Ex Parte Carlberg et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 14, 201613277060 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 14, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 13/277,060 10/19/2011 10631 7590 06/16/2016 Ingrassia Fisher & Lorenz, P.C. (Salesforce) Nicole Gorney The Landmark @ One Market Street, Suite 300 San Francisco, CA 94105 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Reid Carlberg 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 ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 627US (102.0066) 5511 EXAMINER YEN,JASONTAHAI ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3716 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/16/2016 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): IPDocketing@salesforce.com docketing@ifllaw.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte REID CARLBERG and PAUL KOP ACKI Appeal2014-003955 Application 13/277,060 1 Technology Center 3700 Before LINDA E. HORNER, JEREMY M. PLENZLER, and ERIC C. JESCHKE, Administrative Patent Judges. PLENZLER, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner's Final Decision rejecting claims 1-20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 Appellants identify Salesforce.com, Inc. as the real party in interest. App. Br. 1. Appeal2014-003955 Application 13/277 ,060 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER Claims 1, 10, and 18 are independent. Claim 1 is illustrative of the claims on appeal, and is reproduced below: 1. A system for creating a tournament m a multi-tenant database environment, comprising: a database configured to securely store tenant based data; and a processor communicatively connected to the database, the processor configured to: receive number of participants data, assignment of participant data and type of tournament data; receive tournament access information; create tournament data based upon the number of participants data, the assignment of participants data and the type of tournament data; and push the tournament data to a tournament application on a domain of one or more tenants of the multi-tenant database system based upon the tournament . ,.. ,• access mrormauon. REJECTIONS 1. Claims 1, 2, 4--11, and 13-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Jokipii (US Pat. App. Pub. No. 2003/0190960 Al, pub. Oct. 9, 2003); 2. Claims 3 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Jokipii and Nicora (US Pat. App. Pub. No. 2009/0191929 Al, pub. July 30, 2009); 3. Claim 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Jokipii and Slade (US Pat. App. Pub. No. 2005/0261043 Al, pub. Nov. 24, 2005); 2 Appeal2014-003955 Application 13/277 ,060 4. Claim 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Jokipii and Kidron (US Pat. App. Pub. No. 2002/0155886 Al, pub. Oct. 24, 2002); 5. Claim 18 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Jokipii and Spanton (US Pat. App. Pub. No. 2007/0117617 Al, pub. May 24, 2007); 6. Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Jokipii, Spanton, and Arezina (US Pat. App. Pub. No. 2010/0130280 Al, pub. May 27, 2010); 7. Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Jokipii, Spanton, and Herrmann (US Pat. App. Pub. No. 2010/0062840 Al, pub.Mar. ll,2010);and 8. Claims 5 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112 i-f 2 as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the applicant regards as the invention. OPINION Obviousness The independent claims are directed to "[a] system for creating a tournament in a multi-tenant database environment" (claim 1 ), "[a] method for creating a tournament in a multi-tenant database system" (claim 10), and "[a] system for joining a tournament in a multi-tenant database environment" (claim 18). The claims further require "a processor ... configured to ... push the tournament data to a tournament application on a domain of one or more tenants of the multi-tenant database system based upon the tournament access information" (claim 1, similar language in claim 3 Appeal2014-003955 Application 13/277 ,060 18) and "pushing, by the processor, the tournament data to a tournament application on a domain of one or more tenants of the multi-tenant database system based upon the tournament access information" (claim 10). The Examiner finds that Jokipii teaches these limitations. Final Act. 4, 8-9. Appellants dispute these findings. App. Br. 8-15, 18-21. Specifically, Appellants contend that the rejection has not considered the recitation of the domain being that "of one or more tenants of the multi- tenant database system." Id. at 8, 12-13, 18. Our review of the rejection does not reveal where this limitation is considered sufficiently. Rather, the Examiner appears to take the position that the claims require only either a processor configured to push (claims 1 and 18) or pushing (claim 10) "the tournament data to a tournament application on a domain ... based upon the tournament access information," without the domain being that "of one or more tenants of the multi-tenant database system." See Final Act. 12 ("In response to applicant's argument that the references fail to show certain features of applicant's invention, it is noted that the features upon which applicant relies (i.e., Multitenancy, i.e. cloud computing) are not recited in the rejected independent claim(s)."). The Examiner's rejection runs counter to the claim construction principle that meaning should be given to all of a claim's terms. See Bicon, Inc. v. Straumann Co., 441F.3d945, 950 (Fed. Cir. 2006) ("claims are interpreted with an eye toward giving effect to all terms in the claim"). To the extent the Final Action disregards the claim language noted above (which the Final Action appears to confirm at page 12 as noted above), that is error. Even if the Final Action did consider the domain being that "of one or more tenants of the multi-tenant database system," however, it is unclear 4 Appeal2014-003955 Application 13/277 ,060 how the cited portions of Jokipii teach that limitation. Rather than attempting to construe the claim language at issue (i.e., pushing the tournament data to a tournament application on a domain of one or more tenants of the multi-tenant database system) and explaining how Jokipii teaches those features, the Final Action simply cites portions of Jokipii as corresponding to the limitations without further discussion. The portions of Jokipii cited in the Final Action discuss, generally, a client-server environment. See, e.g., Jokipii i-fi-17, 9. As Appellants contend (App. Br. 8, 13, 19), it is unclear why one skilled in the art would consider a traditional client-server system to be a "multi-tenant database system." It is also unclear how the other citations to Jokipii relate to the limitations at issue. See Jokipii i-fi-16, 30, 45, 47, 48. For these reasons, the Examiner has failed to establish sufficiently that claims 1, 10, and 18 are obvious over J okipii. The Examiner's Answer also fails to cure this deficiency. See Ans. 12-13. The Answer responds to Appellants' arguments by indicating that Jokipii's "gaming system 100 is considered as a multi-tenant database system, wherein the game data is pushed to different computing device[ s] or tenant[s]," but fails to provide any explanation as to why one skilled in the art would consider "gaming system 100" to be a "multi-tenant database system" or the "computing device" to be a "tenant." Id. at 13. In response, Appellants contend, for example, that "[ t ]he Examiner's interpretation of 'tenant' is clearly inconsistent with the Applicants specification." Reply Br. 5. We agree. Neither the Examiner nor Appellants direct us to a plain and ordinary meaning for the term "tenant" in the context of database systems. As Appellants note (id. at 5), however, we have guidance as to the meaning 5 Appeal2014-003955 Application 13/277 ,060 of that term from the Specification, which states that "[a] 'tenant' generally refers to a group of users that shares access to common data within database 130" (Spec. i-f 19). The Examiner provides no reason for us to believe that considering a "computing device" to be a "tenant" is consistent with that term's usage in the Specification. Claims 2-9, 11-1 7, 19, and 20 each depend from claim 1, 10, or 18. The rejections of those claims suffer from the same deficiencies noted above relative to claims 1, 10, and 18. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Indefiniteness Claims 5 and 14 are additionally rejected as indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112 i-f 2. Claims 5 and 14 each recite "data security data defining the tournament data that may be shared between tournament users from the same tenant and between tournament users from different tenants." The basis for the rejection in the Final Action is that "it is not clear how a data security data is shared among users from the same and different tenants." Final Act. 3. As Appellants correctly contend, however, "[t]he Examiner appears to [be] misquoting the claim ... the data security data is not shared between tenants, but the data security data defines which tournament data could be shared." App. Br. 22. Accordingly, the Examiner has failed to establish that claims 5 and 14 are indefinite. DECISION We REVERSE the Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-20 as obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a); and 6 Appeal2014-003955 Application 13/277 ,060 We REVERSE the Examiner's decision to reject claims 5 and 14 as indefinite under 35 U.S.C. § 112 i-f 2. REVERSED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation