Ex Parte Baskaran et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jan 23, 2018

13710744 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 23, 2018)

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.
13/710,744 12/11/2012 Hari Baskaran AXSL 1000 9010
78592 7590
Joseph E. Root
1809 Jones Cove Rd.
Clyde, NC 28721
01/25/2018 EXAMINER
KONERU, SUJAY
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3624
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
01/25/2018 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):
ip_docket @ qualipat. com
jroot@qualipat.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte HARI BASKARAN and TUSHAR RANJAN DALAI
Appeal 2016-0071101
Application 13/710,744
Technology Center 3600
Before CARLA M. KRIVAK, ADAM J. PYONIN, and AMBER L. HAGY,
Administrative Patent Judges.
PYONIN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final
rejection of claims 2-4 and 6, which are all the pending claims. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.
1 AXSLogic Pte. Ltd. is identified as the real party in interest. App. Br. 2.
Appeal 2016-007110
Application 13/710,744
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
The Application is directed to “business management systems
providing business intelligence, analytics with automated reports and early
warning alert functionality.” Spec. 11. Claim 6, the sole independent
claim, is reproduced below for reference (emphasis added):
6. A method for building a data structure useful for managing
a business enterprise, comprising:
receiving datasets containing historical and operational
data from business units within the business enterprise;
preparing datasets for loading into a business enterprise
system, including
collating the data in a collation engine, including
organizing the data into logically related units, and
converting data, as required, from a received format into a
preselected format employed within the business enterprise;
pre-validating the data by rejecting data that fails to meet
preselected constraints set out in a data dictionary;
validating the data in a validation engine, by ensuring the
data are structured in a preselected format, and that the data
content meets preselected standards;
loading the data into a product database in a predetermined
structure, including
at least one dimension table, including
product-specific dimensions, containing data
related to preselected product characteristics;
common dimensions, containing data related to
multiple preselected products;
snowflake dimensions, containing preselected data
from other dimension tables; and
static dimensions, containing data from static
tables;
at least one fact table, containing data related to a
preselected product, including
a first snapshot table, containing data related to the
preselected product over a preselected first time period;
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a second snapshot table, aggregating data from the
first snapshot table over a preselected second time period.
References and Rejections
The following is the prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting
the claims on appeal:
Hoang US
Hesse US
Batra US
Conyack US
2007/0156766 A1
2011/0296166 A1
2012/0054249 A1
2012/0246060 A1
July 5, 2007
Dec. 1,2011
Mar. 1,2012
Sept. 27, 2012
Claims 2—\ and 6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for being
directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. Final Act. 3.
Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Hoang, Conyack, and Batra. Final Act. 4.
Claims 2—\ stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Hoang, Conyack, Batra, and Hesse. Final Act. 9.
ANAFYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’
arguments. We have considered in this Decision only those arguments
Appellants actually raised in the Briefs. Any other arguments Appellants
could have made but chose not to make are deemed waived. See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(l)(iv). We are not persuaded of Examiner error; we adopt the
Examiner’s findings and conclusions as our own, and we add the following
for emphasis.
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I. 101 Rejection
Appellants argue the Examiner erred in concluding independent claim
6 is patent-ineligible, because “[cjlaim 6 sets out a particular combination of
structural data elements” and “the combination of actions with concrete
structures places this claim squarely within the ambit of § 101.” App. Br. 6.
We are not persuaded the Examiner erred. An invention is patent-
eligible if it claims a “new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or
composition of matter.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Supreme Court, however,
has long interpreted § 101 to include an implicit exception: laws of nature,
natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable. See, e.g., Alice
Corp. Pty Ltd. v. CLS Bank Inti, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014). The
Supreme Court, in Alice, reiterated the two-step framework previously set
forth in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 132 S. Ct.
1289, 1300 (2012), “for distinguishing patents that claim laws of nature,
natural phenomena, and abstract ideas from those that claim patent-eligible
applications of those concepts.” Alice Corp., 134 S. Ct. at 2355. The first
step in that analysis is to “determine whether the claims at issue are directed
to one of those patent-ineligible concepts,” e.g., to an abstract idea. Alice
Corp., 134 S. Ct. at 2355. If the claims are directed to a patent-ineligible
concept, the inquiry proceeds to the second step, where the elements of the
claims are considered “individually and ‘as an ordered combination”’ to
determine whether there are additional elements that “‘transform the nature
of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” Alice Corp., 134 S. Ct. at
2355 (quoting Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1297).
The Court acknowledged in Mayo that “all inventions at some level
embody, use, reflect, rest upon, or apply laws of nature, natural phenomena,
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or abstract ideas.” Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1293. We, therefore, look to whether
the claims focus on a specific means or method that improves the relevant
technology, or instead are directed to a result or effect that itself is the
abstract idea and merely invoke generic processes and machinery. See
Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
Here, we agree with the Examiner that the claims are directed to
“organized human behavior because managing a business enterprise includes
managing behavior of a group of humans involved in a business.” Final Act.
