to the same vendor or similar products are searched, Stone teaches extracting data from the same field in the same record. We sustain the obviousness rejections of claims 25--46. DECISION The decision of the Examiner to reject 25--46 is AFFIRMED. AFFIRMED 4