Ex Parte UrdangDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 28, 201713916420 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 28, 2017) Copy Citation 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. 13/916,420 06/12/2013 Erik Gwyn Urdang 0465-US-01 1092 83579 7590 01/02/2018 LEVEL 3 COMMUNICATIONS, LLC Attn: Patent Docketing 1025 Eldorado Blvd. Broomfield, CO 80021 EXAMINER JEON, JAE UK ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2193 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/02/2018 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): patent, docketing @ leve!3. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte ERIK GWYN URDANG Appeal 2017-008378 Application 13/916,420 Technology Center 2100 Before CARLA M. KRIVAK, HUNG H. BUI, and JON M. JURGOVAN, Administrative Patent Judges. KRIVAK, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1—20, which are all the claims pending in the application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Level 3 Communications, LLC. Appeal 2017-008378 Application 13/916,420 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant’s invention relates to systems and methods for “generating generic data patterns or structures that may be used to generate data-driven objects for subsequent use in software development” to “design the anticipated behavior of a software application” (Abstract). Claims 1, 7, and 13 are independent. Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is exemplary of the subject matter on appeal. 1. A system comprising: a memory; and at least one processor interacting with the memory to: define one or more generic objects in a standard data format; generate an application implemented based on the one or more generic objects; and update the one or more generic objects by removing or adding an attribute in a data representation corresponding to at least one of the one or more generic objects, thereby changing the functionality of the application by adding, removing, modifying, or updating a human interactive feature from user interface without generating a new version of the application. REFERENCES and REJECTIONS2 (1) The Examiner rejected claims 1,5, 7, 11, 13, and 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 based upon the teachings of Getchius (US 6,496,843 Bl; issued Dec. 17, 2002) and Paas (US 7,174,361 Bl; issued Feb. 6, 2007). 2 Claims 19 and 20 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. § 112 (pre-AIA), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement (Final Act. 2.) However, this rejection was withdrawn in the Examiner’s Answer, and is no longer pending on appeal (Ans. 3, 11). 2 Appeal 2017-008378 Application 13/916,420 (2) The Examiner rejected claims 6, 12, and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 based upon the teachings of Getchius, Paas, and Schmitter (US 7,168,062 Bl; issued Jan. 23, 2007). (3) The Examiner rejected claims 2—4, 8—10, and 14—16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 based upon the teachings of Getchius, Paas, and Patnode (US 7,475,032 Bl; issued Jan. 6, 2009). (4) The Examiner rejected claims 19 and 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 based upon the teachings of Getchius, Paas, Schmitter, and Vishnia-Shabtai (US 2007/0061427 Al; published Mar. 15, 2007). ANALYSIS With respect to claim 1, Appellant contends the Examiner’s combination of Getchius and Paas does not teach or suggest a memory to update the one or more generic objects . . . thereby changing the functionality of the application without seneratins a new version of the application’” (Br. 6). Particularly, Appellant argues “the ‘generic objects’ referenced in . . . Getchius can only be undated by also updating the purported ‘application’ (e.g., the PHTML script code),” in contrast to Appellant’s “claim 1 [that] recites: ‘updating the one or more generic objects . . . without generating a new version of the application’” (Br. 8 (citing Getchius col. 1,11. 62—67; col. 7,11. 49-57; col. 21,11. 7—25)). Appellant argues Paas does not teach “generic objects” and an “application” generated based on generic objects, as claimed (Br. 10—12). Rather, Paas merely discloses a script that “cannot correspond to a generic object because a generic object includes a representation of data only, decoupled from logical components, and the script of Paas combines the data with the logical 3 Appeal 2017-008378 Application 13/916,420 components” (Br. 12 (citing Paas col. 1,11. 62—65; col. 10,11. 40-41)). Lastly, Appellant asserts the Examiner’s combination of Getchius and Paas is improper and frustrates the purpose of claim 1 because “Paas . . . combines data with logical components in its script. Paas therefore teaches doing essentially the opposite from what is taught in the present application’s specification by [Paas’] combining the two elements (logic and data) that the present application states should be segregated” (Br. 12). We do not agree. We agree with and adopt the Examiner’s findings as our own. Particularly, we agree with the Examiner that Getchius “define[s] one or more generic objects in a standard data format” as claimed, by “storing each item of data as a generic object” represented by a “script [such as HTML] . . . indicating] handling of attributes and fields of each generic object” of various data types (Final Act. 3 (citing Getchius col. 1,11. 