Ex Parte Tomlinson et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardNov 18, 201412472650 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 18, 2014) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte HAROLD WOODRUFF TOMLINSON, JR., MICHAEL RICHARD DURLING, RASHI TIWARI, and YASER KHALIFA ____________ Appeal 2013-000577 Application 12/472,6501 Technology Center 2800 ____________ Before BRADLEY R. GARRIS, KAREN M. HASTINGS, and WESLEY B. DERRICK, Administrative Patent Judges. HASTINGS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner’s final decision rejecting claims 1, 2, 4–8, 10–20, 22, 23, and 25–27.2 We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. 1 The Real Party in Interest is General Electric Company. (Br. 2). 2 The Examiner has entered Appellants’ amendment cancelling claim 21 (Ans. 3; Br. 2). Appeal 2013-000577 Application 12/472,650 2 Claim 1 is illustrative of the claimed subject matter (emphasis added): 1. An energy measurement system comprising: at least one sensor configured to measure at least one output signal associated with a plurality of appliances; an orientation module configured to gather publicly available information associated with a consumer location of the appliances; a planning module configured to generate an appliance database comprising probabilities of appliance presence at the consumer location based on an input signal from the orientation module; a decomposition module configured to decompose the at least one output signal into constituent individual loads and therefrom identify energy consumption corresponding to each appliance based on the appliance database; a communication interface configured to transmit the decomposed output signal. Independent claim 17 is directed to a method corresponding to claim 1, and independent claim 25 is directed to an energy management system similar to claim 1 (Br., Claims App’x). The Examiner maintains the following rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a): (a) Claims 1, 2, 4–8, 10, 11, 15, 17–20, 22, and 25–27 as unpatentable over Rada et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2010/0191487 A1, pub. July 29, 2010) in view of Hussey, JR et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2010/0010993 A1, pub. Jan. 14, 2010); (b) Claim 12 as unpatentable over Rada, Hussey, and Nakamura (Load Monitoring System of Electric Appliances Based on Hidden Markov Model, 2006 Transactions of the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan 1223 –1229); (c) claims 13 and 14 as unpatentable over Rada, Hussey, and Hart Appeal 2013-000577 Application 12/472,650 3 (Nonintrusive Appliance Load Monitoring, 80 Proceedings of the IEEE 1870–1891 (1992)); and (d) claims 16 and 23 as unpatentable over Rada, Hussey, and Baranski et al. (Genetic Algorithm for Pattern Detection in NIALM Systems, IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics 3462– 3468 (2004)). Appellants’ arguments focus on limitations common to independent claims 1, 17, and 25 (Br. generally). Appellants rely upon these arguments for all the dependent claims in rejection (a) as well as for rejections (b) – (d) (Br. 6, 7). Accordingly, all the claims stand or fall together. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (2011). ANALYSIS We have thoroughly reviewed each of Appellants’ arguments for patentability. However, we are in agreement with the Examiner that the claimed subject matter of representative claim 1 is unpatentable under § 103 in view of the applied prior art. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s prior art rejections for the reasons explained in the Answer, and we add the following primarily for emphasis. In assessing whether a claim to a combination of prior art elements would have been obvious, the question to be asked is whether the improvement of the claim is more than the predictable use of prior art elements or steps according to their established functions. KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007). “[T]he analysis need not seek out precise teachings directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for a court can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of ordinary skill in the art would employ.” Id. at 418. Appeal 2013-000577 Application 12/472,650 4 We are not persuaded by Appellants’ argument that because Hussey matches personal information about internet users to specific individuals, it does not disclose the probability of appliance presence as recited in the claims (Br. 5). Likewise, Appellants’ argument that Rada does not disclose a planning module configured to generate an appliance database because “Rada discloses generating detailed usage information about the electrical devices and the usage information is not the same as appliance database comprising probabilities of appliance presence” (Br. 6) is also not persuasive. Both of these arguments fail to consider the prior art as a whole, and do not directly address the Examiner’s position. See also, e.g., In re Preda, 401 F.2d 825, 826 (CCPA 1968) ( it is well established that in evaluating references it is proper to take into account not only the specific teachings of the references but also the inferences which one skilled in the art would reasonably be expected to draw therefrom). Appellants have not sufficiently identified harmful error in the Examiner’s detailed position that one of ordinary skill would have appreciated that Hussey’s “information associator 110 . . . is able to take any two pieces of data and output a confidence score that indicates the likelihood [that is, probability] that the information belongs to the same person” (Ans. 24) and applied that concept to Rada’s energy usage monitoring system (Ans. 24–26; no Reply Brief has been filed). Appellants have not provided any persuasive technical rationale or any credible evidence to refute the Examiner’s determination [I]t would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, at the time of the Appellant’s invention, to modify the planning module of Rada, to generate an appliance database comprising probabilities of appliance presence at the consumer location, based on the teachings of Hussey, to ensure that the appliance Appeal 2013-000577 Application 12/472,650 5 information downloaded by the energy monitoring device of Rada matches the consumer using the appliance. (Ans. 26; Br. generally.) See KSR, 550 U.S. at 421 (“A person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton.”). As pointed out by the Examiner, Appellants’ claims do not require generating a “new database” that precludes “field training or manual intervention” (Br. 6; Ans. 26). Limitations not appearing in the claims cannot be relied upon for patentability. In re Self, 671 F.2d 1344, 1348 (CCPA 1982). Therefore, we affirm the Examiner’s § 103 rejections of all the claims on appeal. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136. ORDER AFFIRMED cdc Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation