Ex Parte Pearcy et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 28, 201613340010 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 28, 2016) Copy Citation 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. 13/340,010 12/29/2011 Derek Patton Pearcy 04796-1090 (P52063) 5484 106448 7590 12/30/2016 PATENT CAPITAL GROUP 2816 Lago Vista Lane Rockwall, TX 75032 EXAMINER ZHANG, SHANGAO ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2173 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/30/2016 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): PAIR_106448 @patcapgroup.com eofficeaction @ appcoll.com inteldocs_docketing @ cpaglobal. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte DEREK PATTON PEARCY, JESSICA ANNE HEINRICH, and CRAIG ANTHONY PHILLIPS1 Appeal 2016-001123 Application 13/340,010 Technology Center 2100 Before CARLA M. KRIVAK, MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, and MICHAEL M. BARRY, Administrative Patent Judges. BARRY, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of claims 1—15, 22, 23, and 25, which constitute all of the pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. 1 Appellants identify the real party in interest as McAfee, Inc. (App. Br. 2.) Appeal 2016-001123 Application 13/340,010 Introduction Appellants state their “disclosure relates in general to the field of computer security and, more particularly, to visualizing security status of computer systems.” (Spec. 12.) Claim 1 is representative: 1. At least one non-transitory machine accessible storage medium having instructions stored thereon, the instructions when executed on a machine, cause the machine to: receive data describing security conditions detected in a particular computing system by one or more security sensors; provide a computing system security dashboard for presentation on a computer display device, the dashboard including a plurality of security view panes, each security view pane, when expanded, presenting a respective visualization of a corresponding category of security conditions of the particular computing system, wherein at least one particular security view pane is collapsed so as to hide at least a portion of a particular visualization of particular security conditions related to a particular category, the particular visualization is to be presented using the particular security view pane when expanded, the particular security view pane is to occupy a smaller area of the dashboard when collapsed than when expanded and is to present a particular visual indicator, at least when collapsed, summarizing at least a portion of the particular security conditions represented in the hidden particular visualization, wherein the particular visualization is to graphically represent chronological progress of the particular security conditions over a period of time; and identify a user interaction with the particular collapsed security view pane prompting the particular security view pane to be expanded in area and present the particular visualization. (App. Br. 11 (Claims App’x) (“disputed requirements” emphasized).) 2 Appeal 2016-001123 Application 13/340,010 References and Rejections Claims 1—15, 22, 23, and 25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of Jeffries et al. (US 2011/0131659 Al; published June 2, 2011), Sarferaz (US 2012/0198511 Al; published Aug. 2, 2012), and Hernandez et al. (US 2008/0140448 Al, June 12, 2008). (Final Act. 2-9.) Claim 16 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of Jeffries, Sarferaz, Hernandez, and Kelley et al. (US 7,552,136 B2; issued June 23, 2009). (Final Act. 9.) Claims 17 and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of Jeffries, Sarferaz, Hernandez, and Matthews et al. (US 2006/0107231 Al; published May 18, 2006). (Final Act. 10-11.) Claims 19—21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of Jeffries, Sarferaz, Hernandez, Matthews, and Brooks (US 6,008,809; issued Dec. 28, 1999). (Final Act. 11-12.) Claim 24 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of Jeffries, Sarferaz, Hernandez, and Brooks. (Final Act. 12—13.) Issues Based on Appellants’ arguments (see App. Br. 5—9), the issues before us are whether the Examiner errs in rejecting claim 1 because: (1) the cited references fail to teach or suggest the above-identified disputed requirements (App. Br. 5—7); and (2) the Examiner does not adequately explain the motivation to combine or modify the references as proposed (App. Br. 8—9). ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’ contentions of reversible error. We disagree with Appellants’ conclusions. We adopt the Examiner’s findings and reasons as set forth in the Final 3 Appeal 2016-001123 Application 13/340,010 Rejection from which this appeal is taken and as set forth in the Answer. We highlight the following for emphasis. The Disputed Requirements Appellants argue “both Jeffries and Hernandez fail to disclose how the graph of Hernandez relied on in the Final Action (see Hernandez, Figures 8A and 8B) would be processed to obtain a ‘particular visual indicator ... when collapsed, summarizing at least a portion of the particular security conditions represented in the hidden particular visualization’ as recited in Claim 1.” (App. Br. 6.) Appellants’ arguments do not persuade us. We agree with the Examiner’s findings that Jeffries’ security health reporting system, with its display boxes (“panes” in the vernacular of claim 1) showing security status synthesized from multiple health statuses (which maps to claim l’s “summarizing . . . security conditions”), teaches all elements of the disputed requirements except for “wherein the particular visualization is to graphically represent chronological progress of the particular security conditions over a period of time.” (See Final Act. 2—3; Ans. 3^4 (citing Jeffries Tflf 30, 32, Figs. 2, 4).) The Examiner relies on Hernandez, which relates to “monitoring and analysis of resources and networks and the ability to present graphical and tabular summaries of resource and network activity” for healthcare networks (12), for teaching “wherein the particular visualization is to graphically represent chronological progress of the particular security conditions over a period of time.” (See Final Act. 4; Ans. 3^4 (citing