BSH Home Appliances Corporation et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jun 10, 2020

2020000066 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 10, 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.
14/813,529 07/30/2015 Larry Bell 2015P00824US 3636
46726 7590 06/10/2020
BSH Home Appliances Corporation
100 Bosch Boulevard
NEW BERN, NC 28562
EXAMINER
GLENNIE, DEBRA L
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3689
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/10/2020 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):
MBX-NBN-IntelProp@bshg.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
__________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
__________

Ex parte LARRY BELL
__________

Appeal 2020-000066
Application1 14/813,529
Technology Center 3600
__________

Before ERIC B. GRIMES, FRANCISCO C. PRATS, and
RACHEL H. TOWNSEND, Administrative Patent Judges.

TOWNSEND, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) involving claims to a
domestic appliance and device for providing service data to one or more
domestic appliances, which have been rejected as obvious. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm-in-part.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
“[C]urrent methods for notifying . . . customers [with recall notices]
are slow and do not effectively notify all of the customers in possession of

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37
C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies the real parties in interest as BSH Home
Appliances Corporation and BSH Hausgeräte GmbH. (Appeal Br. 3.)
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the product.” (Spec. ¶ 3.) Additionally, once notified of a recall, “the user
of the product may not always take action to correct the problem identified
in the recall notice.” (Id.) Appellant’s invention is directed at systems to
provide service notifications to a product. (Id. ¶ 6.)
Claims 1–23 are on appeal. Claims 1, 9, and 16 are representative and
reads as follows:
1. A domestic appliance comprising:
communication circuitry;
a processing system, comprising at least one processor,
the processing system coupled to the communication circuitry
and being configured to:
receive, using the communication circuitry, service data
from a server, the service data including a service code
identifying one or more services that need to be performed on
the domestic appliance;
disable, based on the received service code, one or more
features of the domestic appliance while permitting one or more
other features to be operational if the received service code
identifies a non-safety critical service to be performed on the
domestic appliance;
disable, based on the received service code, operation of
the domestic appliance if the received service code identifies a
safety critical service to be performed on the domestic
appliance; and
in response to an input indicating that the one or more
services corresponding to the service code have been performed
on the domestic appliance, enable the one or more features of
the domestic appliance that were disabled.
(Appeal Br. 22.)
9. A domestic appliance comprising:
communication circuitry;
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a processing system, comprising at least one processor
and memory, the processing system coupled to the
communication circuitry and being configured to:
transmit, using the communication circuitry, a request for
recall information for the domestic appliance;
in response to the request for recall, receive, from a
server, recall information for the domestic appliance;
display, on a display coupled to the domestic appliance,
the received recall information for the domestic appliance, and
selectively disable one or more features of the domestic
appliance while permitting one or more other features of the
domestic appliance to be operational based on the recall
information.
(Appeal Br. 24.)
16. A device for providing service data to one or more
domestic appliances, the device comprising:
communication circuitry;
storage storing recall notices for a plurality of domestic
appliances, each recall notice being associated with one or more
domestic appliances; and
a processing system, comprising at least one processor,
the processing system coupled to the communication circuitry
and the storage, the processing system being configured to:
receive, using the communication circuitry, a service data
request from a domestic appliance, the service data request
including appliance identification information of the domestic
appliance;
determine, based [sic] the appliance identification
information, whether one or more of the recall notices stored in
storage apply to the domestic appliance requesting service data;
and
when a determination is made that the one or more of the
recall notices stored in the storage apply to the domestic
appliance requesting the service data, transmit, using the
communication circuitry, the service data with information
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identifying the one or more of the recall notices applying to the
domestic appliance requesting the service data,
wherein the one or more of the recall notices includes
service data including a service code identifying one or more
services that need to be performed on the domestic appliance,
the service code selectively identifying a non-safety critical
service or a safety critical service,
wherein, when the received service code identifies the
non-safety critical service, the service code further identifies
one or more features of the domestic appliance to be disabled
while permitting one or more other features to be operational
until the one or more services, which are identified by the
service code as the non-safety critical service, have been
performed, and
wherein, when the received service code identifies the
safety critical service, the service code further indicates that
operation of the domestic appliance is to be disabled until the
one or more services, which are identified by the service code
to be the safety critical service, have been performed.
(Appeal Br. 26.)

