Ex Parte Sato

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jun 18, 2013

10658057 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 18, 2013)

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.
10/658,057 09/08/2003 Naoyuki Sato SONY-26200 5505
7590 06/19/2013
Jonathan O. Owens
HAVERSTOCK & OWENS LLP
162 North Wolfe Road
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
EXAMINER
NAJJAR, SALEH
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2492
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/19/2013 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 NAOYUKI SATO
____________

Appeal 2011-009127
Application 10/658,057
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, and
CARLA M. KRIVAK, Administrative Patent Judges.

DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

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Application 10/658,057

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims
1-7, 9-33, and 35-41. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

INVENTION
The invention is directed to “determining a location of a user and
providing information to the user pertaining to their location” (Spec. 1:8).
Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method of providing localized information to a
user accessing an internet site through an access point,
comprising:

a. determining a network address corresponding to the
access point;

b. obtaining location information corresponding to the
network address from a location table, wherein the location
information is determined at an internet portal based on the
location table;

c. obtaining the localized information from a localized
information database using the location information, wherein
the localized information corresponding to the location
information is defined by the internet portal, independent of an
identification of the access point; and

d. providing the localized information to the user through
the access point.

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REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Stewart

Hannah

Brauel
US 2002/0173981 A1

US 6,618,005 B2

US 2004/0002343 A1
Nov. 21, 2002

Sept. 9, 2003
(filed June 29, 2001)

Jan. 1, 2004
(filed June 28, 2002)

REJECTIONS
Claims 1-7, 9-33, and 35-41 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Stewart, Brauel, and Hannah.

ANALYSIS
Appellant presents a number of general arguments that do not
reference particular claims (see App. Br. 7-14), followed by arguments that
nominally group each independent claim separately with its respective
dependent claims (see App. Br. 14-18). However, the arguments for each
group of claims merely point out what the claims recite and refer back to the
same general arguments—which are not addressed to any particular
claims—to explain why the references fail to disclose the recited limitations
(see App. Br. 14-18). Appellant thus fails to make the claim-specific
arguments required to warrant separate treatment of the various groups of
claims. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (2010) (“A statement which merely
points out what a claim recites will not be considered an argument for
separate patentability of the claim.”). We do not undertake to determine
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which of Appellant’s general arguments apply to which claims. Rather, we
treat the claims as argued together and select independent claim 1 as
representative. See id. (“When multiple claims subject to the same ground
of rejection are argued as a group by appellant, the Board may select a single
claim from the group of claims that are argued together to decide the appeal
with respect to the group of claims as to the ground of rejection on the basis
of the selected claim alone.”).
Appellant contends that “Stewart does not teach that the localized
information corresponding to a physical location of a specific access point
accessing the internet site is defined by the apparatus according to the
physical location, independent of an identification of the specific access
point” (App. Br. 8). We disagree with Appellant.
The Examiner cites the following disclosure in Stewart in rejecting
claim 1 (Ans. 3-4):
In one embodiment, the KGL information may be determined
by correlating the access point (AP) 120 with stored KGL
information, such as may be stored on the server 150. . . . The
web site 180 may then use this KGL information to provide
KGL based services to the customer, such as maps of the area
local to the business.

(Stewart, ¶ [0047]).
As mentioned above, in various embodiments, KGL
information of the business or customer may be determined by
the system, such as . . . by transmission of an identifying ID,
such as a MAC ID, of the AP 120, which the system may use to
look up the KGL information from a database.

(Stewart, ¶ [0084]). As quoted here, Stewart’s system can look up KGL
information—“location information,” as recited in claim 1—based on a
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MAC ID—a “network address”, as recited in claim 1—of an access point.
We find that Stewart’s KGL information is information corresponding to a
physical location meeting the limitation of the “location information” recited
in claim 1 because Stewart discloses that “[t]he domain place registry may
store KGL information and/or infomediation information for a plurality of
businesses, i.e., the registry may store the physical location of businesses or
business domains” (Stewart, ¶ [0036]) (emphasis added). As further quoted
above, Stewart’s system uses the KGL information to provide KGL based
services, i.e., “localized information”, as recited in claim 1. As Stewart’s
KGL based services are provided based on the KGL information, the KGL
based services are in fact “defined” by Stewart’s system as corresponding to
specific KGL information, as in claim 1.
Further, the KGL based services are “independent of an identification
of the access point,” as recited in claim 1, because Stewart’s system
performs a look up of the KGL information from the access point identity,
and it is the KGL information upon which the KGL based services are
provided (see Stewart, ¶ [0047]).
Accordingly, we find that the portions of Stewart the Examiner relies
upon (Stewart, ¶¶ [0047] and [0084]) disclose the argued limitations. As the
Examiner’s findings with respect to Stewart meet the argued limitations, we
find the Examiner’s reliance on Brauel and Hannah to be merely cumulative
to Stewart’s teachings. For example, although Brauel discloses a look up
table for determining an access point’s physical location from the access
point’s address (Ans. 4; Brauel, Fig. 2), Stewart alone suggests this by
disclosing that “the system may use [the access point’s MAC ID] to look up
the KGL information from a database” (Stewart, ¶ [0084]) (emphasis added).
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Appellant further contends that “Stewart also does not teach a method
of generating a location table corresponding to the network address and
location of access points upon an initial communication from each of the
access points” (App. Br. 8). However, claim 1 does not recite this
limitation, and therefore this argument is not persuasive of error regarding
the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1.
We are therefore not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting
claim 1, and claims 2-7, 9-33, and 35-41 which we treat as argued together
with claim 1 as discussed above.

CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1-7, 9-33, and 35-41
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-7, 9-33, and 35-41 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). See 37
C.F.R. § 41.50(f).

AFFIRMED

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