Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jun 22, 2020

13827917 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Jun. 22, 2020)

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.
13/827,917 03/14/2013 Dharma Shukla 338545.01 7740
69316 7590 06/22/2020
MICROSOFT CORPORATION
ONE MICROSOFT WAY
REDMOND, WA 98052
EXAMINER
HUYNH, TINA
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2199
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/22/2020 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):
chriochs@microsoft.com
usdocket@microsoft.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte DHARMA SHUKLA, MADHAN GAJENDRAN, and
QUETZALCOATL BRADLEY
____________

Appeal 2019-000523
Application 13/827,917
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, CARL L. SILVERMAN, and
MICHAEL J. ENGLE, Administrative Patent Judges.

SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL1

Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant2 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 2, 4–6, 9, 10, 13–19, 21, and 22.3
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.

1 An oral hearing was held for this appeal on May 14, 2020.
2 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in
37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Microsoft
Technology Licensing, Ltd. Appeal Br. 3.
3 Claims 3 and 20 have been canceled and claims 7, 8, 11, and 12 have been
indicated as containing allowable subject matter.
Appeal 2019-000523
Application 13/827,917

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellant’s disclosure is directed to methods and interfaces for
switching between two authentication user interfaces as the user interacts
with the graphical user interface through finger contacts and gestures on a
touch-sensitive surface. See Spec. ¶¶ 6–8.
Illustrative Claim
Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and reads as follows:
1. A method of accessing objects in a document store
on behalf of an application, the method involving a device
having a processor and comprising:
on condition of receiving a document including a
representation of at least one object in a language format,
storing the document in the document store including the
representation of the at least one object in the language format;
on condition of receiving a request from the application
to create an object, creating, in the document store, a document
including the representation of the object in the language
format; and
fulfilling respective requests from the application to
access the object by applying the respective requests to the
representation of the object in the language format in the
document, by:
on condition of receiving a request from the
application to read the object:
retrieving, from the document, the
representation of the object, and providing the
representation of the object to the application
while maintaining the language format of the
representation of the object; and
on condition of receiving a request from the
application to apply an operation to the object,
applying the operation to the representation of the
Appeal 2019-000523
Application 13/827,917

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object while maintaining the language format of
the representation of the object in the document
stored in the document store.

Appeal Br. 33 (CLAIMS APPENDIX).
The Examiner’s Rejections
Claims 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 19, and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shukla (US 2009/0240698 Al; pub.
Sept. 24, 2009) and Salvatore (US 2011/0282911 Al; pub. Nov. 17, 2011).
Final Act. 5–14.
Claim 22 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Shukla, Salvatore, and Chang (US 2012/0036516 Al; pub.
Feb. 9, 2012). Final Act. 14–15.
Claims 13, 14, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Shukla, Salvatore, and Flynn (US 2008/0140724 Al;
pub. June 12, 2008). Final Act. 15–18.
Claims 5 and 6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Shukla, Salvatore, and Austin (US 2010/0293529 Al; pub.
Nov. 18, 2010). Final Act. 18–20.
Claims 15–17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Shukla, Salvatore, Flynn, and Sivasubramanian (US
2012/0330954 Al; pub. Dec. 27, 2012). Final Act. 20–22.

ANALYSIS
Appellant contends the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 because
the combination of cited references, and Shukla specifically, fails to teach or
suggest performing the recited process “while maintaining the language
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Application 13/827,917

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format,” as recited in the independent claims. Appeal Br. 28. According to
Appellant, the cited portion of Shukla in paragraph 37 includes no
discussion of selecting a particular format of the object and, in fact,
“emphasizes the fungibility and interchangeability of various formats
through format translation.” Appeal Br. 29 (emphasis omitted).
The Examiner responds by explaining the interpretation of
“maintaining the language format” as follows:
Examiner interprets documents are represented throughout its
lifecycle in persistent format (single language format), i.e.
throughout the actions applied to the document such that
creating a document in storage, writing an existing document to
storage, retrieving the document from storage for use by the
application and applying operations to the object, such as
modifying the content of the object. The object is maintained
in the same language format.
Ans. 3–4. The Examiner further finds Shukla “provides an approach for
organizing and representing the objects of the computer system according to
an object hierarchy and represented according to a common grammar.” Ans.
4 (citing Shukla ¶¶ 17, 18). Furthermore, the Examiner explains:
Alternatively, “maintaining the language format” could
mean that a back-up copy of the document format is stored
before any modifications are done. The point the examiner
would like to make is that the BRI (Broadest Reasonable
Interpretation) of “maintaining the language format” is not
limited to performing no translations of the objects in the
schema as alleged by the Applicant.
Id.
Claim Construction
As an initial matter of claim construction regarding the broadest
reasonable interpretation of the claim 1 term “maintaining the language
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format,” we turn to the Specification for context. 4 We find an exemplary
description as follows:
Because objects 108 formatted in the language format 112 are
directly accessible to the application 104 through the
application language 110, the serialization 116 and
deserialization 124 of the objects 108 are considerably reduced,
and in some cases eliminated. For example, when the
application 104 receives a JSON-formatted object 108 from a
remote device 212, the device 102 may directly store 214 the
JSON-formatted object 108 as a document 204 within the
document store 202 with little or no serialization 116 or other
conversion. The object 108 is therefore stored in the document
store 202, and exposed to the application 104, in the initially
provided format. In addition to reducing the loss of information
from conversion and the inefficiency of extensive serialization
116 into and out of a storage format 120, these techniques
enable a continuous persistence of the objects 108 in the
absence of store requests 114 initiated by the application 104.
Spec. ¶ 26 (emphasis added).
Given this supporting description above, we conclude that a broad but
reasonable interpretation of the claim 1 term “maintaining the language
format” requires “maintaining or persisting the language format in which the
document was created or received throughout the set of operations
comprising the lifecycle of a document.” See Reply Br. 7.
Discussion
We have considered the Examiner’s findings (see Final Act. 5–22; see
also Ans. 3–6), in light of Appellant’s arguments and any evidence
presented. Based upon our review, and for the reasons discussed below,

4 We give the contested claim limitations the broadest reasonable
interpretation (“BRI”) consistent with the Specification. See In re Morris,
127 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997).
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Application 13/827,917

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Appellant’s arguments and the presented evidence persuade us the Examiner
erred with respect to the claim rejections under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
In particular, we agree with Appellant that Shukla discloses
processing a request to receive objects by translating the object “into
whichever format the application has requested.” Appeal Br. 29 (citing
Shukla ¶ 37). Shukla discloses “the object representing service 72 may
request and receive from the object hierarchy a basic representation of the
objects, and may then reformat the representation of the object according to
the specified data interchange format before delivering the result to the
requesting process.” See Shukla ¶ 37 (emphasis added). Shukla further
discloses a device employs different formats for data exchange based on the
device capabilities. See Shukla ¶¶ 17, 18. We are also persuaded by
Appellant’s argument that Shukla’s discussion of organizing and
representing objects according to an object hierarchy and a common
grammar “does not refer to the format of an object – which may be XML,
JSON, RSS, Atom, etc. – but merely to the fact that each object of the
computing environment, irrespective of its type, is included in the object
hierarchy.” See Reply Br. 8–9 (emphasis omitted). In light of the claim
construction above and the highlighted disclosure in Shukla, we agree with
Appellant that Shukla fails to disclose the disputed limitation. Although
Salvatore teaches storing a document that includes storing the object
representation (see Salvatore Fig. 3, ¶ 30), the Examiner has failed to
establish that Salvatore, or any of the other prior art references, cures
Shukla’s deficiencies because the Examiner has not shown that Salvatore
teaches or suggests maintaining the format of the objects in response to a
request through the operation.
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Application 13/827,917

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Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1,
19, and 21 for obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). We also do not
sustain the Examiner’s rejection of dependent claims 2, 4–6, 9, 10, 13–18,
and 22, which depend from one of claims 1 and 21.

DECISION SUMMARY
In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35
U.S.C. §
Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 2, 4, 9,
10, 19, 21
103 Shukla, Salvatore 1, 2, 4, 9, 10,
19, 21
22 103 Shukla, Salvatore, Chang 22
13, 14, 18 103 Shukla, Salvatore, Flynn 13, 14, 18
5, 6 103 Shukla, Salvatore, Austin 5, 6
15–17 103 Shukla, Salvatore, Flynn,
Sivasubramanian
15–17
Overall
Outcome
1, 2, 4–6, 9, 10,
13–19, 21, 22

REVERSED