Ex Parte Dutta et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 24, 2016

12810021 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 24, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
12/810,021 07/28/2010 Pradyumna Dutta
24737 7590 02/26/2016
PHILIPS INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY & STANDARDS
P.O. BOX 3001
BRIARCLIFF MANOR, NY 10510
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.
2007P01973WOUS 1664
EXAMINER
HOLCOMB, MARK
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3686
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/26/2016 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):
debbie.henn@philips.com
marianne.fox@philips.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte PRADYUMNA DUTTA and
COLLEEN ENNETT
Appeal2013-008125
Application 12/810,021 1
Technology Center 3600
Before HUBERT C. LORIN, BIBHU R. MOHANTY, and
BRADLEY B. BAY AT, Administrative Patent Judges.
LORIN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Pradyunma Dutta and Colleen Ennett (Appellants) seek our review
under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the final rejection of claims 1--4, 7-19, and 22-25.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
SUMMARY OF DECISION
We REVERSE.
1 The Appellants identify Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. as the real
party in interest. App. Br. 2.
Appeal2013-008125
Application 12/810,021
THE INVENTION
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the subject matter on
appeal.
1. A method of retrieving similar patient cases from a
medical database, the method comprising:
matching, by a processor, a current patient case against a
plurality of clinical profiles resulting in a set of matching
clinical profiles, each clinical profile including a plurality of
specifications and the matching includes comparing patient data
for the current patient case with the specifications to determine
whether there is a match for any of the specifications;
determining, by a processor, for each clinical profile
from the set of matching clinical profiles, a degree of
membership of the current patient case based upon a degree of
match between the current patient case and the clinical profile,
wherein matching clinical profiles include degrees of
membership that are less than a complete match with the
current patient case; and
retrieving, by a processor, based on the clinical profiles
in the set of matching clinical profiles, similar patient cases
from the medical database that are identified as having a
substantially corresponding degree of membership in at least
one of the clinical profiles as the current patient case,
wherein each clinical profile is divided into a plurality of
levels with a set of the specifications within each level.
THE REJECTIONS
The Examiner relies upon the following as evidence of
unpatentability:
Herren
Bond
Williams
Rao
us 6,108,635
US 6,177,940 Bl
US 2008/0126277 Al
US 7,457,731 B2
2
Aug. 22, 2000
Jan.23,2001
May 29, 2008
Nov. 25, 2008
Appeal2013-008125
Application 12/810,021
The following rejections are before us for review:
1. Claims 1--4, 7-9, 11-19, and 22-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Bond, Rao, and Williams.2
2. Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
Bond, Rao, and Williams, or alternatively, Bond, Rao, and Herren.
ISSUES
Did the Examiner err in rejecting claims 1--4, 7-9, 11-19, and 22-25
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bond, Rao, and Williams;
and, claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bond, Rao, and
Williams, or alternatively, Bond, Rao, and Herren?
ANALYSIS
The rejection of claims 1--4, 7-9, 11-19, and 22-25 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Bond, Rao, and T¥illiams.
Independent claims 1, 16, 24, and 25 include the limitation "wherein
each clinical profile is divided into a plurality of levels with a set of the
specifications within each level."
The Examiner found said claim limitation disclosed in paragraphs
177-179 of Williams (see Ans. 5 and Advisory Action), reproduced below:
[O 177] Input from the individual patient record is analyzed
(Block 1508) and is profiled against the cohort profile (Block
1510). In one embodiment, the profile is limited to those
predictors that are available for the current patient. In another
embodiment, an imputation method, such as a model-based
imputation, hot deck imputation, imputation to the mean or
2 The Examiner's Answer (p. 3) incorrectly lists the rejected claims.
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Application 12/810,021
median or multiple imputations, are used to impute values that
are missing in the current patient record.
[O 178] Profiling may involve one or more medical or behavioral
outcome measures, which in tum may be either continuous or
categorical. Profiling, in one embodiment, may treat each
outcome individually while another may treat them as a single
multivariate outcome. For example, diabetes status may [be]
treated alone, but systolic and diastolic blood pressure may be
treated as a single two-dimensional outcome. Continuous
outcomes might be profiled using predictive modeling, including
but not limited to methods such as generalized linear models,
generalized mixed effects models, generalized estimating
equations, time series models, tree-structured regression,
Bayesian models, nearest neighbor methods, clustering or
scaling algorithms or neural networks. Categorical models might
be profiled using some of the same methods mentioned for
continuous outcomes where appropriate, but might also include
other techniques, including but not limited to discriminate
analysis, Bayesian classifiers and tree-structured classifiers.
