Ex Parte Lee et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 16, 2014

12050468 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 16, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________________ Ex parte YONG LEE and DAVID KOOPMAN ____________________ Appeal 2012-011394 Application 12/050,468 Technology Center 2400 ____________________ Before: MICHAEL W. KIM, BART A. GERSTENBLITH, and BEVERLY M. BUNTING, Administrative Patent Judges. BUNTING, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2012-011394 Application 12/050,468 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a final rejection of claims 1, 2, and 5–10. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER The claims are directed to a method of electronic calendaring that grants and receives electronic calendar access via an exposed application programming interface (API). Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A method, comprising the step of: a) providing a first party a list of approved entities that have previously entered a service partnership with a provider of an electronic calendar of said first party; b) receiving, from said first party, a selection of said second party from said list of approved entities; c) responsive to receiving said selection of said second party, granting said second party access to said electronic calendar of said first party to insert an event by exposing an Application Programming Interface (API) of said electronic calendar of said first party to said second party; d) notifying said second party that it has been granted access to said API; and e) receiving said event from said second party. REFERENCES The Examiner relies on the following prior art references in rejecting the claims on appeal: Burch Rodriguez Baio Gingras US 2005/0172116 A1 US 7,124,087 B1 US 2007/0260636 A1 US 2010/0180212 A1 Aug. 4, 2005 Oct. 17, 2006 Nov. 8, 2007 July 15, 2010 Appeal 2012-011394 Application 12/050,468 3 REJECTIONS Claims 1, 2, and 5–9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Baio, Gingras, and Burch. Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Baio, Gingras, Burch, and Rodriguez. ANALYSIS Appellants argue claims 1, 2, and 5–9 together. App. Br. 5–23. Reply Br. 2–20. We select claim 1 as representative, treating claims 2, and 5–9 as standing or falling with representative claim 1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (2011). The Examiner finds that Baio discloses the invention substantially as claimed, except for explicitly describing the electronic calendar of the first party as a different electronic calendaring system than the electronic calendar of said second party. Ans. 4–5. Additionally, the Examiner finds that Baio does not “explicitly state that the ‘third party application’ is a different calendaring system.” Id. at 5. According to the Examiner, Gingras cures this deficiency in disclosing “sharing calendar information with a third party residing at a remote site,” and that the remote third party is a calendar “from a calendar of a third party residing at a remote site.” Id. (citing Gingras ¶¶ 5, 9, and 12). Based on these teachings, the Examiner reasons that it would have been obvious to a skilled artisan “to implement a calendaring system such as Gingras’s third-party calendar as the ‘third party application’ disclosed by Baio in order to extend the functionality of Baio’s system,” which could be any known or conceivable application. Id. at 5–6. Appeal 2012-011394 Application 12/050,468 4 Next, the Examiner turns to Burch, because the proposed combination of Baio and Gingras does not explicitly disclose the limitation of: a) providing the first party a list of approved entities that have previously entered a service partnership with a provider of an electronic calendar of said first party; b) receiving from said first party, a selection of said second party from said list of approved entities. The Examiner finds that Burch discloses a “community list” containing the identities of one or more second parties with which a first party can establish trusted relationships, and describes how “the first party can dynamically subdivide, manage, and modify entries of the community list and the trust specification (which defines the policies and access rights associated with interactions between the first party and the second party during any active trusted relationship).” Id. at 6 (citing Burch, Abstract). Thus, the Examiner reasons it would have been obvious for a skilled artisan “to implement Burch’s features in Baio/Gingras’s system such that [the] ‘community list’ of Burch is used to define a list of approved entities that have previously entered a service partnership with the provider of said electronic calendar. . . . it would allow more management control over the trust relationships when giving a second party access to the API of the calendar of a first party.” Id. at 6–7. Appellants note that the present application is related to two other applications presently on appeal, and proffer generic arguments to address the Examiner’s findings in each of these related applications. App. Br. 6– 23; Reply Br. 2–22. These arguments, however, do not address specifically the Examiner’s stated case for obviousness with respect to the claims presently on appeal. We decline to comb through Appellants’ arguments to Appeal 2012-011394 Application 12/050,468 5 decipher which, if any, might apply to the present appeal. For example, Appellants assert that to overcome the discrepancies in combining Gingras with Baio, because Baio does not teach a calendar event or calendar, the “Examiner attempts to combine Doane, Burch and Bennett with Baio, but as shown herein, Baio also does not teach or suggest an electronic calendar, and thus can’t be used to remedy the discrepancies in Doane, Burch and/or Bennett.” Id. at 13. In failing to address the Examiner’s specific findings in this appeal, Appellants’ arguments fall short of informing us how the Examiner’s stated findings with regard to a particular reference or combination of references are in error. Notwithstanding Appellants’ conflated arguments, the Examiner reasonably addresses Appellants’ position in the Examiner’s Answer. After carefully reviewing the Examiner’s findings and conclusions of obviousness, in light of Appellants’ arguments directed to Baio, Gingras, and Burch and the limitations of claim 1, we adopt the Examiner’s response to Appellants’ arguments on pages 10–18 of the Answer. The Examiner’s response articulates sufficiently reasons as to why Appellants’ arguments do not persuasively apprise us of error in the Examiner’s findings. With respect to Baio, for example, Appellants take the position that the event repository of Baio is an event application interface for users to share and collaborate in a social events network environment, and not an electronic calendar. App. Br. 9–20; Reply Br. 6–20. In support thereof, Appellants point out that “the word ‘calendar’ appears only 3 times in the Baio reference, none of which refer to an electronic calendar.” Id. As correctly noted by the Examiner, despite using different phraseology, the events repository of Baio has the same functionality as the events calendar Appeal 2012-011394 Application 12/050,468 6 recited in claim 1. Ans. 11–14. Appellants have not explained sufficiently, nor directed us to evidence in Baio, demonstrating adequately that Baio’s description of “events repository” is inconsistent with Appellants’ description of electronic calendar. Ans. 12–13 (citing Baio, Figs. 1C and 2A). A reference does not have to satisfy an ipsissimis verbis test to disclose a claimed feature, and Appellants do not identify any feature of the claimed electronic calendar that distinguishes over Baio’s events repository.1 Appellants’ further argument that Baio discloses a third party application having the ability to view and modify social events via an API, but does not show a second party inserting a calendar event into a first party’s electronic calendar, is likewise not convincing. App. Br. 8–23; Reply Br. 6–22. The Examiner properly points to the explicit disclosure in Baio of the feature “called ‘event.add’ which allows a new event to be created (Table 1, Paragraph 58)” by a third party to access, view, and modify event information contained in the events repository used by the first party application. Ans. 14; see also Baio ¶ 30. Appellants counter that the event.add method requires user authentication, which is not required by the current invention, because the first party selects the second party from a trust list to grant the second party access to add a calendar event into the first party’s electronic calendar. App. Br. 21–22; Reply Br. 18. The Examiner reasonably explains “just because the event.add function may require authentication does not preclude it from reading on the claim language.” Ans. 18. Moreover, Appellants’ arguments concerning a “trust list” are not commensurate with the scope of claim 1, which defines “a list of approved entities that have previously entered a service partnership with a provider of 1 See In re Gleave, 560 F.3d 1331, 1334 (Fed. Cir. 2009). Appeal 2012-011394 Application 12/050,468 7 an electronic calendar of said first party.” Based on the present record, Appellants do not apprise us persuasively of error in the Examiner’s findings directed to Baio. As to Gingras, Appellants argue that Gingras indirectly teaches an electronic calendar and does not describe the other aspects of the electric calendar recited in claim 1, including an API exposed to a second party. App. Br. 6–7, 10; Reply Br. 7. This argument is not convincing because the Examiner relied on Gingras to support his finding that accepting a calendar event is known, and Appellants do not apprise us of error in this regard. Burch, according to Appellants, cannot teach a service partnership with a provider of an electronic calendar because Burch does not disclose any type of electronic calendar. App. Br. 13–23; Reply Br. 10–12. Appellants’ arguments are not persuasive because the Examiner’s findings rely on Burch’s teachings regarding a service partnership to modify Baio’s disclosure of an electronic calendar, as further modified by the calendar- acceptance feature of Gingras. Appellants’ contention that Burch teaches the generalized use of trust lists, and does not teach “providing a calendar user with a list of approved entities (that have previously entered a service partnership with the electronic calendar’s provider) and subsequently receiving the user’s selection (chosen from the approved list) of entities that will be granted access to insert events in the user’s calendar via an exposed API” do not apprise us specifically or persuasively of error in the Examiner’s findings. App. Br. at 21. Appellants’ assertions challenging the references individually fail to address the Examiner’s reasons to combine the teachings of Baio, Gingras, Appeal 2012-011394 Application 12/050,468 8 and Burch, which are expressly articulated and supported by rational underpinnings.2 For these reasons, and based on the record before us, we sustain the rejection of claim 1, and claims 2 and 5–9 fall therewith. Claim 10 Appellants do not provide a separate argument for claim 10, and rely on the same unpersuasive arguments made in connection to claim 1 that we considered previously. App. Br. 23; Reply Br. 21. We, therefore, sustain the rejection of claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Baio, Gingras, Burch, and Rodriguez. DECISION The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1, 2, and 5–10 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)(1)(iv) (2011). AFFIRMED Ssc 2 See In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006), cited with approval in KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007).