3. Claim 6 is directed to a method of operating a business management
system (see, e.g., Spec, 6—7), and our reviewing court has held claims
similarly directed to certain methods of organizing human activity to be
abstract ideas.2 We also agree with the Examiner that the claims “do not
include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly
more than the judicial exception.” Final Act. 3. Rather than addressing a
technical problem, the method of claim 6 is used to solve the business
2 See, e.g., Elec. Power Grp. LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353 (Fed.
Cir. 2016) (“collecting information, analyzing it, and displaying certain
results of the collection and analysis” is abstract); Accenture Global
Services, GmbHv. Guidewire Software, Inc., 728 F.3d 1336, 1344 (Fed. Cir.
2013) (generating task based rules on the occurrence of an event is abstract);
In re Salwan, Appeal No. 2016-2079, 2017 WL 957239 at *3 (Fed. Cir. Mar.
13, 2017) (affirming the rejection under § 101 of claims directed to “storing,
communicating, transferring, and reporting patient health information,”
noting that “while these concepts may be directed to practical concepts, they
are fundamental economic and conventional business practices”); Cyberfone
Systems, LLC v. CNN Interactive Grp, Inc., 558 F. App’x. 988, 992 (Fed.
Cir. 2014) (nonprecedential) (“using categories to organize, store, and
transmit information is well-established”); Intellectual Ventures I LLC v.
Erie Indem. Co., 850 F.3d 1315, 1328 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (“the heart of the
claimed invention lies in creating and using an index to search for and
retrieve data ... an abstract concept”).
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problem of managing business operations. See Spec. 117; see also Ans. 4.
That such processes may be performed more efficiently by a computer does
not ‘“transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.”
Alice Corp., 134 S. Ct. at 2355 (quoting Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1297); see also
FairWarningIP, LLC v. Iatric Sys., Inc., 839 F.3d 1089, 1096 (Fed. Cir.
2016) (“[T]he use of generic computer elements like a microprocessor or
user interface do not alone transform an otherwise abstract idea into patent-
eligible subject matter.”).
Appellants’ arguments focus on the claimed recitations of “data
structures” (see App. Br. 6; Reply Br. 2). Although the Enfish court found
“the self-referential table recited in the claims on appeal is a specific type of
data structure designed to improve the way a computer stores and retrieves
data in memory” (Enfish, 822 F.3d at 1339), we find the present claims are
not similar. In Enfish, “the plain focus of the claims is on an improvement
to the computer functionality itself.” Enfish, 822 F.3d at 1336. Here, in
contrast, Appellants do not proffer, nor do we find in the record before us,
any showing that the claims improve the computer functionality itself.
Rather, as correctly determined by the Examiner, the claims “require nothing
more than a generic computer to perform routine and conventional computer
functions.” Final Act. 3^4; Ans. 4; see also Spec. 120 (“[Bjusiness
management system 100 is built around a source database 102. The
database can be a large enterprise-scale database or data warehouse system,
exemplified by system[sic] such as SQL Server DB, DB2, Oracle DB,
Datastage, ODI, Informatica, Cognos, Oracle BI And the like.”); Spec. 123
(“Equipment for implementing these modules is known in the art.”). Thus,
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we are not persuaded by Appellants that the claim limitations place claim 6
“squarely within the ambit of § 101.” Contra App. Br. 6.
Accordingly, we are not persuaded the Examiner erred in determining
independent claim 6 is patent-ineligible pursuant to the two-part Alice test.
See Final Act. 3—A. We sustain the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 101 rejection of
claim 6, as well as claims 2—4, which depend therefrom and are not
separately argued. See App. Br. 8.
II. 103 Rejection
Appellants argue the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of independent
claim 6 is in error because “the detailed structure now present in Claim 6 is
neither taught nor disclosed by the cited references.” App. Br. 8; Reply Br.
4. Particularly, Appellants contend “Hoang contains no . . . structure” such
as the claimed dimension table and “[t]he other cited references do not cure
Hoang’s fatal omission.” App. Br. 7; Reply Br. 3.
Appellants’ arguments are not responsive to the Examiner’s findings,
and thus do not persuade us the Examiner erred. For example, Appellants
argue “Conyack is cited for the sole purpose of adding data validation, so it
has no bearing on the data structure” (App. Br. 7; Reply Br. 3); whereas the
Examiner finds Conyack teaches, inter alia, “at least one dimension table.”
Final Act. 6; see also Ans. 5; Conyack || 114—119. Further, Appellants’
arguments consist of general descriptions of the references, but fail to
provide a meaningful analysis of the disputed claim terms or the cited
specific textual portions of the references upon which the Examiner relies in
the rejection. See Ans. 5; Hoang || 32, 35—40, 47; Conyack || 78, 91, 114—
119, 152; Batra 81—82; see also In re Geisler, 116 F.3d 1465, 1470 (Fed.
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Cir. 1997) (conclusory statements that are unsupported by factual evidence
are entitled to little probative value). Thus, Appellants do not persuade us of
error in the Examiner’s finding that “one [of] ordinary skill in the art
[would] combine the teachings of Hoang and Conyack with Batra because
adding snowflake dimensions would provide another solution for an
enterprise to consolidate and organize the data from multiple units.” Final
Act. 7; see also Batra 1—3.
Accordingly, we are not persuaded the Examiner erred in finding the
combination of Hoang, Conyack, and Batra teaches or suggests the
limitations recited by claim 6. We sustain the Examiner’s obviousness
rejection of independent claim 6, and claims 2-4, which depend therefrom
and are not separately argued. See App. Br. 8.
DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 2-4 and 6 is affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv).
AFFIRMED
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