Ex Parte DresdenDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 17, 201610710852 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 17, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 101710,852 08/07/2004 24131 7590 06/21/2016 LERNER GREENBERG STEMER LLP PO BOX 2480 HOLLYWOOD, FL 33022-2480 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Scott Dresden 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. X-9277 7986 EXAMINER OSMAN BILAL AHME, AF AF ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3622 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/21/2016 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): boxoa@patentusa.com docket@patentusa.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte SCOTT DRESDEN Appeal2014-004736 1 Application 10/710,8522 Technology Center 3600 Before ANTON W. PETTING, BIBHU R. MOHANTY, and NINA L. MEDLOCK, Administrative Patent Judges. MEDLOCK, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's final rejection of claims 26 and 31-35. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ). We REVERSE. 1 Our decision references Appellant's Appeal Brief ("App. Br.," filed October 29, 2013) and Reply Brief ("Reply Br.," filed March 13, 2014), and the Examiner's Answer ("Ans.," mailed January 13, 2014) and Final Office Action ("Final Act.," mailed June 5, 2013). 2 The inventor, Scott Dresden, is assumed to be the real party in interest. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(i). Appeal2014-004736 Application 10/710,852 CLAIMED INVENTION Appellant's claimed invention is directed to a method for tracking the effectiveness of an e-commerce advertising channel (Abstract). Claim 26, reproduced below, is the sole independent claim and is representative of the subject matter on appeal: 26. A method for tracking an effectiveness of an advertisement and for routing a telephone call placed in response to the advertisement, the method including: placing an advertisement for a product or service on an internet, the advertisement including a telephonic number for contacting a vendor in order to obtain the product or service and the advertisement including an alpha-numeric identification code for indicating an effectiveness of the advertisement; enabling a potential customer to place a telephone call by entering the telephonic number from the advertisement into a keypad of a telephone communicating with the telecommunications network; enabling the potential customer to enter the identification code from the advertisement into the telecommunications net\'l/ork by manually entering the identification code from the advertisement into the keypad of the telephone communicating with the telecommunications network; having a routing device select a particular one of a plurality of vendors based on the telephonic number entered by the customer and based on bids made for routing the telephone call, and having the routing device route the telephone call through the telecommunications network to the particular one of the plurality of vendors; and obtaining the identification code from the telecommunications network and, in order to track the identification code, putting the identification code in an analysis system. 2 Appeal2014-004736 Application 10/710,852 REJECTION3 Claims 26 and 31-35 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Altberg (US 7,120,235 B2, iss. Oct. 10, 2006) and Thornton (US 6,097, 792, iss. Aug. 1, 2000). ANALYSIS We are persuaded by Appellant's argument that the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claim 26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) because Altberg, on which the Examiner relies, does not disclose or suggest "having a routing device select a particular one of a plurality of vendors based on the telephonic number entered by the customer and ... on bids made for routing the telephone call, and having the routing device route the telephone call ... to the particular one of the plurality of vendors," as recited in claim 26 (App. Br. 5-10). The Examiner cites column 6, lines 25----67 and column 7, lines 1-13 of Altberg as disclosing the argued limitation. But we agree with Appellant that there is nothing in the cited portion of Altberg that discloses or suggests having a routing device select a particular one of a plurality of vendors and route a telephone call to that vendor based on ( 1) the telephone number entered by the customer and (2) bids made for routing the telephone call, as called in claim 26. 3 The provisional rejection of claims 26 and 31-35 on the ground of non- statutory obviousness-type double patenting is moot in view of the abandonment of application Serial No. 11/877,639. See Notice of Abandonment mailed September 13, 2013. 3 Appeal2014-004736 Application 10/710,852 Altberg is directed to a method and apparatus for providing pay-per- call performance based advertising (Altberg, col. 1, 11. 43-52), and discloses an account creation and management module including, inter alia, an advertisement creation module (id. at col. 3, 11. 63---66). Altberg discloses that the advertisement creation module allows a business entity or its agent to input text for an advertisement and also to input keywords, which are associated with the advertisement; thereafter, when a user initiates an online search using a keyword that matches one of the keywords entered by the business entity, the advertisement is displayed within the search results (id. at col. 4, 11. 5-34). The advertisement creation module includes telephone number generation logic that generates a unique telephone number, e.g., a toll-free number; this unique telephone number is associated with the business entity's advertisement and mapped to the business's actual telephone number so that when the unique number is called, the business entity's phone rings (id. at col. 4, 11. 44--49). Altberg, thus, discloses a call routing engine that causes calls to the unique telephone number to be redirected, i.e., routed, to the business's actual telephone number (id. at col. 7, 11. 14-- 25). There is no question but that Altberg discloses a routing device that selects one of a plurality of vendors and routes a telephone call to that vendor based on the telephone number entered by the customer. But we find nothing in the cited portions of Altberg that discloses or suggests that the routing is based both on the telephone number entered by the customer and bids made for routing the telephone call on vendor bids. 4 Appeal2014-004736 Application 10/710,852 Altberg discloses in column 6, lines 25 through 67, cited by the Examiner, that the advertiser is charged for telephone calls to the unique telephone number based on a price-per-call basis, and further discloses that advertisers are ranked based on a bid amount per call that each advertiser is willing to pay. Thus, when a user conducts an online search, advertisements are placed or ranked, i.e., higher or lower, within the search results, based on the advertiser's bid amount. In other words, in the Altberg system, the amount an advertiser is willing to pay, i.e., the advertiser's bid, determines the relative placement of its advertisement within the results of a user's online search. But there is nothing in the cited portions of Altberg that discloses or suggests that the routing of a telephone call to a particular advertiser depends in any way on the bid made by that advertiser; instead, the telephone call is routed based solely on the telephone number entered by the customer. In view of the foregoing, we do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of claim 26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). For the same reasons, we also do not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 31-35. Cf In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266 (Fed. Cir. 1992) ("dependent claims are nonobvious if the independent claims from which they depend are nonobvious"). DECISION The Examiner's rejection of claims 26 and 31-35 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) is reversed. REVERSED 5 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation