Ex Parte Wang et al

Patent Trials and Appeals BoardMar 29, 2019

13944177 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 29, 2019)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR 13/944,177 07/17/2013 Yao Rong Wang 144570 7590 04/02/2019 LOZA & LOZA, LLP / Conduent 305 North 2nd Avenue #127 Upland, CA 91786 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. 20130179-US-NP 2250 EXAMINER REN, ZHUBING ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2483 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 04/02/2019 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): Conduent.PatentDocketing@conduent.com docketing@lozaip.com klopez@lozaip.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte YAO RONG WANG, MICHAEL FURST, and P ANY A CHANA WAN GSA Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944,177 1 Technology Center 2400 Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, MATTHEW J. McNEILL, and STEVEN M. AMUNDSON, Administrative Patent Judges. Opinion for the Board filed by Administrative Patent Judge MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Dissenting-in-part Opinion filed by Administrative Patent Judge ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134(a) from the Examiner's rejection of claims 21-40, which are all the claims pending in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b ). We affirm-in-part. 1 Appellants identify the Applicant, Conduent Business Services, LLC, as the real party in interest. App. Br. 2. Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944, 177 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellants' application relates to preventing vehicle theft by automatically monitoring a video stream for movement of the vehicle. Spec. ,r,r 1-9. Claim 21 is illustrative of the appealed subject matter and reads as follows: 21. A method for preventing vehicle theft, the method compnsmg: receiving user registration information from a user wherein the registration information comprises a user identifier and a password; receiving vehicle identification information from the user wherein the vehicle identification information identifies a vehicle; storing the vehicle identification information in association with the user registration information; accepting a request from the user that the vehicle be monitored, wherein the vehicle is parked in a parking area, wherein at least one camera monitors the parking area, wherein the at least one camera produces at least at least [sic] one video stream, and wherein the vehicle is visible in at least one of the at least one video stream; receiving the at least one video stream; identifying the vehicle in the at least one video stream; analyzing the at least one video stream to detect a movement of the vehicle; and sending the user an alert because of the movement of the vehicle wherein the alert informs the user that the vehicle moved. 2 Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944, 177 The Examiner's Rejections Claims 37-40 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 101 as being directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. Final Act. 2-3. Claims 21, 23-29, 31-37, 39, and 40 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103 as being unpatentable over Bevacqua (US 2009/0309709 Al; Dec. 17, 2009) and Marman (US 2009/0262189 Al; Oct. 22, 2009). Final Act. 3-5. Claims 22, 30, and 38 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103 as being unpatentable over Bevacqua, Marman, and Korn (US 8,392,118 B2; Mar. 5, 2013). Final Act. 5-6. ANALYSIS Patent-Ineligible Subject Matter The Examiner rejects claims 37-40 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 101 as being directed to patent-ineligible subject matter because the broadest reasonable interpretation of claim 3 7 encompasses transitory signals, which are not within one of the four statutory categories of subject matter. Final Act. 3. Appellants do not argue this rejection is in error. See App. Br. 8-19. Thus, we summarily affirm the Examiner's rejection of claims 37-40 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 101. Obviousness We have reviewed the Examiner's obviousness rejections in consideration of Appellants' contentions and the evidence of record. Appellants persuade us the Examiner fails to establish that the claims are unpatentable over the cited references. The Examiner finds the combination of Bevacqua and Marman teaches or suggests all of the limitations of claim 21. In particular, the 3 Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944, 177 Examiner finds Bevacqua teaches or suggests the "receiving user registration information" and "receiving vehicle identification information" limitations, as well as the "storing" limitation. Final Act. 3. The Examiner also finds Bevacqua teaches or suggests "accepting a request from the user that the vehicle be monitored, wherein the vehicle is parked in a parking area," and "sending the user an alert because of the movement of the vehicle wherein the alert informs the user that the vehicle moved." Id. at 3-4. The Examiner finds Bevacqua does not teach the remaining limitations, which relate to detecting movement of the vehicle using camera monitors and video streams. Id. at 4. The Examiner relies on Marman for these limitations and finds an ordinarily skilled artisan would have found it obvious to "modify the vehicle security and monitoring system disclosed by Bevacqua to exploit the well-known vehicle motion detection technique taught by Mannan ... in order to provide improved security, safety, and traffic control for a parking lot." Id. at 4 (emphasis omitted) (citing Mannan Abstract). Appellants argue the Examiner erred because an ordinarily skilled artisan would not have been motivated to combine Bevacqua and Marman as proposed because the combination changes Bevacqua's mode of operation and renders Bevacqua unfit for its intended purpose. See App. Br. 16-18; Reply Br. 5-6. In particular, Appellants argue Bevacqua teaches a vehicle- mounted GPS monitoring system that focuses on tracking a particular vehicle, and Marman teaches a pole-mounted camera that focuses on monitoring a particular parking lot, including any persons and vehicles in that parking lot. See App. Br. 16-17. Appellants argue adding Marman's pole-mounted camera to Bevacqua's vehicle-focused monitoring system 4 Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944, 177 would change the mode of operation of Bevacqua and, if the combination were achieved, would render Bevacqua unfit for its intended purpose of tracking a vehicle in many locations because Marman's tracking system is limited to a particular location. See id. at 16-18. Appellants have persuaded us of Examiner error. The Examiner finds an ordinarily skilled artisan would have found it obvious to "modify the vehicle security and monitoring system disclosed by Bevacqua to exploit the well-known vehicle motion detection technique taught by Marman ... in order to provide improved security, safety, and traffic control for a parking lot." Final Act. 4 ( emphasis omitted) ( citing Mannan Abstract). The Examiner has failed to explain how these systems, which operate in substantially different ways, would be modified to satisfy the limitations of claim 21, and why an ordinarily skilled artisan would make the significant changes necessary to piece these disparate systems together. Thus, we are constrained by the record to agree with Appellants that the Examiner has not sufficiently established that claim 21 is unpatentable over the combination of Bevacqua and Marman. We, therefore, do not sustain the rejection of independent claim 21 as unpatentable over Bevacqua and Marman. 