Thomas Mwakibinga et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Aug 22, 2019

14834973 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Aug. 22, 2019)

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.
14/834,973 08/25/2015 Thomas Mwakibinga 2015P07102US 2194
28524 7590 08/22/2019
SIEMENS CORPORATION
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT
3501 Quadrangle Blvd Ste 230
Orlando, FL 32817
EXAMINER
NGUYEN, CUONG H
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3665
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/22/2019 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):
ipdadmin.us@siemens.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________________

Ex parte THOMAS MWAKIBINGA, FAHD IQBAL,
TORSTEN SCHERLING, and TORSTEN PANNIER1
____________________

Appeal 2018-007391
Application 14/834,973
Technology Center 3600
____________________

Before BRETT C, MARTIN, LISA M. GUIJT, and LEE L. STEPINA,
Administrative Patent Judges.

GUIJT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
decision rejecting claims 1, 2, 4–7, 9, 11–13, 15, 16, and 19–21.2 We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.

1 Siemens Industry, Inc. (“Appellant”), the Applicant as provided in 37
C.F.R. § 1.46, is also identified as the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 1.
2 Final Office Action dated Oct. 26, 2017.
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THE CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
Claims 1, 7, and 11 are independent. Claim 1, reproduced below with
disputed limitations italicized for emphasis, is illustrative of the claimed
subject matter on appeal.
1. A system for determining a location of a vehicle relative
to a stopping point, the system comprising:
a vehicle of an underground transportation system; and
a user interface device comprising a memory device
storing a computer program with executable instructions, the
computer program comprising first executable instructions to
detect a vehicle brake application of the vehicle and second
executable instructions to detect audio data emitted by the
vehicle, the first and second executable instructions being
performed to determine a location of the vehicle relative to a
designated stopping point of the vehicle, wherein the user
interface device comprises at least one accelerometer for
acquiring acceleration data of the vehicle, the first executable
instruction comprising a first algorithm adapted to collect and
store the acceleration data of the vehicle.

THE REJECTION3
I. Claims 1, 2, 4–7, 11, 12, 15, 16, and 19–21 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Thiagarajan (Cooperative Transit
Tracking using Smart-phones®, SenSys ‘10, November 3−5, 2010,
Copyright 2010 ACM 978-1-4503-0344-6/10/11) and Ricci (US
2014/0309872 A1; published Oct. 16, 2014).
II. Claim 13 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable
over Thiagarajan, Ricci, and Pfluger (US 2013/0122928 A1; published May
16, 2013).

3 Claim 9 is objected to as being dependent on cancelled claim 8. Final Act.
3.
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III. Claim 9 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable
over Thiagarajan, Ricci, and Melanson (US 2014/0019247 A1; published
Jan. 16, 2014).
ANALYSIS
Rejection I
The Examiner finds, inter alia, that Thiagarajan discloses “a medium
to implement a method for determining a location of a vehicle relative to a
stopping point.” Final Act. 3. In particular, the Examiner relies on
Thiagarajan for disclosing first executable instructions to detect a vehicle
brake application performed to determine the vehicle’s location relative to a
designated vehicle stopping point, because Thiagarajan discloses a user
interface device having an accelerometer (i.e., “a passenger’s smartphone”)
and the use of acceleration data to determine a location of an underground
vehicle relative to a station. Ans. 4 (citing Thiagarajan, Fig. 10 (for
depicting “‘Smartphone Accelerometry’ to detect ‘braking’ activity . . . ,
wherein a vehicle MUST stop at station i”)). The Examiner relies on both
Thiagarajan and Ricci for disclosing “second executable instructions to
detect audio data,” as claimed. Final Act. 3 (citing Thiagarajan, p. 3, col. 1,
para. 3; Ricci ¶¶ 324, 329).
The Examiner concludes that by integrating “signals of a voice
announcement (of a station)” and “a number of braking time[s],” “a counter
would have been updated to reveal a name/number of a station accordingly
(from a stored database),” because Ricci discloses inputting “a number”
(e.g., “travel data: an end station”) into a mobile device. Final Act. 4 (citing,
e.g., Ricci ¶ 311 (disclosing that “a user’s device, such as a SmartPhone, can
store, in for example, a profile” and thus, “the user’s device can re-establish
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the same communications protocols with the access point 456 [(i.e., a
Bluetooth® access)] as were previously established”)). The Examiner finds
that it is well known to perform the steps of inputting data, comparing data
for a match, and as a result of a match, generating an alert, and therefore
concludes that Ricci’s number is “compared to [a] counter,” wherein “an
alert/alarm/warning would be generated.” Id.
The Examiner reasons that it would have been obvious
to implement a smart-phone of Thiagarajan . . . with [Ricci’s
suggestion] about integrating an audio input signal from an
underground vehicle (e.g. via that vehicle’s announcement on
speakers) for updating a count number/or updating information,
or a decision of generating an alert, an upcoming train station for
an advantage of using a smartphone (a mobile device) to
accurately predict[] a stopping station by personal/handheld
video-audio equipment.
Final Act. 4.
Appellant argues that neither Thiagarajan nor Ricci disclose a vehicle
brake application, as claimed. Appeal Br. 6. In particular, Appellant
submits that “[n]othing in Figure 10 [of Thiagarajan] (or the accompanying
description) teach or suggest that a braking application of a vehicle is
detected” and that “Thiagarajan further notes that ‘allowable transitions are
represented in Figure 10,’” wherein “trains cannot reverse direction (no
back-wards edges) and cannot skip stations.” Reply Br. 4.
Thiagarajan discloses “[r]eal-time transit tracking,” including
“tracking underground vehicles,” wherein “users install an application on
their smartphone,” and “[w]ith the help of built-in sensors, such as . . . [an]
accelerometer, the application automatically detects when the user is riding
in a transit vehicle.” Thiagarajan, Abstract. Thiagarajan’s system “use[s]
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accelerometry to reduce . . . reliance on precise positioning technologies . . .
to support underground transit tracking, where GPS and other localization
technologies perform poorly.” Id. § 2.2, para. 5, “Smartphone
Accelerometry.” Thiagarajan explains that, when tracking underground
transit, “[w]e take the incoming stream of vehicular movement probabilities”
and “[t]he algorithm detects all stops, and provides a good estimate of the
duration of most intervals.” Id. § 3.3, para 3 “Tracking Underground
Tranist” (emphasis added). For underground transit tracking, Thiagarajan
discloses that “the most recent location is matched against underground
transit stations to reveal the station where the trip started” (id. § 3.1, para. 4,
“Activity Classification by Accelerometer”) and “[d]irection of travel
underground can be estimated using the compass and accelerometer
together.” Id. § 3,3.1 (“Filtering out spurious stops”). Thiagarajan further
explains that “[g]iven a candidate ‘path’ i.e. a sequence of accelerations and
corresponding hidden states, the likelihood of the path is the product of the
emission and transition scores along the path.” Id. at para. 3.
Thus, a preponderance of the evidence supports the Examiner’s
finding that Thiagarajan discloses a computer program with first executable
instructions to detect a vehicle brake application of the vehicle, which are
performed to determine a location of the vehicle relative to a designated
stopping point of the vehicle, as claimed, because Thiagarajan uses
accelerometry to determine a sequence of accelerations (and thus, de-
accelerations) to detect stops relative to the vehicle in which the mobile
phone user is riding.
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Appellant also argues that the Examiner impermissibly relied on
hindsight, because the Examiner’s reasoning is derived from Appellant’s
Specification. Appeal Br. 7 (citing Spec. ¶¶ 2, 33).
We are persuaded by Appellant’s argument. Although the Examiner
correctly finds that Ricci generally discloses that smart phones include audio
sensors and accelerometers (Final Act. 3 (citing Ricci ¶ 349)), and that
“these associated device sensors 720 may be used by one or more
subsystems of the vehicle system 200” (id. ¶ 349), a preponderance of the
evidence does not support the Examiner’s finding that Ricci discloses
inputting a number relative to an end station into a mobile device, as set
forth supra. Rather, Ricci generally discloses that a user’s mobile device
can receive an input, such as user characteristics including “historical,
current, and/or future travel destinations.” Id. ¶ 240. In other words, a
preponderance of the evidence fails to support the Examiner’s finding that
Ricci suggests integrating an audio input signal from an announcement made
by an underground vehicle’s speakers, as set forth supra.4
In sum, the Examiner’s conclusion that it would have been obvious to
integrate an audio input signal from an announcement made by an
underground vehicle’s speakers with a vehicle braking application to

4 Notably, Thiagarajan discloses, with reference to related work, that it is
known to “use a combination of accelerometry and other sensors to classify
activities such as . . . riding in an elevator,” wherein “this body of work uses
accelerometers with known locations/orientations, and additional sensors
such as audio . . . sensors which improve the classification results”
(Thiagarajan § 3.1, para. 5, “Activity Classification by Accelerometer,”
“Related work”). Melanson also discloses determining the geographical
location of a mobile device based on receipt of an environmental audio
signal (Melanson, Abstract).
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determine the vehicle’s location relative to a designated vehicle stopping
point lacks factual support from the teachings of Thiagarajan and Ricci, or as
falling within the knowledge of one skilled in the art. Interconnect Planning
Corp. v. Feil, 774 F.2d 1132, 1143 (Fed.Cir.1985) (“When prior art
references require selective combination by the court to render obvious a
subsequent invention, there must be some reason for the combination other
than the hindsight gleaned from the invention itself.”); cf. Spec. ¶ 32
(“[w]hen a brake of a train is detected . . . , [t]he mobile application then
‘listens’ for frequencies that identify when the train door closing”); id. ¶
(“[t]he localization system and method collect and process data collected by
the accelerometer and microphone data while the vehicle is traversing its
route and intelligently determine the location of the vehicle relative to the
stations at which the train stops”).
Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1
and claims 2, 4–6, 12, 15, 16, and 19–21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
unpatentable over Thiagarajan and Ricci. The Examiner relies on the same
findings with respect to Thiagarajan and Ricci in the rejection of
independent claims 7 and 11, and dependent claims 12, 15, 16, and 19–21,
and therefore, for essentially the same reasons as set forth supra, we also do
not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 7, 11, 12, 15, 16, and 19–21.
Final Act. 3–4.
Rejections II and III
The Examiner’s reliance on Pfluger for disclosing that accelerometer
data is filtered, in the rejection of claim 13 (Final Act. 6), and on Melanson
for disclosing that acceleration data is acquired by an accelerometer, in the
rejection of claim 9 (Final Act. 7), does not cure the deficiencies in the
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Examiner’s reliance on Thiagarajan and Ricci as applied to independent
claims 1, 7, and 11 in Rejection I supra.
Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 9
and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Thiagarajan and Ricci, in
view of Pfluger or Melanson, respectively.

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 2, 4–7, 9, 11–13, 15, 16,
and 19–21 is REVERSED.

REVERSED