Ex Parte Burns et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jul 30, 2012

09863996 (B.P.A.I. Jul. 30, 2012)

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.
09/863,996 05/23/2001 Stephen S. Burns 7227/79217 1863
27160 7590 07/31/2012
KATTEN MUCHIN ROSENMAN LLP
(C/O PATENT ADMINISTRATOR)
2900 K STREET NW, SUITE 200
WASHINGTON, DC 20007-5118
EXAMINER
VO, HUYEN X
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2626
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/31/2012 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 BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________________

Ex parte STEPHEN S. BURNS, MICKEY W. KOWITZ, and MICHAEL F.
BELL
____________________

Appeal 2010-008764
Application 09/863,996
Technology Center 2600
____________________

Before JEAN R. HOMERE, THU A. DANG, and CARL W. WHITEHEAD
JR., Administrative Patent Judges.

DANG, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

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I. STATEMENT OF CASE
Appellants appeal the Examiner’s non-final rejection of claims 1, 2, 8-
13, and 29 under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). Claims 3-7 and 14-28 have been
canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

A. INVENTION
According to Appellants, the invention pertains to a data retrieval
system and, more particularly, to a wireless voice recognition system for
providing remote data retrieval (Spec. 1, ¶ [0004]).

B. ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIM
Claim 1 is exemplary and reproduced below:

1. A system for providing wireless voice activated data
retrieval comprising:

an input/output device which includes a user interface for
receiving the voice of a user defining analog voice data and
converting said analog voice data to digital its digital equivalent
defining a first data stream, said input/output device including a
communication system for transferring said first data stream
over a wireless communication link to a remote server system;

a remote server system for receiving said first data stream
from the input/output device over said wireless communication
link, said server system including a database, a database search
engine and an entire speech recognition processing system for
processing said first data stream and converting said first data
stream to text, exchanging text with said database via said
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database search engine to verify the accuracy of the text based
on data stored in said database, and transmitting a second data
stream back to said input/output device over said wireless
communication link based upon data stored in said database.

C. REJECTIONS
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Bennett US 6,633,846 B1 Oct. 14, 2003
(filed Nov. 12, 1999)
Kanevsky US 6,615,171 Bl Sep. 02, 2003
(filed Aug. 13, 1999)

Claims 1, 2, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §
102(e) as being anticipated by Bennett.
Claims 10 and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Bennett and Kanevsky.

II. ISSUE
Has the Examiner erred in finding that Bennett teaches “converting
said analog voice data to digital its digital equivalent defining a first data
stream,” “converting said first data stream to text” and “exchanging text
with said database … to verify the accuracy of the text” (claim 1, emphasis
added)?
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III. FINDINGS OF FACT
The following Findings of Fact (FF) are shown by a preponderance of
the evidence.
Bennett
1. Bennett discloses a real-time system incorporating speech recognition
and linguistic processing for recognizing a spoken query by a user and
distributed between client and server (Abstract).
2. The system accepts a user’s query in the form of speech at the client
where acoustic speech vectors are extracted representing the
utterances, and the vectors are sent to the server wherein the speech
representing the user’s query is fully decoded into text at the server
(id.).
3. In particular, the question (query) asked at the client’s machine is
articulated by the user/speaker and captured by a microphone, wherein
the question is processed by a client-side software resident in the
client’s machine, the output is a set of speech vectors that are
transported to the server and then converted to text at the server, and
the question is decoded by the speech recognition engine located at
the server (col. 7, ll. 18-31).
4. The text corresponding to the user’s query is sent to a natural
language engine and a database processor where optimized SQL
statements are constructed (Abstract).
5. That is, after completing processing of the speech input signal, the
user’s query is recognized wherein the user’s query is converted into a
text string of distinct native language words through the Hidden
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Markov Models (HMM) technique (col. 24, ll. 58-65), and at the
Natural Language Engine (NLE), the text string undergoes
morphological linguistic processing (col. 24, ll. 66-67).

IV. ANALYSIS
Claims 1, 2, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 29
Although Appellants admit that Bennett discloses “a voice recognition
system for digitizing the voice input,” Appellants contend that Bennett does
not disclose a “user interface” which “receives voice input and converts (i.e.
digitizes) the voice input and transfer the digitized voice input (i.e. digital
data stream) over a communication network to a remote server, as recited in
the claims at issue” (App. Br. 4). In particular, Appellants contend that
Bennett “teaches an architecture in which ‘speech vectors’ are transmitted
over the communication link-not digitized voice data” (id.)
Although Appellants also admits that Bennett discloses a
“‘verification’ process,” Appellants contend that “[t]he ‘verification’
disclosed in the Bennett et al patent is really verification of the accuracy of
the speech processing software” (id.). In particular, Appellants assert that
“the verification process disclosed in the Bennett et al patent does not verify
the accuracy of the spoken words” (App. Br. 10).
The Examiner responds that “Bennett reference clearly discloses a
microphone … for recording sound voice from a user and convert[ing] it
into electronic signals” and “[t]he electronic signals are then processed and
converted into MFCC vectors, which are then digitally converted before
transmitting to the server” (Ans. 3-4). Thus, the Examiner finds that “[t]he
digitally encoded signals are now a digital representation of the original
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analog voice signal, and are considered the same as the claimed ‘first data
stream’” (id.). The Examiner then finds that the claimed limitation
“verifying the accuracy of the text based on data stored in said database” is
“interpreted as matching recognized text to text stored in the database” (id.).
We find no error in the Examiner’s findings. In particular, Bennett
discloses capturing speech by a microphone at the client, processing the
speech by a client-side software, and extracting speech vectors representing
the utterances to be sent to the server, wherein the speech representing the
user’s query is fully decoded into text at the server (FF 1-3). We find
Bennett’s speech to comprise analog voice data and find Bennett’s speech
vectors output from the capturing of the voice data by the microphone and
processed by the client-side software to comprise digital data to be decoded.
In fact, even Appellants admit that Bennett discloses “a voice recognition
system for digitizing the voice input” (App. Br. 4).
We note that Appellants refer to paragraph [0032] of the Specification
for support for the digital “data stream,” which merely states that the “sound
transmissions” are received by “microphone” and then recorded to the “data
stream” using “sound recording methods such as a recording algorithm,
software application or other sound recording applications known to those
skilled in the art” (App. Br. 2). We find no patentable difference between
claim 1’s “data stream” limitation and Bennett’s digital data vectors.
Thus, we find no error in the Examiner’s finding that “[t]he digitally
encoded signals are now a digital representation of the original analog voice
signal, and are considered the same as the claimed ‘first data stream’” (Ans.
4). Accordingly, Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in
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finding that Bennett discloses “converting said analog voice data to digital
its digital equivalent defining a first data stream” as recited in claim 1.
Furthermore, Bennett discloses that the text corresponding to the
user’s query is sent to a natural language engine and a database processor
where optimized SQL statements are constructed (FF 4). In particular, the
user’s query is converted into a text string of distinct native language words
through the HMM technique, and at the natural language engine, the text
string undergoes morphological linguistic processing (FF 5). We find
Bennett’s exchanging of text with a database for optimization and
conversion/morphological linguistic processing to comprise verifying the
accuracy of the text. That is, we find no error in the Examiner’s finding that
“verifying the accuracy of the text based on data stored in said database”
reads on Bennett’s “matching recognized text to text stored in the database”
(Ans. 4). In fact, even Appellants admit that Bennett discloses a
“‘verification’ process” (App. Br. 4).
Accordingly, we find no error in the Examiner’s finding that Bennett
also discloses “converting said first data stream to text” and “exchanging
text with said database … to verify the accuracy of the text” as required by
claim 1.
Accordingly, for the above reasons, we affirm the rejection of claim 1
over Bennett. Appellants do not provide arguments for claim 29 separate
from claim 1 and do not provide any argument for claims 2, 8, 9, 11, and 13
depending from claim 1 (App. Br. 5). Thus, claims 2, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 29
fall with claim 1 over Bennett.
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Claims 10 and 12
Although Appellants also argue that “the Bennett patent teaches away
from a client architecture which allows a relatively inexpensive device, such
as a PDA, to be used to access data from a remote data base” (App. Br. 6),
for a disclosure to be teaching away, the disclosure must “criticize, discredit,
or otherwise discourage the solution claimed.” In re Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195,
1201 (Fed. Cir. 2004). However, Appellants do not point to any section of
Bennett that demonstrates any explicit or implicit criticizing, discrediting, or
any discouraging of the solution claimed. Instead, as the Examiner finds,
“Bennett reference also teaches the use of a PDA as client device” (Ans. 5,
citing Bennett at col. 10, ll. 28-61).
Accordingly, we find that Appellants have not shown that the
Examiner erred in rejecting claims 10 and 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over
Bennett in further view of Kanevsky.

V. CONCLUSIONS AND DECISION
Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in finding that
claims 1, 2, 8, 9, 11, 13, and 29 are anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) and
that claims 10 and 12 are unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

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