Ex Parte Tomlinson et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 18, 2014

12472650 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 18, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
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Ex parte HAROLD WOODRUFF TOMLINSON, JR.,
MICHAEL RICHARD DURLING, RASHI TIWARI,
and YASER KHALIFA
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Appeal 2013-000577
Application 12/472,6501
Technology Center 2800
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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).
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Application 12/472,650

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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
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(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.
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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
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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