2 We also do not sustain the rejection of independent claims 29 and 37, which recite commensurate limitations, and claims 23-28, 31-36, 39, and 40, dependent therefrom. The Examiner concludes dependent claims 22, 30, and 38 are unpatentable over Bevacqua, Marman, and Korn. See Final Act. 5-6. The 2 Because we agree with at least one of the dispositive arguments advanced by Appellants with respect to the obviousness rejections, we need not reach the merits of Appellants' other arguments. 5 Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944, 177 Examiner does not provide a new motivation to combine Bevacqua and Marman in the rejection with Korn. Accordingly, we also do not sustain the obviousness rejection of claims 22, 30, and 38. DECISION Because we have affirmed at least one ground of rejection with respect to claims 37-40, we affirm the decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 37-40. See 37 C.F.R. Â§ 4I.50(a)(l). We reverse the decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 21-36. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. Â§ 1.136(a). AFFIRMED-IN-PART 6 Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944, 177 Mantis Mercader, Administrative Patent Judge, dissenting-in-part. I concur with the majority that claims 37-40 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 101 are directed to patent-ineligible subject matter because the broadest reasonable interpretation of claim 37 encompasses transitory signals. However, I respectfully dissent with the majority's determination that the Examiner failed to explain how these systems, which operate in substantially different ways, would be modified to satisfy the limitations of claim 21, and why an ordinarily skilled artisan would make the significant changes necessary to piece these disparate systems together. See supra. Appellants argued inter alia that Bevacqua teaches detecting movement as indicated by Figure 6 elements 602, 604, and 606. App. Br. 16-18. Appellants further argued that the combination changes Bevacqua's mode of operation because a key and central element of Bevacqua' s system is monitoring system 105 installed in a vehicle that cannot be simply replaced by Marmon's pole mounted camera system. Id. at 16. "The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference ... Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of those references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art." (In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413,425 (CCPA 1981). See also In re Sneed, 710 F.2d 1544, 1550 (Fed. Cir. 1983) ("[I]t is not necessary that the inventions of the references be physically combinable to render obvious the invention under review."); and In re Nievelt, 482 F.2d 965, 968 (CCPA 1973) ("Combining the teachings of references does not involve an ability to combine their specific structures.").) Rather, "if a technique has been used to improve one 7 Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944, 177 device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill." (KSR Int 'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398,417 (2007).) The Examiner relies on Bevacqua for teaching the monitoring system receiving vehicle identification information and detecting the movement of the vehicle via the location information of the vehicle while the vehicle is moving or parked at a location. See Ans. 7. The Examiner finds that Bevacqua fails to teach detecting the movement of the vehicle by analyzing a video stream. Id. However, the Examiner relies on Marman's Figure 1 for the teaching of a well-known concept of a system for recognizing and detecting motion of vehicles at a parking lot by using video analysis. See Ans. 7-8. Bevacqua's monitoring system 105 installed in a vehicle does not have to be replaced by Marman's pole mounted camera system because the features of a secondary reference do not have to be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference. See Keller, 642 F.2d at 425. Instead, the combined teachings of Bevacqua and Marman would have reasonably suggested to one skilled in the art at the time of the invention, to substitute the technique of Bevacqua of detecting and determining movement of the car based on GPS signal localization with detecting and determining movement of the car based on video analysis of images detected by cameras (i.e., an alternative technique of monitoring movement). See id. A person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the combination would improve detection of movement in places like garages where the GPS signal from monitoring devices is lost such as in a parking 8 Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944, 177 garage (see Final Rej. citing Bevacqua's para. 65) by using an alternative system such as motion detection via video analysis (Fig. 8 of Marman). See KSR, 550 U.S. at 417 (2007). Alternatively stated, one skilled in the art would recognize that at step 608 of Bevacqua's Figure 6 the determination of movement of the vehicle could be from a monitoring system utilizing GPS signals as taught by Bevacqua or from an alternative monitoring system using video analysis as taught by Marman or both depending on whether the car is at a location where GPS signals can be detected or not. See Modified Fig. 6 below to highlight the receipt of the determination of movement at step 608. 'vVtrnhass M~:ii1it.ant6 $'WK .,..._":l_~i:,.y_q,x:- Delivery Mo_9e Commun. Cntc. FIG. 6 9 Com,-,,,, .. -t,)Gtvl/O>k ... Appeal2018-004751 Application 13/944, 177 Modified Figure 6 shows the system of Bevacqua wherein it includes a monitoring system, a communications center, and a client system. Modified Figure 6 highlights the reception of the movement data detected at step 608. Thus, the difference in the monitoring system-------