Ex Parte Tengler et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 20, 2017

12165294 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 20, 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. 12/165,294 06/30/2008 Steven C. Tengler 262805 1707 73811 7590 03/22/2017 Leydig, Voit & Mayer, Ltd. Two Prudential Plaza, Suite 4900 180 North Stetson Avenue Chicago, IL 60601-6731 EXAMINER KIM, KYUNG J ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3665 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/22/2017 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): Chgpatent @ ley dig. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte STEVEN C. TENGLER, RICHARD A. JOHNSON, and GARY A. WATKINS Appeal 2015-005541 Application 12/165,2941 Technology Center 3600 Before MICHAEL C. ASTORINO, CYNTHIA L. MURPHY, and ALYSSA A. FINAMORE, Administrative Patent Judges. ASTORINO, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL The Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the Examiner’s decision finally rejecting claims 1, 5, 8, 21, and 24—27. We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 The Appellants identify the real party in interest as General Motors Corporation. Appeal Br. 1. Appeal 2015-005541 Application 12/165,294 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Claimed Subject Matter Claims 1 and 24 are the independent claims on appeal. Claim 1, reproduced below with emphasis added, is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal. 1. In a mobile traffic reporting system, a method for enhancing subscriber privacy while delivering in-vehicle alerts to a traffic probe vehicle associated with a subscriber, the method comprising: receiving, by a call center, input corresponding to the traffic probe vehicle opting in as a participant of a fleet of traffic reporting vehicles; receiving, by the call center, input of an alert configuration corresponding to the traffic probe vehicle from the subscriber, wherein the alert configuration includes an indication of types of alerts, selected from the group of alert types consisting of: a weather alert type and an emergency alert type, to be delivered to the traffic probe vehicle; disassociating, by the call center, subscriber information from traffic probe information to be received from the traffic probe vehicle by assigning a unique identifier to the traffic probe vehicle; storing, by the call center, the unique identifier in a table that includes cross-references between unique identifiers and subscriber information; periodically receiving, by the call center, a traffic probe message from the traffic probe vehicle, wherein the traffic probe message includes the unique identifier and further includes information regarding the vehicle’s location, speed, and direction of travel; collecting, by the call center, alert information from a plurality of data feeds, wherein the data feeds include weather data feeds, data feeds from police data centers, and data feeds from fire department data centers; correlating, by the call center, the collected alert information with vehicle location information of a received 2 Appeal 2015-005541 Application 12/165,294 traffic probe message so as to generate a plurality of relevant location-based alerts for the traffic probe vehicle; determining, by the call center, subscriber information that corresponds to the unique identifier of the traffic probe message by querying the table; determining, by the call center, the alert configuration corresponding to the traffic probe vehicle based on the subscriber information; filtering, by the call center, the plurality of relevant location-based alerts based on the determined alert configuration corresponding to the traffic probe vehicle and further based on whether any of the plurality of alerts has previously been delivered to the traffic probe vehicle; and delivering, by the call center, one or more filtered alerts to the traffic probe vehicle; wherein the one or more filtered alerts is delivered to the traffic probe vehicle within the same communication session wherein the received traffic probe message is received. Rejections Claims 1, 5, 24, and 25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Kirk,2 Piccioni,3 and Smith.4 Claims 8 and 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Kirk, Piccioni, Smith, and Pecen.5 Claims 21 and 27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Kirk, Piccioni, Smith, and Tretyak.6 2 Kirk et al. (US 7,650,227 B2, iss. Jan. 19, 2010). 3 Piccioni (US 6,842,774 Bl, iss. Jan. 11, 2005). 4 Smith et al. (US 2005/0065678 Al, pub. Mar. 24, 2005). 5 Pecen et al. (US 2002/0147926 Al, pub. Oct. 10, 2002). 6 Tretyak et al. (US 2006/0276184 Al, pub. Dec. 7, 2006). 3 Appeal 2015-005541 Application 12/165,294 ANALYSIS The Examiner determines that the combined teachings of Kirk, Piccioni, and Smith fail to “explicitly disclose that the one or more filtered alerts is delivered to the traffic probe vehicle within a same communication session wherein the received traffic probe messaged is received.” Final Act. 7 (emphasis added). Thereafter, the Examiner appears to reason that because Kirk teaches receiving a traffic probe message and Piccioni teaches delivering a filtered alert during a communication session, that, in combination, these references teach “one or more filtered alerts is delivered to the traffic probe vehicle within the same communication session wherein the received traffic probe message is received,” as recited in independent claims 1 and 24 (Appeal Br., Claims App.). See Final Act. 7. The Appellants argue that the Examiner’s rejection includes the following erroneous premise “that it would have been obvious for a call center to receive anonymous traffic probe messages and deliver subscriber- specific alerts within the same communication session even though none of the cited references describes doing so.” Appeal Br. 6; see id. at 7—8; Reply Br. 5-6. In response, the Examiner reasons that “it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art to desire a single mobile traffic reporting system and modifying Kirk in view of Piccioni in order to accomplish such a system” because “it would be redundant to”: “perform multiple communication sessions in which data is being provided from the traffic probe to the server or the server to the mobile alert device” and “to require the user to require separate transmitting (for the traffic data reporting) and 4 Appeal 2015-005541 Application 12/165,294 receiving (for the location-based alerts) devices in order to communicate over the same cellular data network.” Ans. 7—8. As persuasively pointed out by the Appellants, the Examiner’s reasoning lacks adequate support in the references being relied upon, i.e., Kirk and Piccioni; and, the Examiner’s reasoning appears to rely on a post hoc rationale based on the claimed invention to cure the deficiencies of the references. Reply Br. 6. Thus, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1 and 24, and dependent claims 5 and 25, as unpatentable over Kirk, Piccioni, and Smith. The remaining rejections based on Kirk, Piccioni, and Smith in combination with Pecen or Tretyak rely on the same post hoc rationale as discussed above and are not remedied by the additional findings and reasoning provided by the Examiner for each of the remaining rejections. As such, we do not sustain the rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) of: claims 8 and 26 as unpatentable over Kirk, Piccioni, Smith, and Pecen; and claims 21 and 27 as unpatentable over Kirk, Piccioni, Smith, and Tretyak. DECISION We REVERSE the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1, 5, 8, 21, and 24—27. REVERSED 5