Ex Parte Ortmaier

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jun 30, 2017

13061361 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 30, 2017)

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.
13/061,361 04/11/2011 Tobias Ortmaier FUBO-06 5406
26875 7590 07/05/2017
WOOD, HERRON & EVANS, LLP
2700 CAREW TOWER
441 VINE STREET
CINCINNATI, OH 45202
EXAMINER
LIN, ABBYYEE
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3664
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/05/2017 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):
usptodock@whe-law.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte TOBIAS ORTMAIER
Appeal 2016-001234
Application 13/061,361
Technology Center 3600
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, MICHAEL M. BARRY, and
MICHAEL J. ENGLE, Administrative Patent Judges.
BARRY, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 12—14, 16—24, and 26. App. Br. 3. We have jurisdiction under 35
U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
1 Appellant identifies the real party in interest as KUKA Roboter GmbH.
App. Br. 3.
Appeal 2016-001234
Application 13/061,361
Introduction
Appellant describes the invention as relating “to a medical work
station and an operating device for the manual movement of a robot arm of a
medical work station.” Spec. 1. Claim 12 is representative:
12. A medical operating device, comprising:
a first manual input device configured for manual
manipulation by a user;
a control device communicating with said first input
device;
said control device generating a first signal in response to
manual movement of said first manual input device, said first
signal operative to control movement of a first robot arm such
that the first robot arm executes a movement corresponding to
the manual movement of said first manual input device;
an interface associated with said control device and
communicating with a hospital data network, said control
device communicating with the hospital data network and
retrieving data that is stored on the hospital data network and
is associated with a living being via said interface;
a display communicating with said control device and
displaying information associated with the data; and
a switching device coupled with said control device;
said control device having two operational modes
responsive to actuation of said switching device, wherein:
in a first mode, said control device generates said
first signal in response to the manual movement of said
first input device, and
in a second mode, said control device retrieves
data associated with the living being and changes how
information associated with the retrieved data is
displayed on said display in response to the manual
manipulation of said first manual input device, and makes
a change to the stored data that is associated with the
2
Appeal 2016-001234
Application 13/061,361
information currently displayed on said display in
response to the manual manipulation of said first manual
input device.
App. Br. 14—15 (Claims App’x) (disputed requirements emphasized).
Rejections
Claims 12—14, 17, 18, and 20-24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Salisbury et al. (US 2003/0220541 Al,
published Nov. 27, 2003 (hereinafter “Salisbury”)) and Graves et al., An
Integrated Remote Neurosurgical System, Proceedings of the First
International Joint Conference CVRMed-MRCAS (1997) (available at
www.cs.cmu.edu/~jtullio/docs/mrcas97.pdf (last accessed June 6, 2017)
(hereinafter “Graves”)). Final Act. 6—14.
Claims 16 and 26 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious
over Salisbury, Graves, and Kazi et al., Next Generation Teach Pedants for
Industrial Robots, Advances in Human-Robot Interaction Chapter 1,
pp. 47-66 (2005) (ISBN 978-3-540-23211-7) (hereinafter “Kazi”). Final
Act. 14-15.
Claim 19 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over
Salisbury, Graves, and Lipow (US 2006/0087746 Al; Apr. 27, 2006). Final
Act. 15—16.
ANALYSIS
The Combined Teachings of Salisbury and Graves
In rejecting claim 12, the Examiner finds Salisbury teaches all
limitations except for the requirement that the control device “makes a
change to the stored data that is associated with the information currently
displayed on said display in response to the manual manipulation of said
first manual input device.” Final Act. 6—8. The Examiner then finds Graves
3
Appeal 2016-001234
Application 13/061,361
teaches this requirement, and concludes that it would have been obvious to
an ordinarily skilled artisan “to modify Salisbury’s master control devices
for each hand, which can switch between controlling robot arms and
retrieving/ scaling data/information, with Graves[’] teaching of using a
manual control device to edit/annotate images.” Id. at 8—9.
Appellant contends the Examiner errs because “the snapshots from the
live video feed of Graves are not data that was retrieved after being stored
on a hospital data network as required by the claims.” App. Br. 9. “The
added annotations [of Graves] would therefore not be changing the data that
was retrieved from a hospital data network, as required.” Id. Appellant
further contends “the added annotations would not constitute changing the
underlying data.” Id.
Appellant’s contentions focus on Graves’ disclosure without
accounting for the teachings of Salisbury. One cannot show nonobviousness
by attacking references individually when the rejection is based on a
combination of references. In re Merck & Co. Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097
(Fed. Cir. 1986); see also In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981). As
the Examiner answers, and we agree, “Salisbury, and not Graves, was used
to address hospital data networks and retrieving data from the hospital
network. The only feature Salisbury was missing was changing/editing data
in general.” Ans. 4.
Appellant replies that the Examiner misapprehends the argument, and
that “Appellant asserts that neither Salisbury ’541 nor Graves teaches or
suggests changing stored data that was retrieved from a hospital data
network.” Reply Br. 2. We note that the relevant inquiry is not whether
either Salisbury or Graves teaches the claimed subject matter identified by
4
Appeal 2016-001234
Application 13/061,361
Appellant. The question is whether the claimed subject matter would have
been obvious to an ordinarily skilled artisan in light of the combined
teachings of the references. Merck, 800 F.2d at 1097 (holding the cited
references must be read, not in isolation, but for what they fairly teach in
combination with the prior art as a whole); Keller, 642 F.2d at 425.
Appellant specifically contends that
saving annotated video obtained from a live feed from a
microscope, as disclosed in Graves, does not teach or suggest
changing data retrieved from a hospital data network. . . . The
snapshots from the live video feed of Graves are not data that
was retrieved after being stored on a hospital data network as
required by the claims.
Reply Br. 3.
Appellant’s argument does not persuade us. Graves specifically
teaches “[a] ‘snapshot’ facility allows the surgeon to record still images from
the microscope camera and store them. . . . [A] history menu of thumbnail
images lets the user [e.g., the surgeon] select an older snapshot to display.
Annotations made to the images through whiteboarding are saved with the
snapshots.” Graves 806. An ordinarily skilled artisan would have
understood that the “older snapshots” in Graves were stored prior to
retrieval. Final Act. 4—5. As discussed above, the Examiner specifically
relies on Salisbury for teaching data stored on the hospital network. In view
of the combined teachings of Salisbury and Graves, an ordinarily skilled
artisan would have understood that the data stored by Graves may be stored
“on a hospital data network.”
The ordinarily skilled artisan also would have understood adding
annotations in Graves constitutes changing the stored data. As the Examiner
finds, and we agree, “adding annotations is more than simply changing how
5
Appeal 2016-001234
Application 13/061,361
something is displayed; adding annotations adds[ to]/changes the actual
information and also correspondingly adds[ to]/changes the data.” Ans. 4.
Appellant also contends “[bjecause neither Salisbury ’541 nor Graves
teaches or suggests using the master control of Salisbury ’541 to change
stored data that was retrieved from a hospital data network, their
combination also fails to teach or suggest at least this limitation.” App. Br.
10. This “neither/nor” argument is unpersuasive because it fails to address
how or why the Examiner errs in finding the combined teachings of both
Salisbury and Graves renders the limitation obvious. See Final Act. 6—9;
Ans. 3—6.
Information and Data
Appellant also argues the Examiner erroneously “considers the terms
‘information’ and ‘data’ to be exchangeable.” App. Br. 10. Appellant
contends that, in the Specification and claims, “‘information’ and ‘data’ are
used to refer to different things.” Id. at 10-11. We agree with Appellant
that the terms information and data as used in claim 12 refer to different
things. Any disagreement between Appellant and the Examiner over the
relative meanings of the terms information and data is, however, moot,
because the Examiner’s rejection maps different items from Salisbury and
Graves to the recited “information associated with the data” and to the
recited “data” that is retrieved and stored. See Final Act. 6—9; Ans. 5—6
(“Thus, whether or not ‘Data’ is the same as ‘information’ or whether ‘Data’
and ‘information’ as treated as different things, the rejection still applies.”).
Conclusion
In view of the foregoing, Appellant has not persuaded us of error by
the Examiner in the rejection of claim 12. Accordingly, we sustain the
6
Appeal 2016-001234
Application 13/061,361
Examiner’s rejection. In doing so, we adopt the findings and reasons of the
Examiner. See Final Act. 6—9; Ans. 3—6. We also sustain the rejection of
claims 13, 14, 16—24, and 26, for which Appellant provides no substantive
arguments separate from those for claim 12. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(i)(iv)
DECISION
For the above reasons, we affirm the rejection of claims 12—14, lb-
24, and 26. 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
7