Ex Parte Patenaude et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 11, 201412165140 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 11, 2014) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte RUSSELL A. PATENAUDE and CHRISTINE E. MEISSNER ____________ Appeal 2012-002020 Application 12/165,140 Technology Center 3600 ____________ Before: MICHAEL W. KIM, MICHAEL C. ASTORINO, and GEORGE R. HOSKINS, Administrative Patent Judges. HOSKINS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Russell A. Patenaude and Christine E. Meissner (“Appellants”) appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–3, 5, 6, 8, 10–12, 14, and 16–20. We have jurisdiction over this appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. Appeal 2012-002020 Application 12/165,140 2 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER Claim 1 illustrates the subject matter on appeal: 1. A system for providing route guidance to a user of a vehicle, the system comprising: a telematics unit associated with the vehicle, adapted to act on geo-coded data to execute an assigned action upon the occurrence of a specified event, wherein the assigned action comprises notifying one or more specified individuals external to the vehicle; a computer linked to a data source for retrieving geo- coded data from the data source; and a removable memory medium for use in conjunction with the computer and the telematics unit, whereby the geo-coded data is transferred from the computer to the telematics unit via the removable memory medium. See App. Br., Clms. App’x. (emphasis added). REJECTIONS Appellants request our review of the following rejections. See App. Br. 3.1 Claims 1–3, 6, 10–12, and 16–20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Millington (US 6,360,167 B1, iss. Mar. 19, 2002) in view of Bullock (US 6,810,323 B1, iss. Oct. 26, 2004). Claims 5, 8, and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Millington, Bullock, and Cona (US 7,711,475 B1, iss. May 4, 2010). 1 The Appeal Brief is not paginated. We treat the captioned page as page 1, so the Appeal Brief consists of pages 1 through 6 prior to the Appendices. Appeal 2012-002020 Application 12/165,140 3 ANALYSIS Rejections of Claims 1–3, 6, 10–12, and 16–20 as Unpatentable Over Millington and Bullock Appellants argue the claims rejected on this ground together as a group, and we select claim 1 to decide the appeal as to all claims in the group. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(vii) (2011). The Examiner cites Millington as disclosing each and every limitation of claim 1 except for “wherein the assigned action comprises notifying one or more specified individuals external to the vehicle,” but concludes that feature is disclosed in Bullock, and that “it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention was made to modify the system of Millington to include notifying third parties to make sharing information more intuitive . . . .” Final Rejection (“Fin. Rej.”) 3–4. Appellants contend modifying Millington in light of Bullock to include external party notification would not be intuitive because: a user would have to purposefully make a call or other communication to notify an external party of an advertisement after the first party reaches a location and receives that advertisement that is specifically targeted to the first party (and not the external party, if there were one) because of their specific location. App. Br. 4–5. Appellants further contend sharing of location information in Millington does not make sense, and in fact Millington teaches away from such sharing, again focusing their discussion on Millington’s disclosure of providing advertising information based upon location. See id. We are not persuaded by Appellants’ contention, because we disagree with Appellants’ suggestion that the Millington disclosure is limited to providing advertisements based on a vehicle’s location. The Examiner’s Appeal 2012-002020 Application 12/165,140 4 rejection cites the Millington disclosure at column 8, lines 18–42 in this regard. See Ans. 5; Fin. Rej. 3–4. Millington therein provides: As the navigation system 20 approaches, reaches or passes selected locations along the tour route, the CPU 22 retrieves text, graphics, audio or other multimedia annotations providing information regarding that location. For example, the tour may guide the user to historical points of interest in the area. The additional information stored on removable media 46 will be provided by the navigation system 20 on display 24 and via audio, information regarding that location, such as historical events or other facts about the location, etc. Each of the multimedia annotations are associated with a location. Millington, col. 8, ll. 24–38 (emphases added). In that context, we agree with the Examiner’s conclusion that one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to apply Bullock’s disclosure of sharing “waypoint” (i.e., location) information with external parties to Millington. See Fin. Rej. 4 (citing Bullock, col. 10, ll. 44–50). That is, it may very well be that the driver of the vehicle in Millington may want to share with others the fact that the driver visited an historical point of interest, perhaps even including the multimedia annotation to provide pertinent information regarding the historical significance of the location. For example, Bullock discloses a third party may be interested in planning a visit to the historical point of interest. See Bullock, col. 4, ll. 27–30 (“For example, a third party (say, John) may wish to send a previously stored waypoint corresponding to the third party’s home to a friend (say, Tom) who is planning to visit.”) Appellants additionally describe the problem addressed by Millington as “the unfamiliarity of a potential user with a new area” (Reply Br. 4 (emphasis removed)), and contend “there is no need for and no reason to provide waypoint management or waypoint sharing [as taught by Bullock] in Appeal 2012-002020 Application 12/165,140 5 the context of providing users within a vehicle with additional information about unfamiliar surroundings [as taught by Millington]” (id. at 6). We are not persuaded by this analysis. In particular, Appellants gloss over the fact that part of the “unfamiliar surroundings” at issue in Millington are historical points of interest. In that context, we agree with the Examiner that there is a reason to provide waypoint sharing to external parties. For the foregoing reasons, we are not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1–3, 6, 10–12, and 16–20 as unpatentable over Millington and Bullock. Rejections of Claims 5, 8, and 14 as Unpatentable Over Millington, Bullock, and Cona Appellants do not argue for the patentability of these dependent claims separately from their respective independent claims 1, 6, and 12. See App. Br. 5–6; Reply Br. 5–7. We therefore sustain the rejections of these claims as unpatentable over Millington, Bullock, and Cona. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(vii) (2011). DECISION The rejections of claims 1–3, 5, 6, 8, 10–12, 14, and 16–20 as unpatentable over the prior art 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). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED Appeal 2012-002020 Application 12/165,140 6 hh Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation