Ex Parte Royyuru

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Feb 13, 2012

11874584 (B.P.A.I. Feb. 13, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

Ex parte VIJAY K. ROYYURU
___________

Appeal 2011-000302
Application 11/874,584
Technology Center 3600
____________

Before BIBHU R. MOHANTY, MEREDITH C. PETRAVICK, and
MICHAEL W. KIM, Administrative Patent Judges.

PETRAVICK, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2011-000302
Application 11/874,584

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Vijay K. Royyuru (Appellant) seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134
of the final rejection of claims 1, 2, 4-21, 23, and 24. We have jurisdiction
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).

SUMMARY OF DECISION
We REVERSE. 1

THE INVENTION
This invention is a method of authenticating an applicant using
transaction history by asking the applicant questions related to the
transaction history. Spec. para., [0016].
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the subject matter on
appeal.
1. A method of authenticating an applicant, the
method comprising:
obtaining, by a host computer system, a
transaction history of transactions performed on an
account held by the applicant and for which the
applicant has been previously authenticated, the
transaction history comprising information about
each transaction;
identifying, by the host computer system,
one or more patterns or anomalies in the
transaction history;

1 Our decision will make reference to the Appellant’s Appeal Brief (“Br.,”
filed May 24, 2010) and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed Jun. 23,
2010).

Appeal 2011-000302
Application 11/874,584

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asking, by the host computer system over an
electronic network, the applicant one or more
questions relating to the information about one or
more transactions in the history, the host computer
system framing at least one of the one or more
questions so as to test the applicant's knowledge of
the one or more patterns or anomalies;
receiving, by the host computer system,
from the applicant answers to the one or more
questions; and
indicating, by the host computer system,
based at least in part on the one or more answers
received and the transaction history, whether the
applicant is authenticated.

THE REJECTION
The Examiner relies upon the following as evidence of
unpatentability:
Kanevsky
French
US 5,774,525
US 6,263,447 B1
Jun. 30, 1998
Jul. 17, 2001

The following rejection is before us for review:
1. Claims 1-2, 4-21, and 23-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§103(a) as being unpatentable over French and Kanevsky.

ISSUE
The issue is whether claims 1-2, 4-21, and 23-24 are unpatentable
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over French and Kanevsky. Specifically, the issue
is whether the combination of French and Kanevsky discloses “the host
computer system framing at least one of the one or more questions so as to
test the applicant's knowledge of the one or more patterns or anomalies.”
Appeal 2011-000302
Application 11/874,584

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ANALYSIS
We are persuaded by the Appellant’s argument that the Examiner
erred in rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over French and
Kanevsky. The Appellant argues that the cited portions of Kanevsky fail to
teach “the host computer system framing at least one of the one or more
questions so as to test the applicant's knowledge of the one or more patterns
or anomalies.” See Br. 7-9. We note that claim 1 requires that the patterns
or anomalies be patterns or anomalies in a transaction history. In the
rejection, the Examiner admits that French does not teach this limitation
(Ans. 3-4, see also Ans. 9), but finds that Kanevsky’s Abstract, Figures 1-3,
and column 2, lines 5-39 (Ans. 4 and 9) does. We agree with the Appellant
(Br. 8-9) that none of the cited portions of Kanevsky teach the limitation at
issue. While Kanevsky describes a dialog module that derives
authentication questions from data in databases (for example, see col. 10, ll.
38-49 and see col. 7, ll. 20-65), the module does not derive the questions “so
as to test the applicant’s knowledge of the one or more patterns or
anomalies” in a transaction history, as required by claim 1. Therefore, we
find that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over French and Kanevsky.
Independent claims 20, 23, and 24 recite similar limitations to the one
at issue above and were rejected by the Examiner using the same rationale
(see Ans. 6). For the same reason as discussed above, we find that the
Examiner erred in rejecting claims 20, 23, and 24 as unpatentable over
French and Kanevsky. Accordingly, the rejection of claims 1, 20, 23, and
24, and claims 2, 4-19, and 21, dependent thereon, under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over French and Kanevsky is reversed.
Appeal 2011-000302
Application 11/874,584

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DECISION
The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1, 2, 4-21, 23, and 24 is
reversed.

REVERSED

Klh