Hernandez || 127—28, Figs. 4, 8a—b).) The Examiner finds, and we agree, that Hernandez teaches using chronological progress graphs for monitoring a computing network 4 Appeal 2016-001123 Application 13/340,010 that includes displaying large and small versions of a graph, with the less detailed small version summarizing its corresponding large version. {Id.; see also Ans. 3—4.) Appellants contend the Examiner’s citations to Jeffries for the claimed “summarizing” “offers no guidance as to how ‘chronological progress of the particular security conditions over a period of time’ would be summarized.” (App. Br. 6—7.) This does not persuade us. “A person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007); see also id. at 421. Appellant has not provided persuasive evidence to show that using the Hernandez’s large and small chronological progress graphs for displaying the security status information of Jeffries over a time period was “uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art.” See Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citing KSR, 550 U.S. at 419). “The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference. . . . Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of those references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art.” In re Keller, 642 F.2d413, 425 (CCPA 1981). Appellants argue in reply that neither Jeffries nor Hernandez provides an enabling disclosure of the disputed requirements. (See Reply Br. 2.) We find this unpersuasive. It is the combination of Jeffries and Hernandez that teaches or suggests the disputed requirements. We also note that “[w]hile a reference must enable someone to practice the invention in order to anticipate under § 102[], a non-enabling reference may qualify as prior art 5 Appeal 2016-001123 Application 13/340,010 for the purpose of determining obviousness under § 103.” Symbol Techs. Inc. v. Opticonlnc., 935 F.2d 1569, 1578 (Fed. Cir. 1991). Appellants further contend “Hernandez offers no guidance on how the large network usage graph in Figure 8B could be summarized when collapsed (the large network usage graph is merely a larger copy of a corresponding small graph).” (App. Br. 7). This is unpersuasive. We agree with the Examiner that Hernandez’s Figure 8b shows a small graph that summarizes its corresponding large graph by providing less detail: Figure 8b of Hernandez shows an example of a graphical display summarizing the network status with a popup displaying a larger graph showing details for a selected machine. Appellants in reply observe that “the text accompanying Fig. 8b (see, e.g., paragraphs 0127 and 0128) of Hernandez, is silent as to a smaller graph hiding information shown in a corresponding popup window.” (Reply Br. 6 Appeal 2016-001123 Application 13/340,010 3.) We are unpersuaded. First, the large graph in Figure 8b by itself shows meaningful, detailed information not included in the small graph. One of ordinarily skill needs no textual explanation to see this. Second, we note Hernandez 1128 states, with reference to Figure 8b, that “[clicking on a small graph can open a popup window displaying, on a larger scale, the details of the network usage for this machine.” We agree with the Examiner that this disclosure, especially in view of the details of Figure 8b, teaches that the small graph summarizes a corresponding large graph. (See Ans. 4.) Motivation to Combine Appellants argue the Examiner errs by “not presenting] sufficient ‘articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning’ that it would have been obvious to make the proposed combination” of Jeffries and Hernandez. (App. Br. 9 (citing KSR, 550 U.S. at 418).) The Examiner answers by finding: Jeffries teaches monitoring overall security conditions of a computing system with graphical indicators. Hernandez teaches monitoring healthcare computing system[s] with graphical indications. Both Jeffries[’] teaching and Hemandez[’s] teaching are in the same field endeavor[, i.e.,] to monitor overall security conditions of a computing system with [a] graphical interface. Hernandez clearly describe[s] the purpose of the monitoring system interface[:] “FIGS. 8a and 8b illustrate examples of a graphical display of network status. . . . The administrator can then quickly remedy inefficiencies by re routing worklists so that workflow is more evenly distributed” (paragraph 0127). Hernandez also states that “Consequently, a system is needed which quickly identifies or detects inefficiencies or bottlenecks in the workflow, alerts the administrator to the problem and provides remedies to the problem” (paragraph 006 lines 15-18). (Ans. 5; see also Final Act 4—5.) 7 Appeal 2016-001123 Application 13/340,010 We find the Examiner sufficiently articulates reasoning with a rational underpinning for why one of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine the teachings of Jeffries and Hernandez, consistent with KSR as cited above by Appellants. We also note the obviousness analysis can “include recourse to logic, judgment, and common sense available to the person of ordinary skill that do not necessarily require explication in any reference.” Perfect Web Techs., Inc. v. InfoUSA, Inc., 587 F.3d 1324, 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2009). We find the Examiner’s articulated reasoning is logical and makes common sense. Appellants’ reply, which notes there would have been a lack of motivation to combine “especially given the focus of Jeffries on security state reporting for a single system and Hernandez’s focus on reporting on multiple different systems in an integrated healthcare enterprise” (Reply Br. 3), is unpersuasive of error. We agree with the Examiner that the teachings of Jeffries and Hernandez are relevant to claim 1, are closely related, and one of ordinary skill would have been motivated to combine them for the reasons stated above. Conclusion We accordingly sustain the rejection of claim 1. We also sustain the rejection of claims 2—25, which Appellants do not argue separately. DECISION For the above reasons, we affirm the rejection of claims 1—25. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal maybe extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 8 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation