Ex Parte Simhi et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 29, 2016

11770933 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 29, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
111770,933 0612912007 MeravSimhi
52025 7590 05/03/2016
SAP SE c/o BUCKLEY, MASCHOFF & TALWALKAR LLC
50 LOCUST A VENUE
NEW CANAAN, CT 06840
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.
2007P00148US 7150
EXAMINER
HEFFINGTON, JOHN M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2172
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):
martin@BMTPATENT.COM
szpara@bmtpatent.com
colabella@bmtpatent.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte MERA V SIMHI, GALIA DUCHOVNY,
ARIEL TAMMMAM, RAN GROSS, and ADI LA VI
Appeal2014-008249
Application 11/770,933
Technology Center 2100
Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JAMES R. HUGHES, and ERIC S. FRAHM,
Administrative Patent Judges.
DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a Final Rejection of
claims 1, 3-9, 11, 13-18, and 20-36. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b ).
We affirm.
The invention relates to the combination of a visual design tool and
meta-model rules for the creation of content for a business enterprise portal
Appeal2014-008249
Application 11/770,933
(see Spec. 3:18-30). Claim 9, reproduced below, is illustrative of the
claimed subject matter1:
9. A portal modeling system, comprising:
a processor executing program code for a plurality of
components, the plurality of components including:
a layout component associated with a visualization layer,
the layout component to receive, from a user, portal content
information via a graphical user interface;
a visual design tool component to exchange information
with the layout component via a shared state object, the visual
design tool including a mediator to bridge the layout component
with a persistent representation of portal content information;
and
a meta-model component, wherein the mediator controls
the visualization layer based at least in part on information
received from the meta-model component;
wherein the information received from the meta-model
component includes meta-model rules that indicate that a
particular portal component is not allowed to be dragged into a
particular portal container in a display; and
wherein the meta-model rules that indicate that a particular
portal component is not allowed to be dragged into a particular
portal container are: (i) stored separately from the visual design
tool executing in the design-time environment and (ii) provided
to the visual design tool from an off-line repository.
1 Although Appellants nominally argue independent claims 1, 9, and 17 and
the respective dependent claims separately, the arguments presented for each
group appear to be the same (see App. Br. 10---50). Therefore, we deem all
claims to be argued together, and we select claim 9 as representative.
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Application 11/770,933
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Hefetz
Trinon
Perantatos
Glein
US 2004/0123238 Al June 24, 2004
US 2006/0161466 Al July 20, 2006
US 2006/0212790 Al Sept. 21, 2006
US 2007 /0055932 Al Mar. 8, 2007
REJECTIONS
The Examiner made the following rejections:
Claims 1, 3-9, 11, 13-18, 20-30, and 34--36 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Hefetz and Perantatos.
Claims 22-24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Hefetz, Perantatos, and Glein.
Claims 31-33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Hefetz, Perantatos, and Trinon.
ANALYSIS
Appellants contend the Examiner's combination of Hefetz' s portal
page design system and Perantatos' s rule that disallows dragging and
dropping certain links into a target group of links while creating a web page
would not have resulted in the claimed invention (see App. Br. 30, Reply Br.
13, 19). Specifically, Appellants argue
even if Hefetz et al. was modified to include meta-model rules
that indicate that a particular portal component is not allowed to
be dragged into a particular portal component, which
Appellant[ s] [do] not admit would be obvious, those rules would
have been added to the layout editor of Hefetz et al., which as
pointed out above, the Final Office Action has interpreted as
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Application 11/770,933
the visual design tool, and as a result, the added rules would
not be (i) stored separately from the visual design tool.
(App. Br. 30). This is because "Perantatos et al. teach that the editing
application or tool (i.e., the editor) not the page being edited (i.e., the thing
being editeef), determines that a link is not allowed to be dropped into a
particular location" (App. Br. 32-33).
Consequently, ifthe teaching of Perantatos et al. was to be
added to Hefetz et al., the rules disallowing the dropping of the
link (i.e., the asserted meta-model rules indicate that a particular
portal component is not allowed to be dragged into a particular
portal container included in a display) would be added to the
layout editor of Hefetz et al. (i.e., the editor and asserted visual
design tool) and not to the portal page layout templates ofHefetz
et al. (i.e., the things being editeef).
(App. Br. 33).
In other words, Appellants assert the Examiner's combination would
not result in a system where "meta-model rules that indicate that a particular
portal component is not allowed to be dragged into a particular portal
container are ... stored separately from the visual design tool," as recited in
claim 9, because the proposed combination would require Perantatos' s rule
to be included within Hefetz's portal layout editor, i.e., the "visual design
tool," not within Hefetz' s separately stored portal layout templates, i.e., the
"meta-model rules." We disagree with Appellants.
Hefetz discloses a system for portal page design that includes a portal
development tool with a portal layout editor and portal layout templates (see
Hefetz i-fi-1 5, 9, 10, 45). The templates are stored in particular file system
locations relative to the portal directory (see Hefetz i1 53). We agree with
the Examiner's finding that Hefetz' s portal layout editor and portal layout
templates meet the respective claim 9 limitations of a "visual design tool"
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Application 11/770,933
and "meta-model rules," and that the portal templates are "stored separately"
from the layout editor, in accordance with claim 9 (see Final Act. 6-7; Ans.
5, 7). The Examiner further finds, and we agree, that Perantatos discloses
the claim 9 feature of "meta-model rules that indicate that a particular portal
component is not allowed to be dragged into a particular portal container"
(Final Act. 8). Specifically, Perantatos discloses a web page organization
system where "if a link is dragged to a group of links where the nature of the
dragged link will be incompatible with a target group of links or other web
page control, dropping the link may be disallowed" (Perantatos i-f 33).
We are not persuaded by Appellants' argument that combining
Perantatos' s rule disallowing certain links to be dragged and dropped into a
group of links with Hefetz's system for portal page design would necessarily
result in the rule being incorporated into the portal layout editor, and not
being stored separately from the portal layout editor (see App. Br. 30).
Rather, we find it would have been obvious to modify Hefetz's system to
include Perantatos' s rule within the portal layout templates that define the
portal page design in Hefetz. Hefetz's template can include "HTML
components having client-side scripting that enables dragging components
on the content container and later saving the changes made" (Hefetz i-f 28).
Thus, because Hefetz's template includes scripting that enables dragging
components into a container, one of ordinary skill in the art would have
combined Perantatos' s rule governing drag and drop functionality with
Hefetz's system by including Perantatos's rule in Hefetz's template, not in
the editor-i.e., "stored separately" from the editor in the language of claim
9. Appellants' position that Perantatos' s rule would need to be part of an
editor does not take into account what the references, taken together, would
have suggested:
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Application 11/770,933
The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a
secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the
structure of the primary reference; .... Rather, the test is what
the combined teachings of the references would have suggested
to those of ordinary skill in the art.
In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981). Here, Perantatos suggests a
particular rule that could be implemented within the drag and drop
functionality provided by Hefetz's templates, regardless of whether
Perantatos' s rule is incorporated into an editor in Perantatos' s system.
We are also not persuaded by Appellants' additional argument that the
Examiner has not articulated some reasoning with a rational underpinning to
support the conclusion of obviousness (see App. Br. 33-35). The Examiner
cites to Perantatos for a reason to combine the references, which discloses
disallowing the dragging and dropping a link if "the nature of the dragged
link will be incompatible with a target group of links or other web page
control" (Perantatos i-f 33). "For example, if a group of links has a group-
level ordering causing included links to be sorted by date, and a dragged link
has no associated date, dropping the dragged link may not be allowed
because the target group may have no way of ordering the dropped link"
(id.). We find that avoiding incompatible components is a sufficient reason
with a rational underpinning to apply Perantatos's rule to Hefetz's system.
That is, in view of Perantatos, one of ordinary skill would have understood
the benefit of limiting the dragging and dropping of incompatible
components into the same container of a portal page in Hefetz' s portal page
design system.
Appellants' argument that the Examiner's combination would require
each template in Hefetz to have a copy of the rules, which would result in an
undue storage capacity burden (App. Br. 34; Reply Br. 37), is not persuasive
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Application 11/770,933
because as discussed above, Hefetz discloses that certain drag and drop
scripting is already present in the portal templates (see Hefetz i-f 28). Indeed,
there is a tradeoff to storing multiple copies of rules, but Hefetz is evidence
that such tradeoff may be worth making. We are also not persuaded by
Appellants' argument that in the Examiner's combination a portal layout
template would lack information about a component being dragged from
another location, and thus storing Perantatos' s rule in the template, as
opposed to the editor which would have knowledge of all components,
would be ineffective (see App. Br. 34; Reply Br. 38). However, Appellants
have not presented evidence to suggest that the rule included with a portal
template in the Examiner's combination would not have access to
information on possible components. Rather, Hefetz's templates must
acquire some data regarding components which are dragged to a container in
order to save the portal page being created (see Hefetz i-f 28).
We are, therefore, not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting claim
9, and claims 1, 3-8, 11, 13-18, and 20-36, which we deem to not be
specifically argued separately from claim 9.
CONCLUSIONS
The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1, 3-9, 11, 13-18, and
20-36 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
DECISION
For the above reasons, the Examiner's rejections of claims 1, 3-9, 11,
13-18, and 20-36 are 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)(l )(iv).
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AFFIRMED
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