Ex Parte Dingfelder et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 21, 2016

12707753 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 21, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
121707,753 02/18/2010
27799 7590 09/23/2016
Cozen O'Connor
277 Park A venue, 20th floor
NEW YORK, NY 10172
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Sabine Dingfelder
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.
5029-609\307211 3164
EXAMINER
SHIU, HOT
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2457
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/23/2016 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):
patentsecretary@cozen.com
patentdocket@cozen.com
patentsorter@cozen.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte SABINE DINGFELDER and DIETER SCHNEIDER 1
Appeal2015-004526
Application 12/707,753
Technology Center 2400
Before ERIC S. FRAHM, KRISTEN L. DROESCH, and
JOHN D. HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judges.
DROESCH, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants seek review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
Final Rejection of claims 1-12, which constitute all the claims pending in
this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We AFFIRM.
BACKGROUND
The disclosed invention relates to providing access authorization in an
industrial automation system. See Spec. i-fi-1 3-9, Abstract. Representative
1 Appellants indicate the real party-in-interest is Siemens AG. App. Br. 2.
Appeal2015-004526
Application 12/707,753
claim 1, reproduced from the Claims Appendix of the Appeal Brie±: reads as
follows (disputed limitations in italics):
1. A method for granting authorization to use a function
in an industrial automation system comprising a plurality of
networked control units, the method comprising:
providing functions of the industrial automation system by
services of each of said plural networked control units;
separating service-side interfaces inside a client/service
architecture into interfaces which provide security-critical functions
and interfaces which provide functions that are not critical to
security; and
hiding the separated service-side interfaces from client
applications by a client-side interface in which the service-side
interfaces are recorded;
wherein the functions provided by the services of each of said
plural networked control units are callable solely over the client-side
interface.
REJECTION
Claims 1-12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Eldridge et al. (US 2009/0118846 Al; published May 7, 2009)
("Eldridge") and Lingua et al. (US 2002/0095229 Al; published July 18,
2002) ("Lingua").
ISSUE
Did the Examiner err in finding the combination of Eldridge and
Lingua teach or suggest "separating service-side interfaces inside a
client/service architecture into interfaces which provide security-critical
functions and interfaces which provide functions that are not critical to
security," as recited in claim 1, and recited similarly in independent claim
12?
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Appeal2015-004526
Application 12/707,753
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner's rejection in light of Appellants'
arguments in the Appeal Brief, the Examiner's Answer, and the arguments
in the Reply Brief. We disagree with Appellants' contentions. We agree
with, and adopt as our own, the Examiner's findings and conclusions of law.
We highlight the following findings and arguments below for emphasis.
Appellants argue that Eldridge provides no description whatsoever of
separating interfaces in a client/ service architecture into different function
specific interfaces. See App. Br. 5---6 (citing Eldridge i-fi-1 51-52); Reply Br.
3--4 (citing Eldridge i-fi-144--52). Appellants assert that Eldridge's teachings
of assigning different functions in a hierarchy to control/manipulate field
devices, coordinate functions of control modules, and/or orchestrate all
processing activities such as scheduling and/or preparing and monitoring
equipment and resources, have nothing to do with the disputed claim
limitations. See App. Br. 5---6; Reply Br. 3-5. Appellants further contend
that although Eldridge provides users with different security levels, it does
not follow that a service side interface is separated into two separate
function specific interfaces. See App. Br. 5 (citing Eldridge i-fi-151-52);
Reply Br. 4 (citing Eldridge i-fi-144--52).
Appellants' arguments are not persuasive because they fail to address
sufficiently the Examiner's following findings: ( 1) that if a supervisor is
needed to perform a restricted operation (security critical) by logging in,
there is an interface which allows the supervisor to input information (citing
Eldridge i152); (2) Eldridge's disclosure of allowing a regular user to require
a supervisor to log in via a log-in dialog to provide functions that are not
permitted to a regular user indicates that there are different functions for
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Appeal2015-004526
Application 12/707,753
different levels of user security (citing Eldridge iii! 833-836); and (3) when a
higher level security function is only available to the higher level security
personnel, when a supervisor logs in, there is an interface in which the
supervisor is allowed to input security credentials to view functions that are
separate of a normal user (citing Eldridge iii! 833-836). See Ans. 7-8. To
the extent Appellants argue, based on reproducing Figure 2 and paragraph
17 of Appellants' Specification (see Reply Br. 2), that the service-side
interfaces must be physically separated, we are not persuaded. Claims 1 and
12 do not impart additional restrictions on the type of separation, such as,
e.g., logical separation, physical separation, time separation. Thus, we agree
with and adopt as our own the Examiner's finding that Eldridge teaches or
suggests a first low security interface for a regular user, and a separate
security critical interface for a supervisor requiring authentication via a log-
in dialog. See Ans. 6-8 (citing Eldridge iii! 44--52, 833-836).
For all of these reasons, Appellants do not persuade us of error in the
rejection of claims 1-12.
DECISION
We AFFIRM the rejection of claims 1-12.
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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