[O 179] Individual baseline outcomes are then calculated (Block
1512). In one embodiment, these are calculated based on the
predictive relationships determined when generating the
statistical profile of the cohort (Block 1506). In another
embodiment, these are calculated based on statistical profiles of
patients derived from relevant literature. A third embodiment
uses predictive relationships on advice solicited from an expert
panel. Another embodiment combines the two or more
approaches depending upon the nature of the outcomes and the
strength of the evidence in the literature, expert panel or patient
record database. Hence, the contribution of the patient record
database grows with the number of subjects captured in it.
Techniques for determining combining proportions may include,
but are not limited to, fixed proportions, proportions based upon
an information measure, any now known or later developed
technique, or combination thereof. In one embodiment the
baseline outcome is a single number or category for each
outcome measure. In another embodiment, the outcomes are
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Appeal2013-008125
Application 12/810,021
probability distributions for each outcome measure, whether
continuous, categorical, multivariate, or combination thereof.
We have reviewed said passages but do not see there disclosed that
each clinical profile is divided into a plurality of levels with a set of the
specifications within each level as claimed. These passages suggest how an
individual patient record is profiled against the cohort profile but there is no
discussion of how the information in the cohort profile is organized.
According to the Examiner:
the element concerning the division of the profile into a
plurality of levels is broad, and can be interpreted and matched
by Williams in multiple ways. Accordingly, the Examiner has
cited multiple ways in which Williams meets this limitation, as
shown above, including the division of the profile into used and
unused specifications (paragraph 177), profiling used on a
continuous level or categorical level outcomes (paragraph 178),
and where multiple cohort sources comprising various levels of
specifications are used at different proportions, or weights
(paragraph 179).
Ans. 23.
With regard to paragraph 177, Williams does not disclose that the
cohort profile is divided into "used and unused" levels, but rather that the
cohort profile can be "limited to those predictors that are available for the
current patient" in one embodiment of profiling information from an
individual patient record against the cohort profile. According to Williams,
the cohort profile is generated to include only certain, i.e., "used" predictors,
so the "unused" predictors are not part of the resulting cohort profile. See i-f
176; Figure 15. In paragraph 178, Williams teaches that "[p]rofiling may
involve one or more medial or behavioral outcome measures, which in tum
may be either continuous or categorical." However, these classifications of
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Application 12/810,021
outcome measures do not teach or suggest that the cohort profile is divided
into one level for continuous measures and another level for categorical
outcomes. Paragraph 1 79 discusses different ways of calculating individual
baseline outcomes. Although these methods for calculating baseline
outcomes variously apply information from the cohort profile, there is no
teaching of the cohort profile being divided into different levels, each having
specifications. The difficulty with the Examiner's findings premised on
Williams is that there is insufficient evidence regarding the organization of
information in the cohort profile, namely whether the cohort profile is
divided into a plurality of levels with a set of specification within each level,
as claimed.
The Examiner also determined that "under another broadest
reasonable interpretation, each 'level' could be composed of one type of
specification," and "[u]nder this interpretation, each specification/parameter
disclosed in Bond at #517 is a level unto itself." Ans. 24. Figure 5 of Bond
depicts Basic Window 500 which allows a user to access the analysis
functions for an outcomes profile report. Bond, col. 6, 11. 56-59. Each sort
criteria set 507 includes a subset 517. Id. at col. 6, 11. 66-67. Although
Bond discloses that the sort criteria are arranged in sets and subsets, the
Examiner has not explained how the organization of the sort criteria teaches
or suggests a particular organization of a clinical profile.
For the foregoing reasons, a prima facie case of obviousness has not
been made out in the first instance by a preponderance of the evidence.
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Application 12/810,021
The rejection of claim 10 under 35U.S.C.§103(a) as unpatentable over
Bond, Rao, and Williams, or alternatively, Bond, Rao, and Herren.
This rejection is directed to claim 10 that depends from claim 1,
whose rejection we have reversed above. For the same reasons, we will not
sustain the rejection of claim 10 over the cited prior art. Cf In re Fritch, 972
F.2d 1260, 1266 (Fed. Cir. 1992) ("[D]ependent claims are nonobvious ifthe
independent claims from which they depend are nonobvious. ").
CONCLUSIONS
The rejections of claims 1--4, 7-9, 11-19, and 22-25 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Bond, Rao, and Williams; and, claim 10 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Bond, Rao, and Williams, or
alternatively, Bond, Rao, and Herren are reversed.
DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1--4, 7-19, and 22-25 is
REVERSED.
REVERSED
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