Ex Parte McFarland

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Dec 7, 2016

13611728 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 7, 2016)

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.
13/611,728 09/12/2012 Norman R. McFarland 2012P10097US 4465
28524 7590 12/09/2016
SIEMENS CORPORATION
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT
3501 Quadrangle Blvd Ste 230
EXAMINER
ABRAHAM, AHMED M
Orlando, EL 32817 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2154
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/09/2016 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):
ipdadmin.us@siemens.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte NORMAN R. McFARLAND
Appeal 2016-002343
Application 13/611,7281
Technology Center 2100
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, and
JOHN R. KENNY,
, Administrative Patent Judges.
HOMERE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
1 Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Siemens Industry, Inc.
App. Br. 4.
Appeal 2016-002343
Application 13/611,728
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 1—20, which constitute all of the claims pending in
this appeal. App. Br. 1. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
Appellant’s Invention
Appellant invented a method and system for monitoring processes
(e.g., HVAC) in a building over time by collecting performance data thereon
and analyzing performance trends to thereby identify service actions that can
be performed to improve process performance. Spec. Tflf 3, 4, Fig. 1.
Illustrative Claim
Independent claim 1 further illustrates the invention as follows:
1. A method performed by one or more data processing
systems to generate building process summary data depicting a process
over time, the method comprising:
receiving a process value and attribute information;
calculating, by the data processing system, statistical moments for the
received data;
retrieving a "where used" database list for a specific process;
determining if received attribute information matches database record
attributes;
where there is a match, adding calculated statistical moments for the
received data into a current database record; and
while received attribute information matches additional database record
attributes according to the "where used" database list, storing calculated
statistical moments for the received data into same or additional database
records as building process summary data.
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Appeal 2016-002343
Application 13/611,728
Prior Art Relied Upon
The Examiner relies on the following prior art as evidence of
unpatentability:
Salinger US 6,304,594 B1
Guo US 2008/0243761 A1
Lyon US 2012/0271809 A1
Rejections on Appeal
Claims 1, 2, 4—12, and 14—20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over the combination of Lyon and Guo.
Claims 3 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over the combination of Lyon, Guo, and Salinger.
ANALYSIS
We consider Appellant’s arguments seriatim as they are presented in
the Appeal Brief, pages 12—63, and the Reply Brief, pages 8-43.
Appellant argues that the proposed combination of references does not
teach or suggest upon determining a match between received attribute
information and database record attributes, adding calculated statistical
moments for the received data into a current database record, as recited in
independent claim 1. App. Br. 17. In the Linal Action, the Examiner relies
on Guo for these limitations. Linal Act. 3^4. Appellant argues although
Guo discloses a preferable time and index to perform the collection of the
data page repetition statistic, Guo does not teach adding such statistic or
anything else to a current database record that matches a received entry. Id.
at 18—19 (citing Guo H 19, 21). According to Appellant, Guo merely
increments a counter upon finding a repeated data page entry in the database.
Oct. 16, 2001
Oct. 2, 2008
Oct. 25, 2012
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Appeal 2016-002343
Application 13/611,728
Id. at 19. Therefore, Appellant submits that Guo does not cure the admitted
deficiencies of Lyon. Id.
In the Answer, the Examiner finds Guo’s disclosure of an RDBMS
collecting page repetition statistics by scanning a database index, taken in
combination with Lyon’s disclosure of a data collection system searching
keyword matches and correlating data with collected data, teaches the
disputed limitations. Ans. 4, 5 (citing Guo 52, 53, Lyon || 16, 20). We
do not agree with the Examiner.
We begin our analysis by first considering the scope and meaning of
the claim limitations “calculated statistical moments for the received data”
which must be given the broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with
Appellant’s disclosure, as explained in In re Morris:
[T]he PTO applies to the verbiage of the proposed claims the
broadest reasonable meaning of the words in their ordinary
usage as they would be understood by one of ordinary skill in
the art, taking into account whatever enlightenment by way of
definitions or otherwise that may be afforded by the written
description contained in the applicant’s specification.
In re Morris, 111 L.3d 1048, 1054 (Led. Cir. 1997). See also In re Zletz,
893 L.2d 319, 321 (Led. Cir. 1989) (stating that “claims must be interpreted
as broadly as their terms reasonably allow.”). Our reviewing court further
states, “the ‘ordinary meaning’ of a claim term is its meaning to the ordinary
artisan after reading the entire patent.” Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 L.3d
1303, 1321 (Led. Cir. 2005) (enbanc).
In particular, Appellant’s Specification states the following:
A statistical moment may include parameters such as an
average (or mean), standard deviation, number of samples, minimum
and maximum values, skewness, and kurtosis... although individual
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Appeal 2016-002343
Application 13/611,728
readings may be captured for a process and then statistics calculated
from them, it may be more memory efficient to keep over the process
interval: 1) the sum of all process readings; 2) the sum of the square of
the process readings; 3) sum of the cube of the process readings; 4)
sum of the square of the square (4th power) of the process reading;
and 5) the number of samples composing those values. These values,
known sometimes as the statistical moments, can be used to calculate
the mean (1 & 5), the standard deviation (1, 2, & 5), the skewness (1,
2, 3, & 5) and the kurtosis (1-5).
Spec. 164. Emphasis added
Consistent with the Specification, we broadly but reasonably construe
“calculated statistical moments” as requiring representative statistics
computed for the received data. As persuasively argued by Appellant,
although each repeated data page entry identified in the database disclosed
by Guo indicates an individual size statistic added to the database by
incrementing an associated counter, such statistical value does not teach a
statistical moment for the received data because it is not representative of a
statistical computation for that data. Instead, it is simply a listing of each
individual reading as well as its order in the number of matching repeat data
pages in the database. Reply Br. 10-16 (citing Guo 52-53, Lyon || 16,
20). We thus agree with Appellant that the cited textual portions of both
Lyon and Gou are silent about, when there is a match, adding calculated
statistical moments for the received data into a current data base record. Id.
Because Appellant has shown at least one reversible error in the
Examiner’s rejections, we need not reach Appellant’s remaining arguments.
Consequently, we reverse the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1, as well as
claims 2—20, which recite the disputed limitations discussed above.
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Application 13/611,728
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner’s obviousness rejections under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) of claims 1—20 as set forth above.
REVERSED
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