Ex Parte Lee

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Mar 23, 2011

10619296 (B.P.A.I. Mar. 23, 2011)

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.
10/619,296 07/14/2003 Wing Lee IDF 2398 4000-12500 6314
28003 7590 03/23/2011
SPRINT
6391 SPRINT PARKWAY
KSOPHT0101-Z2100
OVERLAND PARK, KS 66251-2100
EXAMINER
WINTER, JOHN M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3685
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/23/2011 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 WING LEE
____________

Appeal 2010-002902
Application 10/619,296
Technology Center 3600
____________

Before: MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, HUBERT C. LORIN, and ANTON W.
FETTING, Administrative Patent Judges.

CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL1

1 The two-month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil
action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304, or for filing a request for rehearing,
as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 41.52, begins to run from the “MAIL DATE”
(paper delivery mode) or the “NOTIFICATION DATE” (electronic delivery
mode) shown on the PTOL-90A cover letter attached to this decision.
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Application 10/619,296

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is an appeal from the final rejection of claims 43-78. We have
jurisdiction to review the case under 35 U.S.C. §§ 134 and 6.
The claimed invention is generally directed to methods for integrating
messaging systems and brokering systems to improve the awareness of
business events throughout an enterprise (Spec., para. [0004]). Claim 43,
reproduced below, is further illustrative of the claimed subject matter.
43. A method for making computing applications
throughout an enterprise aware of business events, comprising:
defining objects in an enterprise object model that model
data and services provided by back-office systems;
brokering interactions, by an enterprise integration layer,
between the back office systems that provide data and services
and front-office systems that use the enterprise integration layer
to access the data and the services provided by the back office-
systems through the interactions, brokering the interactions
comprising:
receiving, from the front-office systems, accesses
to objects of the enterprise object model in the enterprise
integration layer through client access interfaces of the
enterprise integration layer, wherein each of the client
access interfaces corresponds with a different technology
and provides a standardized interface through which the
front-office systems access the objects of the enterprise
object model;
implementing, with a business object server of the
enterprise integration layer coupled to the client access
interfaces, data functions and service methods associated
with the accessed objects that enable the interactions
between the front-office systems and back-office
systems; and
transforming, with a set of adapters of the
enterprise integration layer coupled to the business object
server, the accessed objects into a format of the back-
office systems corresponding with the implementation of
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the data functions and the service methods associated
with the accessed objects;
automatically publishing, by the enterprise integration
layer, business events in accordance with the interactions
between the front-office systems and back-office systems;
automatically subscribing, by a messaging system
coupled to the enterprise integration layer, to the business
events published by the enterprise integration layer; and
automatically generating, by the messaging system, for
each of the subscribed business events a message that makes
computing applications that are interested in the business event
aware of the business event.

Claims 43-78 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Suarez (US Pat. 5,790,789, iss. Aug. 4, 1998) in view of Hejlsberg (US
Pat. 7,165,239 B2, iss. Jan. 16, 2007) and Bowman-Amuah (US Pat.
6,742,015 B1, iss. May 25, 2004)2.
We AFFIRM-IN-PART.

ISSUES
Did the Examiner err in asserting that a combination of Suarez,
Hejlsberg, and Bowman-Amuah renders obvious automatically subscribing
to and publishing business events in accordance with the interactions
between the front-office systems and the back-office systems, as recited in
independent claims 43, 52, 62, 72, and 75?
Did the Examiner err in asserting that Suarez and Bowman-Amuah
can be combined to render obvious the subject matter of claims 43-7,
because Suarez and Bowman-Amuah disclose incompatible systems?

2 The Examiner withdrew the rejection of claims 43-78 under 35 U.S.C. §
101 for failing to recite statutory subject matter (Exam’r’s Ans. 10-11).
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Did the Examiner err in asserting that a combination of Suarez,
Hejlsberg, and Bowman-Amuah renders obvious defining an enterprise
object model which defines objects that model the data and services
provided by the back-office systems, as recited in independent claims 43, 52,
62, 72, and 75?
Did the Examiner err in asserting that a combination of Suarez,
Hejlsberg, and Bowman-Amuah renders obvious implementing, with a
business object server of the enterprise integration layer coupled to the client
access interfaces, data functions and service methods associated with the
accessed objects that enable the interactions between the front-office
systems and back-office systems, as recited in independent claims 43, 52,
62, 72, and 75?
Did the Examiner err in asserting that the agents of Suarez are the
equivalent of the recited enterprise integration layer?
Did the Examiner err in asserting that a combination of Suarez,
Hejlsberg, and Bowman-Amuah renders obvious the subject matter of
dependent claims 56, 57, 59-61, 64, 66, 67, 69-71, and 73?

FINDINGS OF FACT
We adopt the Examiner’s findings of fact concerning claims 43, 52,
56, 62, 66, 72, and 75, as set forth on pages 11-17 of the Examiner’s
Answer.

Hejlsberg
Hejlsberg asserts that framework 132 encapsulates the operating
system 146(1) (e.g., Windows.RTM.-brand operating systems) and object
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model services 146(2) (e.g., Component Object Model (COM) or
Distributed COM). The operating system 146(1) allegedly provides
conventional functions, such as file management, notification, event
handling, user interfaces (e.g., windowing, menus, dialogs, etc.), security,
authentication, verification, processes and threads, memory management,
and so on. The object model services 146(2) allegedly provide interfacing
with other objects to perform various tasks. According to Hejlsberg, calls
made to the API layer 142 are handed to the common language runtime layer
144 for local execution by the operating system 146(1) and/or object model
services 146(2) (col. 5, l. 61 through col. 6, l. 7).

Bowman-Amuah
Bowman-Amuah asserts that Application Logic is the expression of
business rules and procedures (e.g., the steps and rules that govern how a
sales order is fulfilled). As such, the Application Logic allegedly includes
the control structure that specifies the flow for processing for business
events and user requests. According to Bowman-Amuah, the isolation of
control logic facilitates change and adaptability of the application to
changing business processing flows (col. 120, ll. 32-39).

Suarez
Suarez asserts that the Queue service provides the basic messaging
capability for agents and associated services. In particular, the queue service
provides distributed queues for agents. The queues are used for storing
messages sent to agents for processing. A queue is also used for store and
forward capabilities when an agent is not available to receive a message for
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reasons such as the host containing a selected service is unavailable.
According to Suarez, queues can be created, modified, or deleted for any
given agent through the use of the queue services. Moreover, Suarez asserts
that it is the user who determines if an agent is to use a persistent queue or
other queue (e.g., vendor-supplied queue) to store messages. A persistent
queue is one in which the messages placed in that queue are stored on disk.
The user can also allegedly manipulate the size of the queue, the general
priority of the queue, a maximum time in which a message may reside in a
queue, and whether the sender is notified when the message has been queued
(col. 21, ll. 16-34).

Specification
Service Broker 300 can provide transactional quality of service
through the use of a transaction processor 330 (para. [0053]).

ANALYSIS
Subscription and Publishing
We are not persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that a
combination of Suarez, Hejlsberg, and Bowman-Amuah renders obvious
automatically subscribing to and publishing business events in accordance
with the interactions between the front-office systems and the back-office
systems, as recited in independent claims 43, 52, 62, 72, and 75 (App. Br.
33-39). Appellant asserts that Suarez only discloses point-to-point
communication, and not publishing (App. Br. 33-36). We adopt the
Examiner’s reasoning, as set forth on page 11 of the Examiner’s Answer.
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Appellant asserts that Bowman-Amuah does not teach or suggest
publishing business events in accordance with the interactions between the
front-office systems and the back-office systems (App. Br. 37-39).
However, Suarez is cited for disclosing these aspects (Exam’r’s Ans. 12-13).
See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 426 (CCPA 1981) (“one cannot show non-
obviousness by attacking references individually where, as here, the
rejections are based on combinations of references”).
Appellant asserts that none of the references disclose automatically
subscribing to the business events published by the enterprise integration
layer (App. Br. 39-40). However, column 21, lines 37-38 of Suarez disclose
subscribing to global or system defined events. And as we agree with the
Examiner that “automating” the process of manually subscribing to the
global or system defined events is obvious, we do not find Appellant’s
arguments persuasive.

Teaching Away
We are not persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that Suarez and
Bowman-Amuah can be combined to render obvious the subject matter of
claims 43-78, because Suarez and Bowman-Amuah disclose incompatible
systems that teach away from being combined with each other (App. Br. 40-
41). Appellant asserts that Suarez discloses an agent-based distributed
computing architecture that solves disadvantages of a client-server
architecture, such as the ORBs disclosed in the client-server architecture of
Bowman-Amuah. As such, Appellant asserts that the agent-based
distributed computing system of Suarez teaches away from being combined
with a client-server architecture system that has the aforementioned
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disadvantages (App. Br. 40-41). We adopt the Examiner’s reasoning as set
forth on pages 13-14 of the Examiner’s Answer. Specifically, just because
Suarez recognizes disadvantages in a client-server architecture does not
mean the two systems are incompatible. Furthermore, Bowman-Amuah
discloses the “ORBs will become a kind of ‘ultimate middleware’ for truly
distributed processing,” showing that the disclosures of Bowman-Amuah are
not limited to a client-server architecture environment, and thus could be
used in the agent-based architecture of Suarez, which also includes
middleware (col. 76, ll. 31-32).

Enterprise Object Model
We are not persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that a
combination of Suarez, Hejlsberg, and Bowman-Amuah renders obvious
defining an enterprise object model which defines objects that model the
data and services provided by the back-office systems, as recited in
independent claims 43, 52, 62, 72, and 75 (App. Br. 42-43; Reply Br. 6-8).
The agents invoked in Suarez launch associated services not present on the
computer host (Figs. 11, 16; col. 30, ll. 50-67). This corresponds to
invoking an object to launch data and services provided by back-office
systems, as recited in independent claims 43, 52, 62, 72, and 75.

Front-Office and Back-Office Interactions
We are not persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that a
combination of Suarez, Hejlsberg, and Bowman-Amuah renders obvious
implementing, with a business object server of the enterprise integration
layer coupled to the client access interfaces, data functions and service
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methods associated with the accessed objects that enable the interactions
between the front-office systems and back-office systems, as recited in
independent claims 43, 52, 62, 72, and 75 (App. Br. 43-44). Appellant
asserts that Suarez discloses directly accessing a service residing on a back-
office system through an appropriate agent, as opposed to accessing an
object, as recited in independent claims 43, 52, 62, 72, and 75. However,
such a distinction between an object and an agent is not set forth in the
claims. See CollegeNet, Inc. v. ApplyYourself, Inc., 418 F.3d 1225, 1231
(Fed. Cir. 2005) (while the specification can be examined for proper context
of a claim term, limitations from the specification will not be imported into
the claims).
Furthermore, Appellant’s Specification discloses objects repeatedly
communicating with back-office systems during operation (paras. [0043]-
[0044], [0049]-[0050]). Accordingly, the line between “directly accessing”
a service residing on a back-office system via an agent, as disclosed in
Suarez, and how the recited object communicates with the back-office
system, is unclear. Thus, the agent of Suarez corresponds to the recited
object under a broadest reasonable construction. See In re Am. Acad. of Sci.
Tech. Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2004).
Appellant asserts that the aspect of “enabl[ing] interactions …
between the front-office system and back-office systems” is not optional, as
asserted by the Examiner (App. Br. 44-46; Reply Br. 8-9). However, as the
agents in Suarez facilitate interactions between various distributed systems,
the argument is moot.
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10
Enterprise Integration Layer
We are not persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that the agents
of Suarez are the equivalent of the recited enterprise integration layer (Reply
Br. 4-6). Appellant asserts “that the enterprise layer is not ‘merely a series
of messages exchanged between the client and the server in order to
synchronize ‘events,[’”] cites paragraph [0019] of the Specification to
support this argument, and thus asserts that “[a]gents are fundamentally
different from an enterprise integration layer” (Reply Br. 5-6). However,
none of the aspects from paragraph [0019] are set forth in the claims. See
CollegeNet, Inc. v. ApplyYourself, Inc., 418 F.3d at 1231. Accordingly, the
agent system that facilitates communication between various distributed
systems does correspond to the recited enterprise integration layer under a
broadest reasonable construction. See In re Am. Acad. of Sci. Tech. Ctr., 367
F.3d at 1364.
Appellant asserts that a combination of Suarez, Bowman-Amuah, and
Hejlsberg does not render obvious “the enterprise object model in the
enterprise integration layer,” “a business object server of the enterprise
integration layer,” and “a set of adapters of the enterprise integration layer”
(Reply Br. 5). However, the agents of Suarez do correspond to the recited
objects, the agents of Suarez communicate with services based on servers,
and Hejlsberg is cited for disclosing the recited set of adapters (Exam’r’s
Ans. 4). See Keller, 642 F.2d at 426.
Appellant asserts that “[a]gents as disclosed by Suarez do not publish
anything” (Reply Br. 6). However, Suarez discloses an agent pushing a
“‘beta-testing’” mode e-mail to a subscribed department (col. 21, ll. 44-47).

Appeal 2010-002902
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Dependent Claims
We are partially persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that a
combination of Suarez, Hejlsberg, and Bowman-Amuah renders obvious the
subject matter of dependent claims 56, 57, 59-61, 64, 66, 67, 69-71, and 73
(App. Br. 46-47; Reply Br. 9-15). Appellant assets that Bowman-Amuah
does not disclose “providing distributed transactional quality of service
through a transaction processor within the enterprise integration layer,” as
recited in claims 56 and 66 (Reply Br. 9-10). However, paragraph [0053] of
the Specification recites that the use of transaction processor 330 is
sufficient to provide a transactional quality of service. Accordingly, the use
of a transaction synchronization service in the cited column 54, lines 19-26
Bowman-Amuah is sufficient to correspond to the recited providing of a
transactional quality of service.
Appellant asserts that the respective portions of Suarez, Hejlsberg,
and Bowman-Amuah cited by the Examiner, do not render obvious the
subject matter of respective claims 57, 59-61, 64, 67, 69-71, and 73 (Reply
Br. 10-15). We agree with Appellant. For dependent claims 57 and 67,
while Hejlsberg, column 5, line 61 to column 6, line 7 discloses general file
management, it does not disclose making data persistent (Reply Br. 10-11).
For dependent claims 59-61 and 69-71, Hejlsberg at column 5, lines 61 to
column 6, line 7 does not mention anything about previous infrastructure
(Reply Br. 11-13). For dependent claim 64, while Bowman-Amuah, column
120, lines 32-39 discloses general business rules and procedures of how to
process a sales order, it does not explicitly disclose transforming formats and
mapping back office systems (Reply Br. 13-14). For dependent claim 73,
while Suarez at column 21, lines 16-34 generally discloses queues, it does
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not disclose “the at least one of the business events and the transformed data
related to the at least one of the business events are combined in a single
packet” (Reply Br. 14-15).
We sustain the rejections of dependent claims 56 and 66.
We do not sustain the rejections of dependent claims 57, 59-61, 64,
67, 69-71, and 73.
Appellant did not provide separate arguments for the rejections of
dependent claims 43-51, 53-55, 58, 63, 65, 68, and 76-78. Accordingly, we
sustain their rejections.

DECISION
The rejections of claims 43-56, 58, 62, 63, 65, 66, 68, 72, 74, and 75-
78 is AFFIRMED.
The rejections of claims 57, 59-61, 64, 67, 69-71, and 73 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). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED-IN-PART

Appeal 2010-002902
Application 10/619,296

13
hh

SPRINT
6391 SPRINT PARKWAY
KSOPHT0101-Z2100
OVERLAND PARK, KS 66251-2100