Ex Parte HattonDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 26, 201712607244 (P.T.A.B. May. 26, 2017) Copy Citation United States Patent and Trademark Office 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 APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 12/607,244 10/28/2009 David Anthony Hatton 81185530 4240 28395 7590 05/31/2017 RROOKS KTTSHMAN P C /FfTET EXAMINER 1000 TOWN CENTER DU, HUNG K 22ND FLOOR SOUTHFIELD, MI 48075-1238 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2645 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/31/2017 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): docketing @brookskushman.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte DAVID ANTHONY HATTON Appeal 2017-002354 Application 12/607,244 Technology Center 2600 Before CARLA M. KRIVAK, IRVIN E. BRANCH, and AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2017-002354 Application 12/607,244 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Non-Final Rejection of claims 14, 15, and 17—21, which are all of the pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. THE INVENTION The application “generally relate[s] to a method and system for emergency call handling.” (Spec. 11:15—16.) Claim 14, reproduced below, exemplifies the subject matter on appeal: 14. A vehicle computing system comprising: one or more computer processors configured to determine if a communication device is connected to the vehicle computing system, upon detection of an emergency event; search for a connectable communication device and automatically connect to an available connectable communication device, if the communication device is not connected to the vehicle computing system; and place an emergency communication using the communication device, after the processor automatically connects to the communication device. 1 Appellant identifies Ford Global Technologies, LLC as the real party in interest. (See App. Br. 2.) 2 Appeal 2017-002354 Application 12/607,244 THE REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner appeal is: Bigwood et al. Kim Rokusek et al. Krasner et al. Rimoni et al. US 2002/0086718 Al US 2008/0039018 Al US 2008/0242365 Al US 7,574,195 B2 US 7,706,796 B2 in rejecting the claims on July 4, 2002 Feb. 14, 2008 Oct. 2, 2008 Aug. 11,2009 Apr. 27, 2010 THE REJECTIONS 1. Claims 14, 17, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Krasner and Rokusek. (See Final Act. 5—11.) 2. Claim 15 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Krasner, Rokusek, and Kim. (See Final Act. 11—12.) 3. Claims 19 and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Krasner, Rokusek, and Rimoni. (See Final Act. 13—16.) 4. Claim 18 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Krasner, Rokusek, and Bigwood. (See Final Act. 16—17.) ANALYSIS Addressing claim 14, the Examiner finds that “Krasner discusses upon detection of an emergency event, the detection system transmits an event message to a target mobile device over a short-range wireless link established by the automatic connectivity method” but “does not specifically disclose the automatic connectivity includes the steps of determining if a mobile device is connected to the detection system, searching for a 3 Appeal 2017-002354 Application 12/607,244 connectable mobile device if the mobile device is not connected, and automatically connecting to an available connectable mobile device.” (Non- Final Act. 6.) The Examiner further finds, however, that “Rokusek teaches the method of determining if a communication device is connected to a hands-free device . . ., searching for a connectable communication device . . ., and automatically connecting to an available connectable communication device, if a communication device is not connected to the hands-free device.” {Id. at 7.) The Examiner concludes that one of skill in the art would have been motivated to modify Krasner by adding Rokusek’s automatic connectivity method “to enable the detection system to find and connect with any mobile device that can provide connectivity to the PSAP operator during an emergency, thus improve the chance of being able to connect with the PSAP operator during an emergency.” {Id. at 7—8.) The Examiner further explains that the claim is directed to a “combination of known elements by known methods with no change in respective function, and the combination would yield predictable results.” {Id. at 8.) Appellant, grouping the independent claims together and not separately addressing the dependent claims, argues that “what Rokusek actually teaches is that the process [of looking for devices] would always be on-going, and there would be no reason to tie it to an accident-state, because, due to its ongoing nature, the process would have either a) already found and connected-to a present wireless device; or b) come up fruitless in its ongoing search, rendering implementation at the point of accident pointless.” (App. Br. 6.) Thus, Appellant asserts, “[w]hat the Examiner is proposing is changing the teachings of Rokusek such that the automatic connection is not continual as explicitly taught, but rather occurs at the time of an accident.” 4 Appeal 2017-002354 Application 12/607,244 (Id.) Appellant concludes that “[a] skilled artisan, presented with the teachings of Rokusek, would rather simply implement the continual connectivity nature of Rokusek into Krasner, and not break the teachings thereof to cover a unique use-case for no better reason than to teach the claims.” (Id.) Appellant additionally argues that “neither reference determines whether or not a device is currently connected.” (Id. at 7.) In the Answer, the Examiner provides the following additional analysis: The emergency detection system cannot establish end-to-end voice communication with the remote PSAP without having short-range wireless connection with the mobile device (10) es tablished. Since the emergency detection system need[s] to trig ger the mobile device to contact the PSAP over the cellular net work in response to the emergency event, it would [have been] obvious for the emergency detection system to have an already established short-range wireless connection to the mobile device (10) at the time of the emergency event or to automatically es tablish the short-range wireless connection to the mobile device if emergency detection system does not already have the connec tion so that the emergency detection system can send the emer gency event trigger message to the mobile device. (Ans. 5.) Appellant replies that “the claims call for determining if a device is connected responsive to an accident (the trigger),” but “Rokusek responds to the ‘vehicle state trigger’ (i.e., the power up in Rokusek) by immediately ‘attempting to connect’ to a device, not by determining if there is a device already connected.” (Reply Br. 3.) Appellant asserts that “[w]hile Rokusek does teach that, following unsuccessful connection to a first device, a second device connection is attempted, the Examiner cannot ignore the whole teachings of Rokusek in the interest of cherry-picking a limitation for 5 Appeal 2017-002354 Application 12/607,244 importation into the combination.” (Id.) Appellant additionally asserts that “[i]n Rokusek, the determination as to whether or not a device is connected is responsive to attempting to connect to the device,” whereas “[i]n the claims, the determination as to whether or not a device is connected is responsive to the accident detection (the vehicle state trigger, as the Examiner would construe it).” (Id.) Appellant also argues the combination would be configured so as to (1) detect an accident, (2) determine possible connections based on previously saved devices, (3) attempt to connect to one of the devices, and (4) if the connection attempt was not successful, attempt to connect to another device. (Id.) Appellant contends that this arrangement “fails to teach that the determination as to whether or not a device was connected is responsive to accident detection.” (Id. at 4.) We agree with and adopt the Examiner’s analysis. We find Appellant’s arguments unpersuasive because they are based on a bodily incorporation of one reference into the other and fail to account for the teachings of the references as a whole. We agree with the Examiner that, given Rokusek’s teaching of automatically connecting to a device where one is not already connected, it would have been obvious to modify Krasner such that, in the event of an accident for which the system would make a call through a connected device, the system, if not already connected, would search for and connect to an available device (as taught in Rokusek) in order to make the call. We agree that one would have been motivated to make this combination “to enable the detection system to find and connect with any mobile device that can provide connectivity to the PSAP operator during an emergency, thus improve the chance of being able to connect with the PSAP operator during an emergency.” (Final Act. 7—8.) 6 Appeal 2017-002354 Application 12/607,244 Because we find Appellant’s arguments unpersuasive, we sustain the rejections of claims 14, 15, and 17—21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). DECISION The rejections of claims 14, 15, and 17—21 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)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation