Ex Parte Oral et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardOct 5, 201711608682 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 5, 2017) Copy Citation United States Patent and Trademark Office 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 APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 11/608,682 12/08/2006 Tolga Oral CAM920060108US1 (160) 9780 46321 7590 CRGO LAW STEVEN M. GREENBERG 7900 Glades Road SUITE 520 BOCA RATON, EL 33434 EXAMINER STERRETT, JONATHAN G ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3623 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 10/10/2017 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): docketing@crgolaw.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte TOLGA ORAL, SERGEI R. LANDAR, and ANDREW L. SCHIRMER Appeal 2016-0022991 2 3 Application 11/608,6822,3 Technology Center 3600 Before BIBHU R. MOHANTY, NINA L. MEDLOCK, and JAMES A. WORTH, Administrative Patent Judges. WORTH, 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—17. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. §§ 134 and 6(b). 1 Our decision refers to the Appellants’ Appeal Brief (“Appeal Br.,” filed June 15, 2015) and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed Dec. 16, 2015), and the Examiner’s Final Office Action (“Final Act.,” mailed Jan. 14, 2015) and Answer (“Ans.,” mailed Oct. 16, 2015). 2 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is International Business Machines Corporation (Appeal Br. 2). 3 This application has previously been before the Board in a prior appeal. In that appeal, the Board reversed a previous rejection of the Examiner. In re Oral, Appeal No. 2012-002317 (PTAB July 7, 2014). Appeal 2016-002299 Application 11/608,682 We AFFIRM. Introduction Appellants’ application relates to “the field of collaborative computing and more particularly to event scheduling conflict management and resolution in a collaborative computing environment” (Spec. 1 1). Claims 1, 8, and 11 are the independent claims on appeal. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal: 1. A method of event scheduling conflict management and resolution for unprocessed events in a collaborative computing environment, the method comprising: proposing a new calendar event for a specified time slot not already scheduled for a processed calendar event in a collaborative computing environment executing in memory of a computer; identifying an unprocessed, unscheduled, proposed event conflicting with the specified time slot; and, prompting for conflict resolution of the conflict. (Appeal Br., Claims App.) Rejections on Appeal The Examiner maintains, and Appellants appeal, the following rejections: I. Claims 1—17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter. II. Claims 1—7 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by A. Chun et al., Optimizing agent-based meeting scheduling 2 Appeal 2016-002299 Application 11/608,682 through preference estimation, 16 Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 727-743 (2003) (hereinafter, “Chun”).4 III. Claims 8—17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Chun and Lee (US 2003/0233265 Al, pub. Dec. 18, 2003). ANALYSIS Rejection I Claims 1—11 The Court in Alice emphasized the use of a two-step framework for analysis of patentability under 35 U.S.C. § 101: Lirst, we determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts. ... If so, we then ask, “[wjhat else is there in the claims before us?” To answer that question, we consider the elements of each claim both individually and “as an ordered combination” to determine whether the additional elements “transform the nature of the claim” into a patent-eligible application. See Alice Corp., Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Inti, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 2355 (2014) (citing Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs, Inc., 132 S.Ct. 1289 (2012)). The Lederal Circuit further elucidated the analysis for determining whether an idea is abstract in DDR, where the court held that a specific implementation of a webpage was non-abstract because it was necessarily rooted in computer technology to overcome a problem specifically arising in the area of computer networks. DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 4 The heading for the rejection lists claims 1—8 but the body of the rejection addresses claims only claims 1—7. We regard the inclusion of claim 8 in the heading as a typographical error. 3 Appeal 2016-002299 Application 11/608,682 773 F.3d 1245, 1257—58 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (“these claims stand apart because they do not merely recite the performance of some business practice known from the pre-Internet world along with the requirement to perform it on the Internet. Instead, the claimed solution is necessarily rooted in computer technology in order to overcome a problem specifically arising in the realm of computer networks.”) In this case, the Examiner determines that the claims are directed to “the abstract idea of event scheduling on a calendar, i.e., which is a method of organizing human activity” (Final Act. 5—6). We agree with the Examiner that scheduling events on a calendar is a method of organizing human activity that is unpatentable subject matter under Alice. Appellants argue that the claims are drawn to a specific way of performing a process within the context of a specific computing arrangement (Appeal Br. 11 (citing Spec. 20-21)). Appellants assert that the structure of the claims require complex programming to enable the management and resolution of event scheduling conflicts for unprocessed events {id. at 11). Appellants also include a general background discussion of the case law, including Ultramercial v. Hulu, 772 F.3d 709 (Fed. Cir. 2014); DDR Holdings, LLCv. Hotds.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245 (Fed. Cir. 2014); and Ax parte Starbuck, Appeal No. 2010-007936 (PTAB Jan. 24, 2013). The Examiner responds that Appellants have “not relied on any fact pattern in this case to be applied to the instant application, other than to quote general statements made by the Court...” (Ans. 7). We agree with the Examiner that Appellants have not tied the case law discussion to specific aspects of the claims or Specification. 