11017063 (B.P.A.I. Sep. 2, 2011)

Ex Parte Rissanen

Board of Patent Appeals and InterferencesSep 2, 2011

11017063 (B.P.A.I. Sep. 2, 2011)

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. 11/017,063 12/21/2004 Jussi Rissanen 004770.00700 9393 72165 7590 09/02/2011 BANNER & WITCOFF, LTD ATTORNEYS FOR CLIENT 004770 1100 13TH STREET SUITE 1200 WASHINGTON, DC 20005-4051 EXAMINER THEIN, MARIA TERESA T ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3627 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 09/02/2011 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 BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS AND INTERFERENCES ____________ Ex parte JUSSI RISSANEN and ARI AARNIO ____________ Appeal 2010-004689 Application 11/017,063 Technology Center 3600 ____________ Before MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, HUBERT C. LORIN, and JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, Administrative Patent Judges. CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2010-004689 Application 11/017,063 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134 of the Examinerâ€™s final decision rejecting claims 13, 15 to 19, 21 to 24, 33, and 35 to 46. We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b). We REVERSE. Claim 13 is illustrative: 13. A method comprising: receiving, at a network system, a request from a mobile device to access a network site; determining, at the network system, whether the requested network site is host sponsored by comparing an address of the requested network site to at least one host sponsored address stored in a database of addresses of a plurality of host sponsored sites; in response to determining that the requested network site is host sponsored, determining, by the network system, a degree of sponsorship associated with the requested network site; and determining, at the network system, a first cost and a second cost from data traffic billing incurred by the mobile device's access of the requested network site, the determination of the first and the second costs being based on the determined degree of sponsorship, wherein the first cost is to be charged to a user of the mobile device and the second cost is to be charged to the host sponsoring the requested network site. Appellants appeal the following rejection: Claims 13, 15 to 19, 21 to 24, 33, and 35 to 46 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Crosskey (US Pat. 6,035,281, iss. Mar. 7, 2000) and Schloss (US Pat. 5,706,507, iss. Jan. 6, 1998). Appeal 2010-004689 Application 11/017,063 3 ISSUE Did the Examiner err in rejecting the claims because the combined teachings of Crosskey and Schloss would not result in the features of the appealed claims? ANALYSIS The Examiner relies on Crosskey for teaching the elements of claim 13 except that the Examiner recognizes that Crosskey does not disclose comparing an address of the requested network site to at least one host sponsored address stored in a database of addresses of a plurality of host sponsored sites. We agree with the following findings of the Examiner in regard to Crosskey and adopt the findings as our own: Crosskey discloses Universal Resource Locator (URL) which uniquely identifies or address information on the Internet (col. 1, lines 39-40). Crosskey discloses that in order to bill the user based on the actual usage the URL is used (col. 6, lines 64-66). The billing formula can identify the target content provider as being responsible for payment. Also, because the hyperlink source indicates the present URL content, the billing formula can identify the source content provider as being responsible for payment. (Col. 6, line 67- col. 7, line 5). (Ans. 4). We find that Schloss discloses a system and method for controlling access to data (col. 1, ll. 1 to 3). A gateway 10 functions as a proxy server to cache the most recently requested content data, to control access to the Appeal 2010-004689 Application 11/017,063 4 internet to only specified clients, and for billing the clients for access to the internet (col. 4, ll. 9 to 12). The system includes advisory servers 20 interfaced with the internet that maintain a knowledge base 22 that characterizes the content generated by one or more servers 6 (col. 4, ll. 57 to 61). The advisory servers 20, upon receiving a request for content characterization from the user, compares the URL field 303 of the content requested with the knowledge base to determine whether content should be shown (col. 2, ll. 29 to 33; col. 7, ll. 36 to 40). The advisory servers 20 may check whether the user should be charged and if so record the usage for billing purposes (col. 8, ll. 7 to 10). We agree with the Appellants that Schloss does not disclose determining whether a site is host sponsored by comparing addresses stored in a database. The comparison disclosed in Schloss relates to the characterization of the content. Schloss does disclose that the advisory servers may check to see if the user should be charged but Schloss does not disclose how the advisory servers perform this check. We also agree with the Appellants that if the Crosskey and Schloss references were combined, the combination would result in the billing being done as taught in Crosskey and the content being filtered in accordance with the teachings of Schloss. There is no reason apparent from the portions of the prior art relied on by the Examiner for combining the teachings of the references so as to use the content filtering method of Schloss in the Crosskey billing method. Appeal 2010-004689 Application 11/017,063 5 In view of the forgoing, we will not sustain the Examinerâ€™s rejection of claim 13 and claims 15 to 18 dependent thereon. We will also not sustain the rejection as it is directed to the remaining claims because they all require the step of comparing an address of the requested network site to at least one host sponsored address stored in a database of addresses of a plurality of host sponsored sites. DECISION The decision of the Examiner is reversed. REVERSED hh