The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:
Name Reference Date
DeSalvo US 2013/0073690 A1 Mar. 21, 2013
Engle et al. US 2006/0149612 A1 July 6, 2006

The following grounds of rejection by the Examiner are before us on
review:
Claims 1–6 and 8–23 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over
DeSalvo.
Claim 7 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over DeSalvo and
Engle.
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DISCUSSION
Claim 1
The Examiner finds that DeSalvo teaches a host system connected to a
network that is adapted to communicate between a consumer, a supplier, and
an appliance. (Final Action 3–4.) The Examiner finds that the system
includes a hub that communicates to a server maintained by a supplier,
where the supplier can provide through the server a number of things
including warranty and recall information, product updates, as well as
diagnostic code recognition and servicing. (Id.) The Examiner also finds
that the system monitors the status of the appliance and provides the
customer with duress maintenance notifications regarding when a part is
wearing down or needs to be changed. (Id. at 4.) The Examiner further
finds that DeSalvo teaches that control actions are performed on the
appliance including “modifying the operational cycle of the appliance”
based on sensing by the appliance where the appliance communicates with
an external database and retrieves information that enables the appliance “to
be used but in an altered condition.” (Id. at 5.) In addition the Examiner
finds that DeSalvo teaches that “received alerts will persist on the appliance
until the consumer takes a specific action” and that the system “may warn
and/or terminate processing before the appliance has a mechanical or
electrical breakdown.” (Id. at 6.)
The Examiner interprets the “diagnostic code recognition of DeSalvo
[to be] equivalent to the service code” claimed. (Id. at 7.) Accordingly,
“[t]he Examiner asserts the prior art is recognizing codes and therefore the
codes have specific (predefined) meaning and are specific (predefined) to
particular failures or particular operating conditions. The codes are
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identifying the operational state of the appliance.” (Id.) According to the
Examiner,
[t]he teachings of DeSalvo would have led one of ordinary skill
to come to [the] conclusion that the evaluation of the codes of
DeSalvo and the modifications to the operations of the
appliance in order to alter, pause, extend, and/or terminate the
operation of the appliance establishes a teaching to arrive at the
claimed invention.
(Id. at 7–8.)
“An examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case
of obviousness.” In re Huai-Hung Kao, 639 F.3d 1057, 1066 (Fed. Cir.
2011). We agree with Appellant that the Examiner has not done so for claim
1. In arriving at our conclusion, we do not find it necessary to determine the
scope of “safety critical service” and “non-safety critical service.” Rather,
we conclude that the question of whether the Examiner established a prima
facie case may be resolved based on the two different functions that the
processing system is required to be configured to perform. The “configured
to” language can denote structure in the context of an electronic circuit or
programming. In re Lowry, 32 F.3d 1579, 1583–84 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (claim
limitations regarding organization of data in memory held to distinguish
over prior art); In re Noll, 545 F.2d 141, 148 (CCPA 1976) (“[T]he claimed
invention . . . comprises physical structure, including storage devices and
electrical components uniquely configured to perform specified functions
