Ex Parte Dettinger et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Mar 9, 2009

10640814 (B.P.A.I. Mar. 9, 2009)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
________________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
________________

Ex parte RICHARD D. DETTINGER, CALE T. RATH,
and RICHARD J. STEVENS
________________

Appeal 2008-2191
Application 10/640,814
Technology Center 2100
________________

Decided:1 March 10, 2009
________________

Before JAMES D. THOMAS, LANCE LEONARD BARRY, and
HOWARD B. BLANKENSHIP, Administrative Patent Judges.

THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

1 The two-month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil
action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304, begins to run from the decided date
shown on this page of the decision. The time period does not run from the
Mail Date (paper delivery) or Notification Date (electronic delivery).
Appeal 2008-2191
Application 10/640,814

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final
rejection of claims 1 through 4, 7 through 17, 30 through 32, and 34 through
37. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

Invention
In an effort to prevent sensitive information from being divulged in an
annotation of an entry in a database, a set of predefined security rules is
applied to the annotation to detect sensitive information contained therein.
If this sensitive information is detected in such an annotation, appropriate
security measures may be taken. (Abstract 31).

Representative Claim
14. A computer-implemented method of monitoring information
contained in annotations, comprising:
querying a database to obtain a set of instance values for one or more
fields of the database designated as prohibited fields;
generating a set of prohibited terms including the set of instance
values;
providing security information identifying information considered
sensitive, wherein the security information comprises the set of prohibited
terms; and
monitoring the content of annotations for the information considered
sensitive.

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Prior Art and Examiner’s Rejections
The Examiner relies upon the following references:
Adjaoute U.S. 2003/0009495 A1 Jan. 9, 2003
Bays U.S. 6,519,603 B1 Feb. 11, 2003
Toomey U.S. 2004/0128552 A1 Jul. 1, 2004
(filing date Apr. 15, 2003)
Rowney U.S. 2004/0225645 A1 Nov. 11, 2004
(filing date Jun. 27, 2003)

All claims on appeal, claims 1 through 4, 7 through 17, 30 through 32,
and 34 through 37, stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103. In a first stated
rejection as to claims 1, 7 through 11, 13 through 17, 30, 32, and 35 through
37, the Examiner relies upon Bays in view of Rowney. In a second stated
rejection, the Examiner rejects claims 2 through 4, 12, and 34 by relying
upon this initial combination of references, further in view of Toomey. In a
third stated rejection of claim 31, the Examiner also relies upon this initial
combination of references, further in view of Adjaoute.

Claim Groupings
Based upon the arguments presented at pages 10 and 11 of the
principal Brief, independent claims 1, 14, and 30 are argued collectively.
All of these claims are rejected within the first stated rejection. Based upon
the remarks at pages 11 and 12 of the principal Brief on appeal, Appellants
rely for patentability upon those arguments presented with respect to the first
stated rejection and do not argue that Toomey and Adjaoute are not properly,
respectfully, further combinable with the combination of Bays and Rowney.
In this respect, the principal Brief does not argue that Bays and Rowney are
not properly combinable within 35 U.S.C. § 103. As such, any arguments
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regarding this issue at pages 2 and 3 of the Reply Brief are considered to be
untimely filed since they have been effectively waived by the absence of any
such arguments the principal Brief. No arguments are presented as to any
dependent claim within any of the three stated rejections.

ISSUES
1. Have Appellants shown that the Examiner erred in finding that the
combination of Bays and Rowney teaches the feature common among
independent claims 1, 14, and 30 on appeal of querying a database to obtain
a set of instance values for one or more fields of the database designated as
prohibited fields?
2. Have Appellants shown that the Examiner erred in finding that the
combination of Bays and Rowney teaches the feature of monitoring the
content of annotations for the information considered sensitive in
independent claim 14, and the corresponding feature of effectively searching
the content of the annotations for one or more of the prohibited
items/instance values among independent claims 1 and 30?

FINDINGS OF FACT
1. Figures 1 and 1A of Bays show the ability to annotate databases 14,
16 with annotations that are separately stored within the annotation database
20. The initial sentence of the Abstract and Summary of the Invention at
column 2 of Bays states that his invention relates to “capturing annotations
about database material in a way that allows queries with conditions or
predicates on both the database material and the annotations.”
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2. The discussion of the background of the invention at the bottom of
column 1 of Bays indicates that it was known in the art that annotations may
be provided for selective database material including selective subdivisions
of such database material, thus teaching that databases as well as prohibited
fields therein of the first issue. The various figures of Bays illustrate the use
of the term “data items” as well as substantially all of the text of his patent
which refers to such data items within the databases 14 and 16.
3. Bays teaches the following from column 3, lines 5 through 33, as
relied upon by the Examiner:
It is the capture and query of information from experts
represents one important feature of the present invention. To this end,
the present method offers the capability to allow standardized
structure of annotations based on the "group" to which the author and
reader belong, as well as on the data item being annotated. A group
can be as small as one person, in which case there can be a
personalized annotation structure, or it can contain a "related" set of
people, such as people of a particular discipline or performing a
particular role. Henceforth, group will be referred to as a "context".
There is a context associated with the annotation author as well as the
reader. Thus, it is permitted for the structure for the entry of an
annotation about any one data item to be different depending on the
context of the author, and for this information to be presented
differently on retrieval depending on the context of the reader. These
structures that are associated with contexts, can be used to give a level
of credibility to the annotations. That is, the annotation structure may
be set up such that only experts in a given discipline (context) can
enter information or advice pertaining to the expertise understood by
that discipline. Filtering and transforming the entered annotation
content based on the context of the reader can be used to retrieve only
relevant information, or to "hide" information to which this reader
context is unauthorised [sic], or to present the information in a form
easily understood by the discipline or role of the reader. Multiple
annotations from authors with different contexts or within the same
context can be attached to a single annotatable data item.
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4. In concluding the Summary of the Invention, Bays teaches, at column
5, lines 40 through 49, the following:
The information management system can have multiple annotations
for the same data object, and different annotations on the same data
item can be entered by different people/applications or by the same
person/application at different times. Moreover, when the annotations
are retrieved, they can be filtered or modified in a way that depends
on the context of the reader. The annotations can also be propagated
to specific target data items that can be selected from a drop down list,
or by entering a free format text, numeric, document, URL, and so
forth.