59—67; col. 6,11. 5—9; col. 7,11. 49—53); Ans. 5—6 (citing Getchius col. 21,11. 4—28; col. 22,11. 30-64)). Appellant does not rebut the Examiner’s finding that Getchius teaches the claimed “generic objects” (Ans. 6—7). Rather, Appellant argues Paas does not teach “generic objects, of which data-driven objects are a type, [which] may contain only data, and not programming logic” or any “logical components” (Br. 11—12 (citing Spec. ^fl[ 19, 21, 26)). Appellant’s argument regarding Paas is also not persuasive as that argument is not commensurate with “generic objects” as recited in claim 1 and, likewise, as described in Appellant’s Specification (Ans. 9). Particularly, Appellant’s Specification does not exclude logical components from “generic objects”; rather, Appellant’s Specification excludes logical components from “data- 4 Appeal 2017-008378 Application 13/916,420 driven objects”—which are not recited in claim 1 (Ans. 9; see Spec. 1119, 21, 26).3 We are also not persuaded by Appellant’s arguments that Getchius’ generic objects “can only be undated by also updating the purported ‘application’ (e.g., the PHTML script code),” in contrast to Appellant’s “claim 1 [which] recites: ‘updating the one or more generic objects . . . without generating a new version of the application’” (Br. 8). Appellant’s arguments do not address the Examiner’s specific findings that the application in Getchius is the “GTE Superpages online system (online yellow page system)'1'’ displaying business listings generated based on generic objects (Ans. 5—6 (citing Getchius col. 21,11. 4—28; col. 26,11. 61—65; Fig. 3) (emphasis added)). We agree with the Examiner’s findings. Getchius’ GTE Superpages interface is commensurate with the description of “application” in Appellant’s Specification.4 3 Appellant’s Specification describes “generating data-driven objects that effectively decouple the data of a[sic] object from its logical components (e.g.[,] methods),” such that a “data-driven object includes a representation of data only” (see Spec. H 19, 21 (emphases added)). Additionally, “generated generic data-driven data objects may be implemented in a standard data format, such as according to an extensible markup language (‘XML’),” but “such an implementation is not intended to be limiting in any way. Rather, it is contemplated that other types of data formats may be implemented, some of which include JavaScript object notation (‘JSON’), ordered graph data language (‘OGDL’), comma-separated values (‘CSV’), and yet another markup language (‘YAML’), among others” (see Spec. 126 (emphases added)). 4 Appellant’s Specification provides that “[a]ny software generated from the source code, which may be any type of software application . . . may process, analyze, and/or otherwise access the generated data-driven objects,” and “[i]n one particular embodiment, the generated application may be a graphical user-interface including various interactive elements, such as 5 Appeal 2017-008378 Application 13/916,420 We also agree with the Examiner that Getchius updates generic objects without generating (e.g., recompiling) a new version of the application (Ans. 5—6). Particularly, the generic objects [of Getchius] are updated via adding or removing object attributes ... by updating the script or PHTML to effect the GUI changes [i.e. [,] color features changes] . . . without changing the application code or recompiling the web application, which is GTE Superpages online system . . . [and] this technique provides for rapid integration of new data types [generic data objects] without requiring recompilation or code changes in source code which uses instances of data that include the additional data types (Ans. 5—6 (citing Getchius col. 1,11. 40-56; col. 9,11. 1—8; col. 22,11. 30- 64)). Appellant’s arguments have not addressed the Examiner’s findings. Additionally, Paas discloses “user-interface components [the generic objects for human interactive features] . . . can be updated . . . without having to rewrite and recompile the application code” of applications using the updated user-interface components, thereby also suggesting “without generating a new version of the application” (Ans. 7—8 (citing Paas col. 11, 11. 49-55)). Appellant argues Paas frustrates the purpose of claim 1 because Paas “combin[es] the two elements (logic and data) that the present application states should be segregated” (see Br. 12). This argument is not persuasive because the claimed “generic objects” do not require segregation of logic and data, as discussed supra. buttons, forms, fields, selections, inputs, streams, etc., that are data-driven by the generic data objects generated by the processing device” (see Spec. 130 (emphases added)). 6 Appeal 2017-008378 Application 13/916,420 In light of the broad terms recited in claim 1 and the arguments presented, Appellant has failed to clearly distinguish the claimed invention over the prior art relied on by the Examiner. Thus, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1, independent claims 7 and 13 for which Appellant provides substantially the same arguments, and dependent claims 2—6, 8—12, and 14—20, not separately argued (Br. 13—14). DECISION The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1—20 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 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation