Ex Parte Joyce et alDownload PDFBoard of Patent Appeals and InterferencesFeb 27, 201210447250 (B.P.A.I. Feb. 27, 2012) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE 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. 10/447,250 05/27/2003 Robert Joyce 0600/96753 2918 24628 7590 02/27/2012 Husch Blackwell LLP Husch Blackwell Sanders LLP Welsh & Katz 120 S RIVERSIDE PLAZA 22ND FLOOR CHICAGO, IL 60606 EXAMINER KE, PENG ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2174 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/27/2012 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS AND INTERFERENCES ____________ Ex parte ROBERT JOYCE and PRABHURAM MOHAN _____________ Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before JOSEPH F. RUGGIERO, ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, and DENISE M. POTHIER, Administrative Patent Judges. MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final rejection of claims 1-60. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. INVENTION Appellants’ claimed invention is directed to a customer interaction system that receives and processes an instant message call with other interaction types based on information associated with the instant message call (Spec. ¶ [0030]). Claims 1 and 30, reproduced below, are representative of the subject matter on appeal: 1. A method to process an instant message call from a customer within a customer interaction system, the method including: receiving the instant message call, initiated by the customer, through a third party instant messaging service independent of the customer and the customer interaction system, at the customer interaction system said customer initiated call being commingled with messages of other interaction types received by the customer interaction system over other media; and processing the instant message call within the customer interaction system with other interaction types based on information associated with the instant message call including determining whether to allocate the instant message call to an automated agent or to a blended live-agent, and queuing the instant message call within a unified message queue that includes other interaction types if a blended live-agent is not available upon determining to allocate to a blended live-agent. 30. A system to process an instant message call from a customer within a customer interaction system, the system including: a plurality of media specific customer interaction systems, each for servicing a specific media type, and including an instant message media specific customer interaction system to receive the instant message call, initiated by the customer through a third party instant messaging service Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 3 independent of the customer and the customer interaction system, at the customer interaction system each media specific interaction system having a media specific queue to queue media specific calls for allocation to a media specific automated or non-blended live-agent if a media specific agent is not available, and generating a multimedia request in response thereto, said customer initiated call being commingled with messages of other interaction types received over other media; and a multimedia customer interaction system to process the instant message call within the customer interaction system with other interaction types in response to the multimedia request and based on information associated with the instant message call including determining whether to allocate the instant message call to an automated agent or to a blended live- agent, and queuing the instant message call within a unified message queue that includes other interaction types if a blended live-agent is not available. THE REJECTIONS The Examiner relies upon the following as evidence of unpatentability: Kannan US 2001/0054064 A1 Dec. 20, 2001 Pickering US 6,493,695 B1 Dec. 10, 2002 Petrovykh US 7,299,259 B2 Nov. 20, 2007 (filed Aug. 17, 2001) The following rejections are before us for review: 1. The Examiner rejected claims 30-58 under 35 U.S.C. § 101. 2. The Examiner rejected claims 1-60 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kannan in view of Petrovykh and Pickering. ISSUES 1. Did the Examiner err in determining that independent claim 30 lacks any recitation to hardware elements and simply lists software steps? Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 4 2. Did the Examiner err in determining that Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach the limitation of “receiving the instant message call, initiated by the customer, through a third party instant messaging service independent of the customer and the customer interaction system” as recited in claim 1? 3. Did the Examiner err in determining that Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach the limitation of “customer initiated call being commingled with messages of other interaction types received by the customer interaction system over other media” as recited in claim 1? 4. Did the Examiner err in determining that Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach the limitation of “queuing the instant message call within a unified message queue that includes other interaction types if a blended live-agent is not available upon determining to allocate to a blended live-agent” as recited in claim 1? PRINCIPLES OF LAWS “[O]ne cannot show non-obviousness by attacking references individually where . . . the rejections are based on combinations of references.” In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 426 (CCPA 1981). The Supreme Court recognized that when there are a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, a person of ordinary skill has good reason to pursue the known options within his or her technical grasp. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 421 (2007). Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 5 ANALYSIS I. Analysis with respect to the rejection of claims 30-58 under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The Examiner alleges that the word “system” is not directed to a machine and that the Specification suggests that all steps of the system claim may be implemented in software (Final Rej. 2-3).1 Appellants argue, that contrary to the Examiner’s allegations, claims 30-58 are directed to a system having hardware subsystems including media specific interaction systems 24 and multimedia customer interaction system 26 (see Fig. 1,¶ [0036]) which perform the recited functions (App. Br. 9). Appellants explain that these systems are not directed to software per se and could not be implemented with software alone. We are persuaded by Appellants’ arguments. We find no suggestion in the Specification, nor does the Examiner point to a specific section, that all the steps of the system claim may be implemented by software alone. Furthermore, claim 30 clearly recites “a plurality of media specific customer interaction systems” (emphasis added), which are described in the Specification as server machines 28, 30, and 32 (Spec. ¶ [0036]). Claim 30 also describes “a multimedia customer interaction system” which is described in the Specification as including an interaction machine 40 and a server machine 47 (Spec. ¶ [0037]). Thus, claim 30 and dependent claims 31-58 are directed to a machine. Accordingly, we will reverse the Examiner’s rejections of claims 30-58 under 35 U.S.C. § 101. 1 Claim 60 was withdrawn as rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 (Ans. 3). Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 6 II. Analysis with respect to the rejection of rejected claims 1-13, 15-24, 26-29, and 31-60 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kannan in view of Petrovykh and Pickering. A. Did the Examiner err in determining that Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach the limitation of “receiving the instant message call, initiated by the customer, through a third party instant messaging service independent of the customer and the customer interaction system” as recited in claim 1? Appellants argue that: (a) Kannan teaches communicating through a service applet 534; (b) Kannan’s customer interaction system does not receive an instant message at all; and (c) the communication is not initiated by the customer through an independent instant messaging service (App. Br. 11). We do not agree with Appellants. The Examiner correctly pointed out (Ans. 20) that, according to Kannan, potential customers browsing a Web site are intelligently routed, by matching the customer query in a queue 613 to appropriate customer service representatives (CSR) listed in queue 614 assigned to handle particular queries (i.e., queries related to a particular type of customer, type of subject matter, or region) (see ¶¶ [0095]-[0096] and Fig. 6). Furthermore, and most importantly, we agree with the Examiner (Ans. 20) that Kannan’s Figure 14c and related text (¶¶ [0134]-[0135]), teach that Instant messages can be used as a form of real-time interaction through an instant messaging interface. Thus, Kannan does teach instant messaging as a form of interaction initiated by the customer (i.e., customer initiates the query). Furthermore, the Examiner relied on Petrovykh for the teaching of a third party instant messaging service independent of the customer (see Ans. 6, col. 26, ll. Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 7 14-26)—not Kannan. Accordingly, we agree with Examiner (Ans. 6) that the combination of Kannan in view of Petrovykh teaches “receiving the instant message call, initiated by the customer, through a third party instant messaging service independent of the customer and the customer interaction system” as recited in claim 1. We note that one cannot show non-obviousness by attacking references individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references. See Keller, 642 F.2d at 426. B. Did the Examiner err in determining that Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach a “customer initiated call being commingled with messages of other interaction types received by the customer interaction system over other media” as recited in claim 1? Appellants argue that Kannan does not teach instant message calls processed with other interaction types (App. Br. 12). We do not agree with Appellants’ arguments. We agree with the Examiner (Ans. 20-21) that Kannan’s queue 613 combining particular type of queries messages (i.e., queries related to a particular type of customer, type of subject matter, or region) (see ¶¶ [0095]-[0096]) could be reasonably read on the claimed “customer initiated call being commingled with messages of other interaction types” as recited in claim 1. We also agree with the Examiner (Ans. 20-21) that Pickering teaches that various types of interaction media can be commingled into various queues (col. 7, l. 18-col. 8, l. 10). In particular, and for example, if the customer interaction is in Spanish (i.e., similar to Kannan’s queries related to a particular type of customer, and as in Pickering’s example, Spanish speaking customers) then these queries are queued to allow for interaction with Spanish speaking agents, “without regards to the media thereof” (col. 7, l. 49-60). Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 8 Thus, Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach and suggest a “customer initiated call being commingled with messages of other interaction types received by the customer interaction system over other media” as recited in claim 1. C. Did the Examiner err in determining that Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach the limitation of “queuing the instant message call within a unified message queue that includes other interaction types if a blended live-agent is not available upon determining to allocate to a blended live-agent” as recited in claim 1? Appellants further argue that the combination of references does not teach “queuing the instant message call within a unified message queue that includes other interaction types if a blended live-agent is not available upon determining to allocate to a blended live-agent” as recited in claim 1 (see App. Br. 14). We do not agree with Appellants’ argument. We agree with the Examiner’s finding (Ans. 21) that according to Pickering a customer communication may be routed to a selected one of agents 226 or may be routed to one or more queues 218, 220 if no appropriate agent 226 is currently available (col. 5, ll. 13-16). Furthermore, Pickering teaches that the messages from all media types can be queued into a single universal media queue (see col. 7, ll. 12-17). Thus, the combination of references teaches the limitation of “queuing the instant message call within a unified message queue that includes other interaction types if a blended live-agent is not available upon determining to allocate to a blended live-agent” as recited in claim 1. Accordingly based on the analysis as stated supra under headings A- C, we will affirm the Examiner’s rejections of independent claim 1 and the Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 9 rejections of claims 2-13, 15-24, 26-29, and 31-60 which were not separately argued. III. Analysis with respect to the rejection of independent claim 30 and dependent claims 14 and 25 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Appellants argue that Pickering does not teach queuing to both a media specific queue and to a unified queue (App. Br. 15-16). We agree with the Examiner (Ans. 21) that Kannan teaches that media specific interaction type queries can be queued together (see ¶¶ [0095]- [0096]). The Examiner then relies on Pickering to teach that interaction types from various media can be commingled into one queue (col. 7, l. 12- col. 8, l. 10). Thus, the combination of the references teaches queuing to a media specific queue for particular types of queries and/or queuing interaction types from various media to a unified queue. Based on Kannan’s and Pickering’s teachings, there is only a finite number of predictable solutions in queuing a communication (e.g., using one queue for various media or separate queues for each media), and an ordinarily skilled artisan would have known to pursue these predictable options. See KSR, 550 U.S. at 421. We will also sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 30 and its dependent claims 14 and 25. CONCLUSIONS 1. The Examiner erred in determining that independent claim 30 lacks any recitation to hardware elements and simply lists software steps. 2. The Examiner did not err in determining that Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach the limitation of “receiving the instant message call, initiated by the customer, through a third party Appeal 2010-011130 Application 10/447,250 10 instant messaging service independent of the customer and the customer interaction system” as recited in claim 1. 3. The Examiner did not err in determining that Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach the limitation of a “customer initiated call being commingled with messages of other interaction types received by the customer interaction system over other media” as recited in claim 1. 4. The Examiner did not err in determining that Kannan in combination with Petrovykh and Pickering teach the limitation of “queuing the instant message call within a unified message queue that includes other interaction types if a blended live-agent is not available upon determining to allocate to a blended live-agent” as recited in claim 1. ORDER The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-60 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) is affirmed. The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 30-58 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is reversed. 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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