Ex Parte LI

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Apr 27, 2009

10463287 (B.P.A.I. Apr. 27, 2009)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________________

Ex parte BO LI
____________________

Appeal 2008-1213
Application 10/463,287
Technology Center 2100
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Decided:1 April 28, 2009
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Before: JAY P. LUCAS, ST. JOHN COURTENAY III,
and CAROLY D. THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judges.

LUCAS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REHEARING

Appellant has requested a rehearing of our Decision on Appeal dated
November 6, 2008, wherein we affirmed the rejection of claims 22 to 42
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 and reversed the rejection of claim 42 under 35
U.S.C. § 101.

1 The two-month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil
action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304, begins to run from the decided date
shown on this page of the decision. The time period does not run from the
Mail Date (paper delivery) or Notification Date (electronic delivery).
Appeal 2008-1213
Application 10/463,287

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Appellant contends that the Decision misapprehends or overlooks
points with respect to the affirmance of the rejection of claims 26 and 36
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over the patent to Shaughnessy. More particularly,
Appellant contends that the Decision “did not analyze or even mention the
substance of claims 36 and 26 and did not refer to either Appellants’
argument or the Examiner’s argument for claims 36 and 26, even though
Appellants presented arguments specifically directed to the claims 36 and 26
. . . ” (Req. Reh’g 1, middle).
Appellant is correct, and with this response we will amend the
Decision of November 6, 2008 to address the issue of claims 26 and 36.
Both claims have the same subject matter (Req. Reh’g 2, top). Claim 26,
which we choose to be representative, is reproduced below.
26. The system of claim 25, wherein said postprocessing comprises
filtering the extracted report data received by the logic processing
module.

Appellant’s invention relates to a method and system for generating a
report using software modules adapted for easy modification and updating
(Spec. 1, [0002]). In the words of the Appellant:
Custom business reports for a WEB application are generated by
parsing a configuration file, processing data logic, and organizing
data. The result of the parsed configuration file is further processed
by the data logic processing. The data logic processing prepares the
data to generated languages suitable for a data query from a database
or for locating files. The data is then organized into a form suitable
for display.

(Spec. 28, Abstract).

Appeal 2008-1213
Application 10/463,287

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Claim 26 addresses the point in the system where the data has already
been extracted from the database by the data logic, and post-processing is
applied to the report to present the data in a more helpful and usable manner.
(Spec. 22, ¶ [0040]). The claim requires that the post processing comprises
filtering the extracted report.
The Examiner has pointed to Shaughnessy, column 5, lines 16 to 25,
and the flowchart in Figure 7B, for a teaching or suggestion to render claim
25, addressing post-processing, obvious. (Answer 6, middle). This
paragraph describes the post-processing in the reference, similar to that in
Appellant’s claim 25. Unfortunately, the Examiner, in rejecting claim 26,
mistakenly pointed to a few lines further down that column of the reference
where Shaughnessy was discussing his pre-processing. (Answer 6, bottom).
That error is now corrected, and Appellant is hereby directed to lines 16 to
25 as the basis for the rejection of claim 25 and claim 26. The reference
mentions that post-processing includes the ability to add links, and drill
downs. (Col. 5, l. 20). As a drill down focuses the report on a portion of the
data, such a recitation forms the basis for the decision to reject the claimed
data filtering of claim 26 for being obvious, as filtering performs a similar
focusing of the report on a portion of the data.
This support of the rejection of claim 26 is applied to claim 36, also
subject of this Request for Rehearing.
DECISION
The Request for Rehearing is granted with regard to reconsidering the
issues raised by the Appellant. The Opinion of November 6, 2008 is
Appeal 2008-1213
Application 10/463,287

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modified to include the reasoning expressed above, however the Request is
denied with respect to modifying the Decision of that Opinion.

REHEARING DENIED

msc

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