Ex Parte Ranjan et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Dec 27, 2016

13595389 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 27, 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.
13/595,389 08/27/2012 Amit Ranjan 82965474 3280
22879
HP Tnr
7590 12/29/2016 EXAMINER
3390 E. Harmony Road
Mail Stop 35
RAHMJOO, MANUCHEHR
FORT COLLINS, CO 80528-9544 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2667
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/29/2016 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):
ipa.mail@hp.com
barbl@hp.com
y vonne.bailey @ hp. com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte AMIT RANJAN and PRAPHUL CHANDRA
Appeal 2016-000718
Application 13/595,3891
Technology Center 2600
Before KRISTEN L. DROESCH, CARL L. SILVERMAN, and
MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges.
McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1-19, which are all the claims pending in this application.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Hewlett-Packard
Development Company, LP. App. Br. 3.
Appeal 2016-000718
Application 13/595,389
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellants’ application relates to a method and system for preventing
unauthorized publication of a media object. Abstract. Claim 10 is
illustrative of the subject matter on appeal and reads as follows:
10. A system to prevent an unauthorized publication of a
media object, comprising:
a user interface to receive a request from a user to
prevent the unauthorized publication of the media object;
a camera to establish a video link with the user upon
receipt of said request; and
a privacy management module to:
obtain an image of the user from the video link;
determine whether the image of the user
correspond with an image in the media object; and
perform an action with regard to the unauthorized
publication of the media object if the image of the user
correspond with an image in the media object.
The Examiner’s Rejection
Claims 1-19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as anticipated by
Nurmi (US 2011/0202968 Al; Aug. 18,2011). Final Act. 2-6.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in consideration of
Appellants’ contentions and the evidence of record. Appellants persuade us
the Examiner fails to establish the claims are unpatentable over the cited
prior art.
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Appeal 2016-000718
Application 13/595,389
The independent claims of the present application are claim 1
(method), claim 10 (system), and claim 15 (non-transitory computer
readable medium). The Examiner rejects all three independent claims as
anticipated by Nurmi using the same rationale. See Final Act. 3-4. Claim
10 is a system claim that recites functions performed by a “privacy
management module.” We conclude this privacy management module
invokes pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 112, | 6, and the functional language,
therefore, limits the scope of the system to cover the corresponding structure
described in the Specification and its equivalents. See Williamson v. Citrix
Online, LLC, 792 F.3d 1339, 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (enbanc) (“Generic
terms such as ‘mechanism,’ ‘element,’ ‘device,’ and other nonce words that
reflect nothing more than verbal constructs may be used in a claim in a
manner that is tantamount to using the word ‘means’ because they ‘typically
do not connote sufficiently definite structure’ and therefore may invoke §
112, para. 6.”). We select claim 10 as representative. See 37 C.F.R. §
41.37(c)(l)(iv).
Appellants argue the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 10 because
Nurmi does not disclose “a camera to establish a video link with the user
upon receipt of said request” or a “privacy management module to[] obtain
an image of the user from the video link.” See App. Br. 7-10. In particular,
Appellants argue Nurmi discloses a user registers features with the privacy
service, but Nurmi does not disclose a camera establishes a video link with
the user upon registration to obtain images of the user from the video link.
Reply Br. 6. Appellants argue Nurmi does not establish a link upon
registration, and there would be no reason to do so because the features that
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Appeal 2016-000718
Application 13/595,389
will be used to determine whether to prevent unauthorized publication have
already been provided to the system in the form of the reference images. Id.
The Examiner finds Nurmi teaches establishing a video link and
obtaining an image from that link in paragraph 24. Ans. 8. In paragraph 24,
Nurmi discloses a user initiating a privacy service by registering features to
identity with the media privacy platform. Nurmi 124. These features will
be used by the platform to identify specific content in media items. Id. The
features may include reference images, such as a facial image of the user.
Id.
Appellants have persuaded us of Examiner error because Nurmi does
not disclose obtaining an image of a user from a video link, wherein the
privacy management module determines whether the image of the user
corresponds with an image in the submitted media object. Nurmi discloses a
user submitting reference images which may be used for later comparison
against media items to determine whether those items should be authorized
for publication. Nurmi 124. The cited portion of Nurmi does not disclose
the user submitting a media item and an image captured from a video link
being compared to that submitted media item. Id. Accordingly, on this
record, we do not sustain the rejection of claim 10. We also do not sustain
the rejections of independent claims 1 and 15, which contain similar
limitations, or dependent claims 2-9, 11-14, and 16-19.
DECISION
We reverse the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-19.
REVERSED
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