Ex Parte Gupta et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Oct 24, 2014

11918087 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 24, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________________

Ex parte AJAY GUPTA
and
CHANDRASEKAR VENKATRAMAN

Appeal 2012-0043731
Application 11/918,087
Technology Center 2400
____________________

Before JEAN R. HOMERE, CARLA M. KRIVAK, and
CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judges.

HOMERE, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

1 Appellants identify the real party in interest as Hewlett-Packard
Development Company, LP. App. Br. 3.
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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 1, 2, 4-16, and 18-25. Claims 3 and 17 have been
canceled. App. Br. 3. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
Appellants’ Invention
Appellants invented a method and system for collecting viewership
data of television and radio broadcast programs. Abst. Upon demodulating
a received broadcast signal, a decoder recovers, substantially at the same
time, the program along with supplementary content contained in the signal.
The decoder also records the tag identity and the detection time of the tag
contained in the supplementary content, which constitutes viewership data
that is tallied, and subsequently analyzed. Fig. 5A; Spec. ¶ 70.
Representative Claim
Independent claim 1 is representative. It reads as follows:
1. A monitoring method comprising:
receiving a transmit signal at a receiver, the transmit
signal containing a program and a supplementary content
associating therewith, the supplementary content having a data
portion and a meta-data containing a tag identifying the
program;
demodulating the transmit signal to provide a data-
augmented signal;
recovering the supplementary content from the data-
augmented signal at substantially the same time the program is
rendered at the receiver; and
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keeping a record upon successfully recovering the
supplementary content by recording the tag identity and time
the tag is detected.
Prior Art Relied Upon
Welsh 5,374,951 Dec. 20, 1994
Mankovitz US RE38,600 E Sep. 28. 2004
Barton et al. US 2005/0278747 A1 Dec. 15, 2005
Eyer et al. US 2006/0184994 A1 Aug. 17, 2006
Rejections on Appeal
The Examiner rejects the claims on appeal as follows:
Claims 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18, and 23 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Welsh and
Barton.
Claims 5, 8, 9, 15, and 19-25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over the combination of Welsh, Barton and
Mankovitz.
Claims 12 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over the combination of Welsh, Barton, and Eyer.
ANALYSIS
We consider Appellants’ arguments seriatim as they are presented in
the Appeal Brief, pages 7-19, and the Reply Brief, pages 4-13.2

2 Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellants and the Examiner, we
refer to the Appeal Brief (filed September 20, 2011), the Reply Brief (filed
January 19, 2012), and the Answer (mailed November 21, 2011) for the
respective details. We have considered in this Decision only those
arguments Appellants actually raised in the Brief. Any other arguments
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Dispositive Issue: Under 35 U.S.C. § 103, did the Examiner err in
finding the proposed combination of Welsh and Barton teaches or suggests,
upon successfully recovering a supplementary content, recording the tag
identity and the time the tag associated therewith is detected, as recited in
claim 1?
Appellants argue the proffered combination of references does not
teach the disputed limitations emphasized above. App. Br. 7-14; Reply Br.
4-8. In particular, Appellants argue Welsh discloses after
recovering/decoding character strings from a broadcast signal, and upon
detecting a successful match of the character strings with character strings
stored in RAM, a program identification code, and the time of the
comparison are recorded in a log. According to Appellants, Welsh discloses
at best recording the time of the successful match, which occurs after
decoding the strings, whereas the disputed limitations require recording the
time of the actual string decoding. App. Br. 9-10, and 13; Reply Br. 6-7.
In response, the Examiner finds Welsh’s disclosure of recording the
time of the successful character string match teaches recording the actual
detection/decoding time of the character string. Ans. 13. Further, the
Examiner finds even if the time of the successful match were subsequent to
the actual detection time, because the time difference between the two is
minimal or even negligible, the detection time and the successful match time
are substantially the same, as claimed. Id. at 14.

Appellants could have made but chose not to make in the Briefs are deemed
to be waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).
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On the record before us, we do not find error in the Examiner’s
obviousness rejection of claim 1. We note at the outset, the recitation of
recording the tag identity and the time the tag is detected upon recovering
the supplemental content, including the tag associated therewith, does not
require that such recording occur simultaneously with the supplemental
content recovery. Such recitation is broad enough to encompass a recording
of the tag ID as well as a tag detection time subsequent to the supplemental
content recovery. Therefore, we agree with the Examiner that Welsh’s
undisputed disclosure of recording the detection time of a character string’s
successful match along with the program ID code associated therewith (col.
5, ll. 55-59) teaches the disputed limitations. We further agree with the
Examiner’s finding that even if the claim required such recording be made
contemporaneously with the supplemental content recovery, Welsh’s
disclosure would still teach or at least suggest the disputed limitations. As
noted by the Examiner, because the time difference between such
contemporaneous recording and decoding is minimal when executed by a
processor, Welsh’s disclosure would have predictably resulted in
substantially the same result of keeping a record of the tag ID as well as the
tag detection time associated with the supplemental content recovery.
We thus find the cumulative weight and the totality of the evidence on
this record reasonably support the Examiner’s conclusion that the combined
disclosures of Welsh and Barton would have taught or suggested the
disputed limitations.
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For at least the aforementioned reasons, we find Appellants have not
sustained the requisite burden on appeal of providing arguments or evidence
persuasive of error in the Examiner’s rejection of representative claim 1. It
therefore follows that Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in
finding that the combination of Welsh and Barton renders claim 1
unpatentable.
Regarding the rejection of claim 22, Appellants argue while
Mankovitz discloses editing information, such editing is not made before
sending the record to a data collection entity. App. Br. 17-18; Reply Br. 11.
This argument is not persuasive because only routine skill would be required
for the ordinarily skilled artisan to apply Mankovitz’s disclosure of editing
records before or after transmitting the records to the data collection entity.
Consequently, we find no error in the Examiner’s obviousness rejection.
Because Appellants have not presented separate patentability
arguments or have reiterated substantially the same arguments as those
previously discussed for patentability of claims 1 and 22 above, claims 2, 4-
16, 18-21, and 23-25 fall therewith. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).

DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1, 2, 4-16, and 18-25 as
set forth above.
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).

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AFFIRMED

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