Ex Parte Pearson

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Oct 30, 2014

11760559 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 30, 2014)

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.
11/760,559 06/08/2007 Larry B. Pearson 7785-225_2006-1839 8407
92384 7590 10/30/2014
AT&T Legal Department - G&G
Attention: Patent Docketing
Room 2A-207
One AT&T Way
Bedminster, NJ 07921
EXAMINER
CONAWAY, JAMES E
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2454
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/30/2014 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 PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD

____________

Ex parte LARRY B. PEARSON
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Appeal 2012-004441
Application 11/760,559
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before CARLA M. KRIVAK, JEFFREY S. SMITH, and
JOHNNY A. KUMAR, Administrative Patent Judges.

KRIVAK, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of
claims 1–23. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

Appeal 2012-004441
Application 11/760,559

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant’s claimed invention is directed to a “system and method of
managing publications” (Spec.¶ 2).
Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the
subject matter on appeal.
l. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium,
comprising computer instructions for:
receiving from a sender one or more requests to publish
to a plurality of recipients a portion of a network address book
of the sender;
submitting to the plurality of recipients an invitation to
subscribe to the portion of the network address book;
comparing a first threshold to a number of declined
invitations received from the plurality of recipients; and
adjusting the sender's ability to publish a second portion
of the network address book responsive to identifying the
sender as a potential spammer when the number of declined
invitations exceeds the first threshold, wherein the adjusting of
the sender's ability to publish comprises temporarily suspending
the sender's ability to publish.

REFERENCES and REJECTIONS
1

The Examiner rejected claims 1–4, 7–15, and 17–23 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) based upon the teachings of Reding (US 2007/0038720 A1,
Feb. 15, 2007) and Spadea (US 2006/0047766 A1, Mar. 2, 2006).
The Examiner rejected claims 5, 6, and 16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
based upon the teachings of Reding, Spadea, and Piche (US 2010/0226261,
A1, Sept. 9, 2010).

1
The Examiner withdrew the rejection of claims 14–16 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 101 (Ans. 4).
Appeal 2012-004441
Application 11/760,559

3
ANALYSIS
The Examiner finds Reding discloses all the features of Appellant’s
claimed invention except for the last two steps of claim 1 (Ans. 5). The
Examiner relies on Spadea for teaching and suggesting these limitations
(Ans. 5–6). Particularly, the Examiner finds Spadea teaches and suggests
adjusting a sender’s ability to publish, and temporarily suspend the sender’s
ability to publish, as claimed (Ans. 5–6; 15–17).
We agree with and adopt the Examiner’s findings as our own (Ans. 5–
17). Particularly, under the broadest reasonable interpretation of the term
temporarily, we agree Spadea discloses this limitation in paragraphs 93, 100,
and 101.
Appellant’s argument that what Spadea teaches is not the same as
Appellant’s claimed invention is not correct. Appellant is reading more into
the claim limitations than is actually claimed. Spadea’s disclosure that
“removing” can mean changing a status from desired to “undesired” or
changing a status from “verified” to “unverified” allows us to correctly
interpret this term to mean “temporarily suspending the sender’s ability to
publish” within the scope of claim 1, contrary to Appellant’s contention
(Reply Br. 5). That is, as the Examiner explains “The suspension is
temporary because a sender's status may change back to ‘verified’ or
‘desired’ (Spadea: par 0100)” (emphasis added) (Ans. 16).
On this record, we are not persuaded the Examiner’s reading of the
claims on the cited combination of references is overly broad, unreasonable,
or inconsistent with the Specification. Thus, in light of the broad terms
recited in the claims and the arguments presented, Appellant has failed to
clearly distinguish their claimed invention over the prior art relied on by the
Appeal 2012-004441
Application 11/760,559

4
Examiner. Therefore, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent
claim 1 and claims 13, and 17, argued for the same reasons, and claims 4, 7–
12, 14, 15, and 18–23, not separately argued (App. Br. 12–13).
With respect to claims 5, 6, and 16, Appellant asserts these claims are
allowable over the cited references for the reasons set forth with respect to
claims 1 and 13 (App. Br. 13–14). Thus, for the reasons set forth above, we
also sustain the Examiner’s rejection of these claims.

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–23 is 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)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

ELD