Ex Parte Raghunathan et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardSep 15, 2014

12358488 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 15, 2014)

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. 12/358,488 01/23/2009 Badri Raghunathan 1576-0257 2609 28078 7590 09/16/2014 MAGINOT, MOORE & BECK, LLP One Indiana Square, Suite 2200 INDIANAPOLIS, IN 46204 EXAMINER HILGENDORF, DALE W ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3662 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 09/16/2014 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________________ Ex parte BADRI RAGHUNATHAN, ENYLTON M. COELHO, and JAN BECKER ____________________ Appeal 2012-008602 Application 12/358,488 Technology Center 3600 ____________________ Before MICHAEL C. ASTORINO, SCOTT A. DANIELS, and GEORGE R. HOSKINS, Administrative Patent Judges. DANIELS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the rejections of claims 1, 2, 4–7, 9–14, and 16–23.1 Claims 1, 10, and 17 are independent, and claims 3, 8 and 15 are canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 The Final Office Action of July 20, 2011, and the Examiner’s Answer, both indicate that dependent claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shuman in view of Marvin. Final Act. 2, Ans. 4. Claim 3 was canceled by amendment dated May 6, 2011. Appeal 2012-008602 Application 12/358,488 2 THE CLAIMED INVENTION The claims are directed to a method and apparatus for an adaptive vehicle lighting system. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: Claim 1. An adaptive external vehicle lighting system comprising: a vehicle communication network; a memory including an atlas database, a directory database, and production instructions for generating a model of a vehicle and an environment outside of the vehicle, identifying an object of interest based upon the generated model, analyzing rendering criteria associated with the identified object of interest, and rendering object of interest data based upon the analysis; a processor operably connected to the vehicle communication network and to the memory and configured to execute the program instructions; and at least one rendering system operably connected to the processor through the vehicle communication network and configured to render the object of interest data using an associated external lighting system of the vehicle, wherein the object of interest data includes data, obtained from the directory database, which is associated with the identified object of interest. REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Marvin Shuman Eschler US 5,781,195 US 2003/0065432 A1 US 6,791,511 B2 July 14, 1998 Apr. 3, 2003 Sept. 14, 2004 Appeal 2012-008602 Application 12/358,488 3 Tedesco Donath Braun US 2004/0190767 A1 US 2005/0149251 A1 US 6,993,255 B2 Sept. 30, 2004 July 7, 2005 Jan. 31, 2006 Boncyk US 2010/0034468 A1 Feb. 11, 2010 REJECTIONS Appellants seek our review of the following rejections: Claims 1, 2, 10–12, and 17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shuman and Marvin. Ans. 4. Claims 1, 2, 10–12, and 17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shuman, Marvin, and Donath. Ans. 7. Claims 4, 7, 13, and 16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shuman, Marvin, and Braun. Ans. 16. Claims 5, 6, and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shuman, Marvin, and Eschler. Ans. 18. Claim 9 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shuman, Marvin, and Donath. Ans. 20. Claims 18–20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shuman, Marvin, and Tedesco. Ans. 20. Claims 21–23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C §103(a) as being unpatentable over Shuman, Donath or Marvin, and Boncyk. Ans. 22. Appeal 2012-008602 Application 12/358,488 4 ANALYSIS Claims 1, 2, 10–12, and 17 as unpatentable over Shuman, Marvin and/or Donath2 The Examiner found that Shuman discloses a vehicle computing architecture 100 which includes a “smart” headlight vehicle lighting application 224. Ans. 4, see Shuman Fig. 6. The Examiner explained that computing architecture 100 shown in Shuman’s Figure 2 discloses generally a communication data network and a memory (drive recorder 225) with software program instructions implemented by processors 212. Ans. 4–5. The Examiner conceded that Shuman does not disclose an “atlas database” or a “directory database” as recited in claim 1. Id. With respect to the directory database, the Examiner also stated that Shuman does not explicitly disclose the limitation in claim 1 “wherein the object of interest data includes data, obtained from the directory database, which is associated with the identified object of interest.” Id. at 7, 10. The Examiner asserts that Marvin discloses the atlas and directory database limitations where Marvin discusses the intent to improve rendering two-dimensional views of a three- dimensional surface. Id., citing Marvin col. 3, ll. 20–30, and col. 4. ll. 1–10. Further, the Examiner contends that with respect to an “object of interest,” Donath reveals “a real-time accessible geospatial database that can be used to assist a driver.” Ans. 10. Appellants argue that the Examiner’s combination of references does not disclose the database elements of the claims, and also that the rejection 2 The Final Office Action of July 20, 2012 (page 2) applies the separate obviousness grounds of Shuman and Donath, and then, Shuman and Marvin, to claims 1, 2, 10–12, and 17. The Examiner’s Answer applies the grounds of Shuman and Marvin, and then Shuman and Marvin, in view of Donath, to the same claims. Ans. 4, 7. For purposes of clarity, we address all these grounds together as Shuman, Marvin and/or Donath. Appeal 2012-008602 Application 12/358,488 5 fails to provide “a clear articulation of the reason for finding the claims to be obvious.” App. Br. 7–8. For the following reasons, we determine that the Examiner has failed to clearly articulate a persuasive reasoning with rational underpinning supporting the combination of Shuman with either Marvin and/or Donath. In the Answer, the Examiner explains that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art “to incorporate the teaching of Marvin into the disclosure of the combination of Shuman and Donath to store data that can be used to render two-dimensional views of a three dimensional surface.” Ans. 10, citing Marvin col. 3, ll. 20–30. Addressing Appellants’ contention that this explanation does not provide the required articulated reasoning supporting the combination of references, the Examiner argues that “[i]n this case, it would have been extremely advantageous to combine the prior art of record for the purposes stated in the detailed action below.” Ans. 23. Neither the rejections portion of the Answer, nor the Response to Arguments portion of the Answer, explains sufficiently why one of ordinary skill in the art would combine these references to meet the particular claim limitations. The determination by the Examiner that the combination would be “advantageous” is conclusory and unsupported by evidence or technical reasoning explaining how, or why, one of ordinary skill would make or find the combination of either reference beneficial. In other words, the Examiner has failed to set forth a persuasive articulated reasoning based on rational underpinnings for why one of ordinary skill in the art would have been led to apply the rendering of a three-dimensional feature as a two-dimensional feature in the form of entries in a stored database and relating the stored data to an object of interest for a vehicle with a “smart” headlight system. See In Appeal 2012-008602 Application 12/358,488 6 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) (“[R]ejections on obvious grounds cannot be sustained by mere conclusory statements; instead, there must be some articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness.”). That such a combination could be accomplished is not sufficient. Accordingly, we do not sustain the obviousness rejections of claims 1, 2, 10–12, and 17 in view of Shuman, Marvin, and/or Donath. Dependent claims 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 14, 16, and 18–23 As the remaining rejections of dependent claims 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 14, 16, and 18–23 all rely upon the underlying combination of Shuman and Marvin, or Shuman and Donath, for the reasons explained above, we also do not sustain the remaining obviousness rejections. DECISION For the above reasons, the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1, 2, 4–7, 9–14, and 16–23 are REVERSED. REVERSED mls