4 Appeal 2016-002299 Application 11/608,682 In any event, with respect to Appellants’ discussion of DDR, the Examiner finds that “[s]ince appointment calendars and resolving scheduling conflicts on them were not new to the internet, the fact pattern of DDR does not apply” (Ans. 8). The Examiner further finds that Appellants’ arguments that the claim limitations are a “specific application” are not persuasive (id. at 9). The Examiner reasons that Appellants rely on paragraphs 20 and 21 of the Specification, which refer to Figures 2 and 3 (id. at 9-10). The Examiner finds that these portions of the Specification show a generic computer platform and a generic flow chart, with routine and nominal computer functions for loading data and performing processing, but without specific computer instructions for implementing the claimed invention (id. at 10; see also Final Act. 6). Applying DDR, we agree with the Examiner’s findings that the Specification does not provide anything more than conventional computer equipment and programming techniques (see Spec, H 23—25; Figs. 2—3), and that Appellants have not provided specific arguments to the contrary. Further, we agree with the Examiner that this case is unlike DDR because it addresses a pre-internet problem that is not specific to computer networks. See 773 F.3d at 1257—58. We note that the background of the Specification attempts to differentiate the invention from commercially available products (Spec. H1—2). Nevertheless, the Specification still does not provide anything more than conventional technology to solve the problem of avoiding unscheduled meetings on a calendar and does not offer a specific implementation. Accordingly, in view of the claim language and the Specification, we agree with the Examiner that the claims are directed to scheduling an event 5 Appeal 2016-002299 Application 11/608,682 on a calendar, as an abstract idea, i.e., as a method of organizing human activity. For similar reasons, we further conclude that the additional limitations, which include “proposing,” “identifying,” “prompting,” “listing,” “selecting,” “determining,” taken individually, or as a whole, do not add significantly more to take the invention out of the realm of the abstract because they are directed to the same abstract idea. Therefore, we determine to affirm the Examiner’s rejection under § 101 of independent claims 1, 8, and 11, and their dependent claims. Rejection II Independent claim 1 and its dependent claims Appellants argue that Chun fails to disclose “identifying an unprocessed, unscheduled, proposed event conflicting with the specified time slot,” as recited by independent claim 1. In particular, Appellants assert that pages 733—34 of Chun, relied on by the Examiner, teach “only of the proposing and counter-proposing of a timeslot for a meeting and the marking of different time slots in the proposal table” (Appeal Br. 14). Appellants continue that the “Examiner has made the same mistake as before in the prior appeal in which the Board noted Examiner’s attempt to construe the claimed event to be one in the same so as to create a problematic application of the term ‘conflicting’” (id.). The Examiner provides the following definition of event: “a thing that happens,” especially one of importance (Final Act. 4). The Examiner proposes the following interpretation of the scope of “events” that are “conflicting”: two events (e.g. when someone wants to have a meeting one day and another person wants to have the same meeting another day) can conflict when different times are proposed for the 6 Appeal 2016-002299 Application 11/608,682 event. The claim language, broadly construed, does not require that the different events recited have to be for different meetings as argued. They can be for the same meeting, but proposed for different times and thus be ‘conflicting’ (i.e. in disagreement) with respect to a particular proposed time. (Ans. 13). Thus, the Examiner concludes that the same meeting can be understood to conflict with itself if two users propose different times. In this manner, the Examiner concludes that the same meeting can constitute two different events. We conclude that this is an unreasonable interpretation of “event,” and suffers from a similar problem as the rejection which was previously reversed. In the previous appeal, the Examiner found that the same event could conflict with itself. See In re Oral, Appeal No. 2012-002317, slip op. at 4 (PTAB July 7, 2014). In the instant appeal, the Examiner interprets the same meeting as two different events if proposed to occur at different times. This meaning is inconsistent with the Specification and the remainder of the claims, which refer to an event that conflicts with a “specified” time slot, i.e., a specific time. Further, we conclude that this is not within the broadest reasonable meaning of “event” because it is contrary to the ordinary usage of the term “event,” even as proposed by the Examiner. Importantly, events occur only once in the physical world. Additionally, the Examiner has not shown a special meaning for the term “event” in the claims or Specification. Therefore, we agree with Appellants that Chun discloses a proposal and a counter-proposal for times for the same event rather than for different events (see Chung 733—34). We further agree with Appellants that different events do not “conflict” with each other if they are at different times under the ordinary usage of the limitation taken as a whole. Even if different 7 Appeal 2016-002299 Application 11/608,682 proposed times were considered a “conflict,” the different events would not conflict with a “specified time slot.” As such, Chun does not disclose a “new calendar event” that conflicts with a “specified time slot” for an event that has already been proposed, as required by independent claim 1. Accordingly, we determine to reverse the Examiner’s rejection under § 102 of independent claim 1 and its dependent claims. Rejection III Independent claims 8 and 11 and their dependent claims Independent claims 8 and 11, which contain similar language and requirements as independent claim 1, stand rejected under § 103 as unpatentable over Chun and Lee. The Examiner does not rely on Lee to remedy the argued deficiency in the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1 under § 102 as anticipated by Chun. Accordingly, we determine to reverse the Examiner’s rejection under § 103 of independent 8 and 11, and of their dependent claims. DECISION The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1—17 under § 101 is affirmed. The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1—7 under § 102 is reversed. The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 8—17 under § 103 is reversed. 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 8 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation