Thomas Mwakibinga et al.Download PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardAug 22, 201914834973 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Aug. 22, 2019) 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. 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. Appeal 2018-007391 Application 14/834,973 2 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. Appeal 2018-007391 Application 14/834,973 3 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 Appeal 2018-007391 Application 14/834,973 4 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] Appeal 2018-007391 Application 14/834,973 5 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. Appeal 2018-007391 Application 14/834,973 6 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). Appeal 2018-007391 Application 14/834,973 7 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 Appeal 2018-007391 Application 14/834,973 8 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 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation