Ex Parte Bedingfield

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 27, 2013

11412004 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 27, 2013)

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.
11/412,004 04/26/2006 James Carlton Bedingfield SR. 9400-188 (050037) 4813
39072 7590 02/28/2013
AT&T Legal Department - MB
Attn: Patent Docketing
Room 2A-207
One AT&T Way
Bedminster, NJ 07921
EXAMINER
ENGLAND, SARA M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2172
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/28/2013 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte JAMES CARLTON BEDINGFIELD SR.
____________

Appeal 2011-000084
Application 11/412,004
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD, JR., ERIC S. FRAHM, and
ANDREW J. DILLON, Administrative Patent Judges.

DILLON, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1-10 and 12-19. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. §
6(b).
We affirm.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
“According to some embodiments of the present invention, recorded
audio information is managed by using annotation markers.” Spec., ¶ 5.
“[A]nnotating the audio information … comprises processing the audio
information to convert the audio information to text information,
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electronically generating a concordance comprising selected words from the
text information, and saving the text information and the concordance in the
electronically searchable file.” Spec., ¶ 8.
The Examiner relies on the following references as evidence of
unpatentability:
Moran US 5,717,869 Feb. 10, 1998
Spielberg US 2002/0129057 A1 Sep. 12, 2002

REJECTION
The Examiner rejected claims 1, 2, 6-10, 12-15, and 19 under 35
U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Moran. Ans. 3-6.1
The Examiner rejected claims 3-5 and 16-18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Moran and Spielberg. Ans. 6-10.

MORAN
Moran teaches a system for organizing business meeting data.
Abstract; col. 5, ll. 15-21. Moran achieves this objective via three types of
data – timestreams, events, and sessions. Col. 6, l. 34 – col. 9, l. 14.
Essentially, a timestream constitutes a portion of media content, an event
constitutes an occurrence within media content, and a session maps
timestreams and their event/s to one another. Id. All three data types can be
stored within a Timestream Database. Id. at col. 9, ll. 16-17; col. 16, ll. 1-
27. The session data and event data can be searched within the Timestream

1 Throughout this opinion, we refer to the Appeal Brief filed June 1, 2010
(“App. Br.”), the Examiner’s Answer mailed July 8, 2010 (“Ans.”), and the
Reply Brief filed September 8, 2010.
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Database. Id. at col. 16, ll. 31-44 (“database querying capability to allow
selective retrieval of Sessions and Events”).

ANALYSIS
Claims 1-3, 5-10, 12-16, 18, and 19
Claims 1-3, 5-10, 12-16, 18, and 19 stand or fall together. App. Br.,
pp. 6-7. We select claim 1, reproduced below, as representative. 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(iv).
1. A method of managing information, comprising:
recording audio information;
annotating the audio information to include at least one
marker so as to modify the audio information, the at least one
marker being searchable; and
saving the annotated audio information including the at
least one marker in an electronically searchable file.
The Examiner reads the claimed audio information on Moran’s
Timestream Database and, particularly, on the stored “temporal data”
comprised of timestreams and events. Ans., p. 10 (citing Moran, col. 16, ll.
23-31); see also id. at p. 3 (citing Moran, col. 3, ll. 1-8 ). The Examiner
reads the claimed “marker” on the event data of the Timestream Database.
Id. at p. 8 (citing Moran, col. 16, ll. 35-38).
Appellant’s arguments fail to address the Examiner’s reading of the
claimed audio information on the Timestream Database’s temporal data.
App. Br., pp. 5-7. The arguments instead incorrectly state that the claimed
audio information is read strictly on Moran’s timestream data. Id. This
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mistake is best exemplified by the Appeal Brief’s asserted summary of the
issues:
In summary, Moran discloses “annotating” an
audio/video file through user interaction with a presentation
while the presentation is being recorded. While these
annotations may modify the audio/video information, they are
not searchable. Moran also discloses generating session and
event data from time stream data corresponding to a
presentation. The session and event data, while searchable, do
not modify the timestream data. They may be stored in the
same or different databases, but the original time stream data
remain intact. Thus, Moran does not disclose or suggest, at
least, annotating audio information in such a way that it
modifies the audio information and includes at least one
searchable marker as recited in the pending independent
claims.
App. Br., p. 7 (italic emphasis added). Appellant repeats this mistake within
the Reply Brief, arguing:
Moran does not describe modifying the bulk timestream data to
include event and/or session data. Even if the bulk time stream
data is stored in the same database, they still remain as separate
entities within the database. The bulk timestream data is not
modified by the event and/or session data. By contrast,
independent Claims 1, 14, and 19 state that the audio
information is modified with at least one marker.
Reply Br., p. 2 (italic emphasis added).
The record clearly reflects, in the several respects presented below,
that the claimed audio information is read on the Timestream Database’s
temporal data. First, in addressing the claimed step of recording audio
information, the rejection cites to temporal data comprising both
timestreams and events. Ans., p. 3 (citing Moran, col. 3, ll. 1-8); see also
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Final Rej., p. 2. Second, in addressing the claimed step of
annotating/modifying the audio information, the Answer’s “Response to
Arguments” section explains that Moran’s “[t]emporal data is a combination
of the timestream and Events (Col. 6, lines 16-17)[;] therefore when the
event is named, the temporal data is altered.” Ans., p. 12. And third, the
“Response to Arguments” section block quotes a portion of Appellant’s
Specification that indicates the claimed audio information may be any
conglomeration of audio information bound within a cohesive unit and,
moreover, emphasizes the passage’s example of “database document” in
bold characters. Id. at p. 11 (citing Spec., ¶ 33).
In light of the above, Appellant should have understood the rejection
as reading the claimed audio information on the Timestream Database’s
temporal data. Instead, Appellant incorrectly addresses the rejection as
though reading the claimed audio information strictly on Moran’s
timestream data. As such, the arguments do not address the rejection; much
less identify a reversible error.
Accordingly, we sustain the anticipation rejection of claim 1 and
claims 3-7, 9-11, 13-18, and 20 falling therewith.
We find the Examiner’s reading of the claimed invention on Moran’s
teachings to be reasonable. As reflected above, Appellant’s Specification
presents an expansive interpretation of “audio information” that
encompasses any conglomeration of audio information bound within a
coherent unit. Spec., ¶ 33. Given this expansive scope, Moran’s system can
be reasonably interpreted as: “recording audio information,” as claimed, by
way of generating the Timestream Database’s temporal data; “annotating the
audio information to include at least one marker so as to modify the audio
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information, the at least one marker being searchable,” as claimed, by way
of including the searchable event data within the Timestream Database’s
temporal data; and “saving the annotated audio information including the at
least one marker in an electronically searchable file,” as claimed, by way of
maintaining the Timestream Database as a searchable database.
Claims 4 and 17
Remaining claims 4 and 17 stand or fall together. App. Br., p. 8. We
select claim 4, reproduced below, as representative. 37 C.F.R. §
41.37(c)(iv).
4. The method of Claim 1, wherein annotating the
audio information and saving the annotated audio information
comprises:
processing the audio information to convert the audio
information to text information;
electronically generating a concordance comprising
selected words from the text information; and
saving the text information and the concordance in the
electronically searchable file.
The Examiner finds that the further subject matter is taught by Moran
as follows:
Moran states “The timestreams are analyzed to create a set of
events for each timestream. An event is subsequently used as
an index for replaying the session” as described by the abstract.
Moran further states “Events are used to created indices which
provide direct access to a point or span in time during the
collaborative activity. Timestreams may inherently define
events, or alternatively may be analyzed to identify events[.]”
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Ans., p. 13 (citing Moran, col. 3, ll. 15-18). Appellant responds:
Claims 4 and 17 … state that the concordance is generated from
selected words taken from the audio information – not from
annotations made to the audio information. By contrast, it
appears that the Examiner’s Answer is alleging that Moran
teaches that a concordance can be made from textual
annotations used for indexing underlying audio/video data as
opposed to generating a concordance based on the underlying
audio/video data.
Reply Br., p. 2.
Appellant misinterprets the rejection. As shown by the above block
quote of the Answer, the Examiner finds that the subject matter of claim 4 is
suggested by Moran’s analyzing of timestreams to create events, which are
in turn used to create indices. Ans., p. 13 (citing Moran, col. 3, ll. 15-18).
This process is generally described by Moran’s abstract, as is discussed by
the Examiner (see Examiner block quote, above). The “analyzing” part of
this process is particularly described with respect to Moran’s Analyzer, as
follows:
The analyzer accesses the data in timestreams of the
given session, and creates events associated with the session.
… For example the analyzer might be an audio word spotter
which creates an event every time a given word (which would
be part of the specs string) is spoken. Note that the Analyzer
could be running after a session has been recorded[.]
Moran, col. 8, ll. 51-61. An exemplary use of the analyzer would be to store
timestreams of audio content within the Timestream Database as temporal
data (id. at col. 13, ll. 50-54; col. 14, ll. 19-22), process the temporal data
with a word spotting analyzer so as to generate events for particular words
(id. at col. 8, ll. 51-61; col. 14, ll. 26-31), and then use the events to generate
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indices for some of the spotted words (id. at col. 3, ll. 16-19; col. 5, ll. 15-
21). The claimed text information and concordance read on the events and
indices of the spotted words, respectively.
Accordingly, we sustain the obviousness rejection of claim 4 and
claim 17 falling therewith.
We note the Examiner relies on Spielberg as teaching that audio
content can be automatically converted to text indices. Ans., p. 8 (Moran
“fail[s] to show converting audio to text, that text to be the input for the
indices.”) We find this reliance on Spielberg unnecessary. Claim 4 more
broadly recites converting the “audio information” to “text information” and,
in turn, “electronically generating” a concordance comprising words of the
text information. The use of an audio word spotter to “create[] an event
every time a given word (which would be part of the specs string) is spoken”
(see above block quote of Moran, col. 8, ll. 51-61), implicitly entails some
manner of converting audio information to text information; e.g.,
determining a text information equivalent of the audio information.
Otherwise, the audio information would not be recognized as including the
selected words of the text information. Any ensuing generation of indices
comprising the selected words – e.g., even by user input – would in turn
constitute “electronically generating a concordance,” as claimed.

ORDER
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-7 and 9-20 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).
AFFIRMED
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