5. Bays also teaches, at column 9, lines 50 through 65, additional
material relied upon by the Examiner:
When the annotation structure assignment is completed at block
150, the method 100 can proceed to decision block 155 (FIG. 3C).
Optionally, the method 100 can perform a template transforming (or
filtering) loop illustrated by blocks 155, 160, 165, 170, and/or an
annotation propagation loop illustrated by blocks 175, 180.
The template transforming loop can be automatically initiated
by the method 100 at the decision block 155, whereby, the method
100 inquires whether the administrator 27 (or application 22) wishes
to specify a filter or modify a template to reflect the reader's context.
The administrator 27 indicates which categories are to be retained,
which attributes within these categories are to be retained, which
attribute names are to be changed and how, and more generally
transformations that should be applied to the annotation content.
6. Lastly, with respect to the showing in Figure 5, the Examiner relies
upon the teachings of Bays at column 11, lines 25 through 39:
The method 250 begins at block 255 by having the reader 27
select the data of interest. The method 250 then inquires at block 260
if the reader wishes to view the annotations. If not, the method 250
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terminates at block 263. If the reply to this inquiry is in the
affirmative, the annotations corresponding to the data items within the
data collection are retrieved on request from the data storage 20. The
annotation content can be returned as written or, alternatively, filtered
or modified in a way that depends on the context of the reader.
The method 250 proceeds to the decision block 270 and
inquires if the requested annotation content is subject to filtering,
transformation or modification. If it is, the method 250 proceeds to
block 275 and performs the necessary filtering, transformation and/or
modification, and then returns or displays the requested annotations at
block 280.
7. The Examiner persuasively argues in the paragraph bridging pages 12
and 13 of the Answer:
Bays discloses that filtering and transforming the entered
annotation content based on the context of the reader can be used to
retrieve only relevant information, or to "hide" information to which
this reader context is unauthorized (lines 25-30 in col. 3). Bays
discloses the annotation content can be returned as written or,
alternatively, filtered, or modified in a way that depends on the
context of the reader (lines 31-33 in col. 11). Such filtering and
modification of the annotation content teach the annotation content is
being searched/monitored, such that information of the annotation
content is hidden to the unauthorized reader.

ANALYSIS
To the extent that the Examiner relies upon Rowney to teach the
feature of querying a database for certain prohibited fields, Findings of Fact
1-2 clearly indicate that Bays already teaches this feature. Therefore, the
teachings relied upon by the Examiner in Rowney are considered cumulative
to what is already taught in Bays. Moreover, the Appellants present
arguments at the bottom of page 3 of the Reply Brief that Bays merely
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teaches searching the data structure of a database entry rather than searching
the content of an annotation. Based upon Appellants’ recognition of this
feature among features already noted to this effect in Findings of Fact 1-2
presented earlier, Appellants also appear to admit that Bays teaches the
disputed feature in issue number 1.
As to the other disputed feature that there is no teaching of applying
security rules comprises searching/monitoring the content of an annotation
for one or more prohibited terms or information considered sensitive,
Findings of Fact 3 through 6 plainly indicate that this feature is taught in
Bays. Therefore, Appellants’ corresponding argument at page 11 of the
principal Brief and the position at the bottom of page 3 of the Reply Brief,
that Bays does not search the content of an annotation, are misplaced. Since
Bays plainly teaches this feature according to these findings, Appellants’
position is not understood. The teachings go well beyond the mere
description of filtering a template or hiding information as argued. No
argument is presented that Bays does not teach some measure of prohibited
information; it is also noted that Finding of Fact 3 clearly indicates that a
given reader context may indicate that a given reader is unauthorized or
otherwise prohibited from viewing some material. The position at the top of
page 4 of the Reply Brief is also misplaced to the extent Appellants belittle
the teaching at column 9 that appears to be limited to merely an
administrator deciding whether to make changes to an annotation template
and not to the annotations themselves. This position belies the whole
teaching value of Bays because the reference plainly teaches the
applicability of such templates to specific authors and/or readers and/or
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groups of them with respect to specific database information and the
respective annotations thereto.
Therefore, Bays does teach the feature argued with respect to the first
issue in this appeal by teaching the retrieval of a given annotation if it is not
prohibited, and its transformation, filtering, hiding, modification with
respect to the same or different annotations to the same data item as applied
to authors, readers or the data items themselves in a categorical context. The
artisan would well understand that certain annotations (issue two) and data
items in a database themselves may be prohibited from retrieval by the
categories of the author/reader. The Examiner’s positions in Finding of Fact
7 are consistent with the teachings of Bays.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
1. Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in finding that the
querying feature of a database to obtain a set of instance values for one or
more fields of the database designated as prohibited fields is not taught by
the combined teachings of Bays and Rowney.
2. Likewise, Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in
finding that the combination of Bays and Rowney teaches the feature of
searching or otherwise monitoring the content of an annotation itself for one
or more prohibited terms or sensitive information.

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DECISION
The Examiner’s three separate rejections of claims 1 through 4, 7
through 17, 30 through 32, and 34 through 37, under 35 U.S.C. § 103 are
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)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

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