Ex Parte Vdovjak

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 16, 2016

13132949 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 16, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
13/132,949 06/06/2011 Richard Vdovjak
24737 7590 11/18/2016
PHILIPS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & STANDARDS
465 Columbus A venue
Suite 340
Valhalla, NY 10595
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
2008P01102WOUS 9256
EXAMINER
DURANT, JONATHAN W
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3686
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/18/2016 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):
marianne.fox@philips.com
debbie.henn@philips.com
patti. demichele@Philips.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte RICHARD VDOVJAK
Appeal2014--004862
Application 13/132,949
Technology Center 3600
Before ANTON W. PETTING, MICHAEL C. ASTORINO, and
ROBERT J. SILVERMAN, Administrative Patent Judges.
PETTING, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE 1
Richard Vdovjak (Appellant) seeks review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the
Examiner's Final rejection of claims 1-20, the only claims pending in the
application on appeal. 2 We have jurisdiction over the appeal pursuant to
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
1 Our decision will make reference to the Appellant's Appeal Brief ("App.
Br.," filed November 12, 2013) and Reply Brief ("Reply Br.," filed March
17, 2014), and the Examiner's Answer ("Ans.," mailed January 17, 2014),
and Final Action ("Final Act.," mailed June 13, 2013).
2 The claims currently of record are those filed Nov. 12, 2013 and entered
according to the Advisory Action ("Adv. Act." mailed Jan. 15, 2014).
Appeal2014-004862
Application 13/132,949
The Appellant invented a way of managing patient records in a medical
environment. Specification 1 :2-5.
An understanding of the invention can be derived from a reading of
exemplary claim 1, which is reproduced below (bracketed matter and some
paragraphing added).
1. A method of reusing comparisons, comprising:
[ 1] receiving a record supplied by an outside party with an
input;
[2] comparing
the received record
with
a plurality of records currently maintained by a receiving
party
in order to determine if any two compared records
correspond to a same customer
with at least one computer processor [modifies
comparing, not customer];
[3] generating a likelihood ratio
based on a probability value
that the compared records match
with the at least one computer processor;
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[ 4] comparing
the likelihood ratio
to
an accept threshold
and to
a reject threshold,
the accept threshold being different from the reject
threshold
with the at least one computer processor;
[ 5] assigning a record
to an exception list
when the record's likelihood ratio a [sic] value
is both less than the accept threshold
and
is also greater than the reject threshold
to an exception list [sic]
\~1ith the at least one computer processor;
[ 6] determining whether the records on the exception list should
be accepted as a match or rejected as not matching
and
[7] recording the determination
with the at least one computer processor;
[8] receiving assertions made by outside parties
whether records on the exception list were accepted or
rejected as matching
with the at least one computer processor;
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Application 13/132,949
[9] comparing the records on the exception list
that were at least one of accepted and rejected
by both the party receiving the record and each outside
party
in order to calculate an assertion acceptance value for
each outside party
with the at least one computer processor;
and
[ 10] recording the assertion acceptance values in a matrix
format
with the at least one computer processor.
The Examiner relies upon the following prior art:
Borthwick
Stead et al.
("Stead")
US 2003/0126102 Al
US 2006/0287890 Al
July 3, 2003
Dec. 21, 2006
Gum_madi et aL; Modelling Group Trust For Peer-To-Peer Access
Control, Computer Society, Proceedings of the 15th International
Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications (DEXA'04),
pp. 971-978, (8/30/04--9/3/04).
Claim 9 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, fourth paragraph, as
failing to further limit the subject matter of a previous claim. 3
Claims 1-5, 8-13, and 15-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Borthwick and Gummadi.
Claims 6, 7, and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Borthwick, Gummadi, and Stead.
3 A rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 was withdrawn. Adv. Act. 2.
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Application 13/132,949
ISSUES
The issues of obviousness tum primarily on whether the applied art
describes calculating an assertion acceptance value for each outside party
based on the comparison of the records on the exception list that were at
least one of accepted and rejected by both the party receiving the record and
each outside party. The issues of being a proper dependent claim tum
primarily on whether a product instantiating a process claim is independent
or dependent.
FACTS PERTINENT TO THE ISSUES
The following enumerated Findings of Fact (FF) are believed to be
supported by a preponderance of the evidence.
Facts Related to the Prior Art
Borthwick
01. Borthwick is directed to determining whether stored data items
should be linked or merged. More specifically, the present
invention relates to making use of maximum entropy modeling to
determine the probability that two different computer database
records relate to the same person, entity, and/or transaction.
Borthwick para. 2.
02. Borthwick describes a significant database management
problem related to merging two databases into one. Suppose one
company merges with another company and now wants to create a
master customer database by merging together existing databases
from each company. It may be that some customers of the first
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Application 13/132,949
company were also customers of the second company. Some
mechanism should be used to recognize that two records with
common names or other data are actually for the same person or
entity. Borthwick para. 7.
03. Borthwick describes using a statistical technique known as
"maximum entropy modeling" to determine whether two records
should be linked or matched. Briefly, given a set of pairs of
records, which each have been marked with a reasonably reliable
"link" or "non-link" decision (the training data), Borthwick builds
a model using "Maximum Entropy Modeling" (or a similar
technique) which will return, for a new pair of records, the
probability that those two records should be linked. A high
probability of linkage indicates that the pair should be linked. A
low probability indicates that the pair should not be linked.
Intermediate probabilities (i.e., pairs with probabilities close to
0.5) can be held for human review. Borthwick para. 11.
04. Borthwick describes useful results with its scoring process:
computing the percentage of records on which the system was
able to make a decision within the user's precision tolerance (the
Human Removal Percentage), computing the percentage of
human-marked link and no-link records (the recall) which were
correctly marked with the required level of precision, and finally,
as a by-product, detecting candidate threshold values above which
and below which records can be linked/no-linked. Between the
threshold values, records should likely be held for human review.
The required level of precision may not be reached by using these
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thresholds on new data, but they are reasonable values to use since
on this test the thresholds give the user the minimum number of
records for human review given his/her stated precision tolerance.
The user is free to set the thresholds higher or lower. Borthwick
para. 127.
05. Borthwick describes how with thresholds set for 98% merge
precision, 1.2% of the record-pairs on which the DOH annotators
are able to make a link/no-link decision (i.e., excluding those pairs
which the annotators marked as "hold") needed to be reviewed by
a human being for a decision on whether to link the records (i.e.
1.2% of these records were marked by system 10 as "hold"). With
thresholds set for 99% merge precision, 4% of these pairs need to
be reviewed by a human being for a decision on whether to link
the records. Borthwick para. 148.
Gurnrnadi
06. Gummadi is directed to two important security issues related to
the aspect of peer-to-peer file sharing. First is the problem of
"Peer Selection," where the notion of security deals with the
identification and prevention of peers that display malicious
tendencies in their behavior. The second issue is "Request
Resolution" which comes into play when a peer needs to decide
among the received requests for its resources. Request resolution
is of vital importance since some of these requests may tend to
exhaust the peer's serving capabilities (like processing capacity
and bandwidth), so that it can't respond to any further requests
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normally. Consequences of such a maligned request may result in
the peer losing its trust among other peers as well as being
branded malicious. Gummadi describes how to model group trust
for peer-to-peer access control so as to make them secure and thus
provide a redressal to the above-mentioned issues. Gummadi,
Abstract.
07. Gummadi describes its Trust Matrix as a matrix that stores
peer-to-peer trust values. The peer-to-peer trust values that are
stored in the Trust matrix are computed from the trust and
reputation based model according to which each peer needs to
store a trust value with respect to every other peer in the group
with which it had made transactions. Gummadi para. 3.2.1 Trust
Matric.
ANALYSIS
Claim 9 rejected under 35 US. C. § 112, fourth paragraph, as failing to
further limit the subject matter of a previous claim
Claim 9 is an independent computer readable media claim that refers to
process claim 1 for shorthand much the same as a product-by-process claim
does.
that
Claims 1-5, 8-13, and 15-20 rejected under 35 USC§ 103(a) as
unpatentable over Borthwick and Gummadi
As to independent claim 1, we are persuaded by Appellants' argument
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Gmnmadi does not teach or suggest calculating an assertion
acceptance value for each outside party based on the
comparison of the records on the exception list that were at
least one of accepted and rejected by both the party receiving
the record and each outside party .... To cure these
shortcomings, the Examiner asserts that Gummadi is concerned
with the same problem as the present application and thus
obviously teach the claimed limitations.
App. Br. 10-11. We agree with the Examiner's findings as to the first eight
limitations, which are not under contention. The issue is whether the
combined references describe creating the particular acceptance values
matrix recited in claim 1, and in independent claims 9 and 11. Independent
claim 15 does not recite this per se, but recites the equivalent in its final
performing step that performs a generating step.
As Appellants contend, Gummadi builds its trust matrix from the trust
and reputation based model according to which each peer needs to store a
trust value with respect to every other peer in the group with which it had
made transactions. The instant claims do not simply recite using acceptance
values in the matrix (Limitation [9]), but creating those values by calculating
an assertion acceptance value for each outside party from the comparing of
the records on the exception list that were at least one of accepted and
rejected by both the party receiving the record and each outside party.
Gummadi, in contrast, does not describe how each cell in its matrix is
computed. 4 Gummadi' s Trust Matrix Creation Algorithm only describes the
procedure for adding values to the matrix and not the procedure for
4 Gummadi refers to its footnotes 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 17, and 18 for such
computation ( Gummadi para. 3 .2.1) but none of those references are applied
or even of record.
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computing each such value. The Examiner does not present any findings as
to why one of ordinary skill would have computed the values as in the
recited acceptance values matrix.
Claims 6, 7, and 14 rejected under 35 US.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Borthwick, Gummadi, and Stead
These claims are dependent on the above claims.
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
The rejection of claim 9 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, fourth paragraph, as
failing to further limit the subject matter of a previous claim is improper.
The rejection of claims 1-5, 8-13, and 15-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Borthwick and Gummadi is improper.
The rejection of claims 6, 7, and 14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Borthwick, Gummadi, and Stead is improper.
DECISION
The rejection of claims 1-20 is reversed.
REVERSED
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