Ex Parte Son

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Mar 29, 2017

14199123 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 29, 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.
14/199,123 03/06/2014 Tae-Hwan SON 0201-0867 9868
68103 7590
Jefferson IP Law, LLP
1130 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 420
Washington, DC 20036
EXAMINER
PATEL, MAHENDRA R
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2645
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/31/2017 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):
u sdocketing @ j effersonip .com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte TAE-HWAN SON
Appeal 2017-001017
Application 14/199,123
Technology Center 2600
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, ADAM J. PYONIN, and
AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges.
MOORE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2017-001017
Application 14/199,123
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1, 3—11, and 13, which are all of the pending claims. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
THE INVENTION
The application is directed to “a method and an apparatus for
processing a message transceived in a portable terminal.” (Spec 12.) Claim
1, reproduced below, is representative:
1. A method of processing a message in a first terminal, the
method comprising:
receiving the message from a second terminal;
identifying location information of the first terminal in re­
sponse to the receiving of the message;
configuring message data including the message and the lo­
cation information;
storing the message data in the first terminal; and
displaying map data with a location identifier indicating a lo­
cation corresponding to the location information.
THE REFERENCES AND THE REJECTION
Claims 1—14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Baghdasaryan (US 8,135,377 B2; issued March 13, 2012) and Oh et al.
(US 2008/0171555 Al; published Jul. 17, 2008). (See Final Act. 4.)
1 Appellant identifies Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. as the real party in
interest. (See App. Br. 2.)
2
Appeal 2017-001017
Application 14/199,123
ANALYSIS
The Examiner finds the claims unpatentable over the combination of
Baghdasaryan and Oh, both of which teach one device sending a text
message with location information to a second device, where the second
device then uses the location information for navigation. (See Final Act. 4—
5.) In Baghdasaryan, for example, “a sample text message is inputted, i.e.,
‘Please meet me at,’ and an option to select ‘Attach Location’ is presented,”
the selection of which “causes the first personal navigation device 14 to
obtain and attach a current location of the first personal navigation device 14
to the text message under preparation.” (Baghdasaryan 3:36-42.) Then,
“the second personal navigation device 20 recognizes the attached location
information of an incoming text message and offers to navigate to a location
represented by the location data on display 64, for example, in UI 80.” (Id.
at 3:50-53.) Oh similarly teaches transmitting a “text message as well as
navigational directions starting at [a] second mobile electronic device’s
geographic location and ending at [a] first mobile electronic device’s
geographic location” and “[i]n other embodiments . . . updating the
navigational directions and/or updating the embedded map in real time.”
(Oh 16.)
Appellant argues the rejections are in error because “Oh does not
disclose mapping the location of the receiving terminal on a map when a
message is received” as “Oh merely discloses the composition of the
transmitting terminal, but nowhere does Oh disclose the composition of the
receiving terminal.” (See App. Br. 5.)
This argument is not commensurate with the scope of the claims,
which do not recite “when a message is received.” It is also unpersuasive
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Appeal 2017-001017
Application 14/199,123
because one of skill in the art would have known that in order to initially
determine and then maintain the navigation directions at the receiving
terminal, one necessarily would need to determine the location of the
receiving terminal. Thus, the combination includes “receiving [a] message
from a second terminal” (i.e., receiving the message with the destination
information) and, “in response to the receiving of the message” (i.e., when
such a message is received), “identifying location information of the first
terminal” (i.e., determining where the terminal is in order to determine how
to navigate from there to the destination).
Because we find Appellant’s argument unpersuasive, we sustain the
Section 103(a) rejection of claim 1 and, because Appellant does not offer
additional arguments for the remaining claims, we also sustain the Section
103(a) rejections of claims 3—11 and 13.2
DECISION
The rejection of claims 1, 3—11, and 13 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)(l)(iv).
AFFIRMED
2 Although the Reply briefly cites the “configuring” claim language (Reply
Br. 3), we find any such argument waived by its omission from the Appeal
Brief. See Ex parte Borden, 93 USPQ2d 1473, 1474 (BPAI 2010)
(informative); 37 C.F.R. § 41.41(b)(2). And, in any event, the “configuring”
is so broadly described and claimed that it would cover any system
(including that of the combination) that selects a position identification
method. See Spec. 172.
4