through the physical properties of electrical circuits to achieve controlled
results. Appellant’s programmed machine is structurally different from a
machine without that program.”).
In particular, claim 1 requires the processing system be configured to
(a) disable a feature of the appliance while permitting another feature to be
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operational “based on the received service code” if that code “identifies a
non-safety critical service to be performed on the” appliance and (b) disable
operation of the appliance “based on the received service code” if that code
“identifies a safety critical service to be performed on the” appliance.
DeSalvo describes a host server (68) connected to an appliance
through a network where that server system can provide real-time alerts to
the appliance, such as recall information and/or duress maintenance
notification. (See, e.g., DeSalvo ¶¶ 41, 46, 50 and Figure 2.) DeSalvo
explains further that “the system provides a customer with duress
maintenance notifications and informs the customer when a part is wearing
down or needs to be changed” and that the “alerts will persist on the
appliance . . . until the consumer takes a specific action to respond to the
alert.” (Id. ¶¶ 22, 50.) DeSalvo also teaches that “[t]he described system
provides for the detection and/or prediction of problems in operation of the
appliance and may warn and/or terminate processing before the appliance
has a mechanical and/or electrical breakdown.” (Id. ¶¶ 22, 50 (noting the
appliance would “stop running itself before ruining something if it’s a
serious mechanical problem”).) Based on these teachings, we agree with the
Examiner that DeSalvo teaches or at least suggests disabling the appliance
based on a recall notice or duress maintenance notification.
However, what we find is not taught or suggested by DeSalvo is that
“one or more features of the domestic appliance” are disabled while
permitting one or more features to be operational based on the received
service code. DeSalvo teaches that operation of an appliance may be
optimized when an appliance sensor determines “the wrong type of
consumable” or is “alerted” that the wrong type of consumable is being used
in order to “compensate for the incorrect usage.” (Id. ¶¶ 25–27.) We do not
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see any teaching or suggestion of disabling only a particular feature of an
appliance while allowing other features to operate based on a received
service code in DeSalvo. The disabling that is responsive to a service code
is either providing a warning or terminating the entirety of processing,
whereas feature disablement, rather than whole processing, is in response to
appliance sensor determinations.
Although claim 9 does not have two different disable functions that
the processing system is required to be configured to perform, we note that,
like claim 1, claim 9 does require that the processing system be “configured
to” selectively disable one or more features of the appliance while permitting
one or more other features of the appliance to be operational “based on the
recall information.” As just discussed, DeSalvo does not teach or suggest
the processing system so configured.
Consequently, we reverse the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–6, 8–
15 and 21–23 as being obvious over DeSalvo.
Claim 7 depends from claim 1. Engle, which the Examiner relies on
to address the limitation of claim 7, does not address the deficiency
discussed above. Consequently, we also reverse the Examiner’s rejection of
claim 7 as being obvious over DeSalvo and Engle.

Claim 16
Unlike claims 1 and 9, claim 16 focuses not on the domestic
appliance, but on a device for providing service data to a domestic
appliance. We determine that this claim is significantly different in scope
than claims 1 and 9. In particular, here the processing system is concerned
with receiving requests for service data from an appliance, determining
whether a recall notice stored in the device applies to the requesting
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appliance, and transmitting service data with information identifying
relevant recall notices to the appliance. In addition to the foregoing, there
are three “wherein” clauses. The first wherein clause describes content of
the recall notice, namely that it includes service data including a service
code “selectively identifying a non-safety critical service or a safety critical
service.” The second and third wherein clauses describe further information
in the service code which relates to disabling of features or disabling
operation with respect to the appliance depending on whether non-safety
critical or safety critical service is identified in the service code. The
processing system of this claim is not directed to being configured to
disable, but simply to receiving, assessing, and transmitting data.
As to this claim, the Examiner explains that DeSalvo describes a host
system that is connected to a network and is adapted to receive and transmit
information/data to an appliance. (Final Action 20–22 (citing DeSalvo
Figures 1 and 2).) The Examiner further finds that DeSalvo teaches that the
host system communicates with a server maintained by a supplier that has
access to a data repository that contains information about appliances and
that this system allows the supplier to provide, inter alia, recall information,
diagnostic code recognition, and servicing information, including alerts
letting the consumer know a part is wearing down or needs changing. (Id.;
Ans. 12.) The Examiner explains that DeSalvo teaches that the system
provides information relevant to the appliance. (Final Action 22 (citing
DeSalvo ¶ 19).) The Examiner also finds that DeSalvo teaches that the
information content set forth in the wherein clauses is transmitted to the
appliance. (Id. at 23–25.)
We find that the Examiner has established a prima facie case of
obviousness based on DeSalvo for claim 16.
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However, in so concluding, we note that while it is true that DeSalvo
teaches that the appliance communicates with the hub (see DeSalvo ¶ 16
(“each individual appliance has the communication ability to talk to a home
router or hub”) and the hub communicates with supplier servers “to process
information requests” (id.), we do not find anything in this paragraph of
DeSalvo that teaches or suggests the processing system of the hub is
receiving requests from the appliance concerning “a service data request.”
In particular, DeSalvo states:
each individual appliance has the communication ability to talk
to a home router or hub. The hub, in tum, communicates
through a network such as, for example, the Internet to a server
maintained by a supplier such as a manufacturer and/or retailer
to process information requests either directed to the appliance
or from data repositories that contain information such as
information regarding the appliance.
(DeSalvo ¶ 16.) This paragraph indicates that the appliance communicates
with the hub and the hub communicates with suppliers and processes
information directed to the appliance or from the repository about the
appliance.
DeSalvo teaches that the system “may monitor” the appliance health
(id. ¶ 17), that a remote control can be used to pause, extend, alter and/or
terminate processing (id. ¶ 18), that product information relevant to the
appliance can be provided to the appliance by the supplier (id. ¶ 19), that the
system can mine long term data regarding the appliance (id. ¶ 20) and can
provide a customer with duress maintenance notifications and inform the
customer when a part is wearing down or needs to be changed (id. ¶ 22), and
provide a customer with scheduled maintenance reminders and/or alerts
(id.). However, none of the foregoing suggests that the appliance is
requesting service information.
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On the other hand, DeSalvo does teach that the appliance can
communicate to the supplier information such as the consumable it is using,
and the appliance
will be notified how to adjust the type of mechanical action,
thermal or time settings or other options and modifiers available
on the machine based on the hardness o[f] water and
temperature of inlet water in order to produce the best cleaning
result, most accurate use of additives or most efficient operation
without compromising the cleaning performance.
(Id. ¶¶ 25–26.) This communication can be deemed to be a request for
service. Consequently, we conclude that DeSalvo teaches or suggests that
the hub processing system is configured to receive a service data request
from the appliance.
We further note that DeSalvo teaches “the processing devices 20, 20',
20" illustrated in FIG. 1 may be embodied in any device having the ability to
execute instructions such as . . . a personal computer.” (Id. ¶ 31.) In light of
this, regarding the wherein clauses that identify content of the service code
that the processing system must be configured to transmit using
communication circuitry (which DeSalvo also teaches (id. ¶¶ 16, 37)), we
determine that, absent evidence to the contrary, the processing system
described by DeSalvo that receives service requests from the appliance and
transmits service data including recall notices, diagnostic code recognition
and/or servicing (DeSalvo ¶ 19), is configured such that it would be capable
of transmitting recall notices that include service code required by the
wherein clauses.
Appellant’s arguments that DeSalvo is silent to differentiating
between non-safety critical and safety critical services to be performed on an
appliance (see, e.g., Appeal Br. 13–17; Reply Br. 9–11, 15–19) are not
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persuasive because claim 16 is not directed to the performance of any
services on the appliance other than transmitting data to it.
Claims 17–20 have not been argued separately and therefore fall with
claim 16. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv).
DECISION SUMMARY
In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C.
§
Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–6, 8–23 103 DeSalvo 16–20 1–6, 8–15,
21–23
7 103 DeSalvo, Engle 7
Overall
Outcome
16–20 1–15, 21–23

TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED-IN-PART