11130162 (B.P.A.I. May. 24, 2010)

Ex Parte Sawyer et al

Board of Patent Appeals and InterferencesMay 24, 2010

11130162 (B.P.A.I. May. 24, 2010)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS AND INTERFERENCES ____________ Ex parte DAVID B. SAWYER, RONNIE D. KING JR., GOPINATH SRINIVASAN, RICHARD S. BICE, JON P. BRUSSEAU, RICHARD L. LACOURSE, and HERBERT T. RAFFAELE ____________ Appeal 2009-001887 Application 11/130,1621 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Decided: May 24, 2010 ____________ Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, LANCE LEONARD BARRY, and CAROLYN D. THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judges. THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL 1 Application filed May 17, 2005. The real party in interest is Verizon Business Global LLC. Appeal 2009-001887 Application 11/130,162 2 I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1-11 and 13-30, which are all the claims remaining in the application, as claim 12 is cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. A. INVENTION Appellants invented a system and method for automatically processing service requests using structured messaging protocols. (Spec. 1, ¶ [0002].) B. ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIM The appeal contains claims 1-11 and 13-30. Claims 1, 11, 21, and 29 are independent claims. Claim 1 is illustrative: 1. A system for handling messages, the system comprising: a schema module configured to: provide a first message handling rule based on a first schema and a second message handling rule based on a second schema, the first message handling rule facilitating translation of an incoming message including incoming information and the second message handling rule facilitating making a backend message available to a backend device; and a message handler including a processor configured to: receive the incoming message, Appeal 2009-001887 Application 11/130,162 3 translate the incoming message using the first message handling rule, extract the incoming information, and publish the incoming information using the second message handling rule. C. REFERENCES The references relied upon by the Examiner as evidence in rejecting the claims on appeal are as follows: Meltzer US 6,125,391 Sep. 26, 2000 Kihl US 6,222,536 B1 Apr. 24, 2001 Rudraraju US 2002/0111876 A1 Aug. 15, 2002 Salo US 6,563,800 B1 May 13, 2003 Sabharwal US 2003/0167456 A1 Sep. 4, 2003 Betts US 2006/0004768 A1 Jan. 5, 2006 Cui US 7,155,715 B1 Dec. 26, 2006 D. REJECTIONS The Examiner entered the following rejections which are before us for review: (1) Claims 1-3, 7-11, 13-20, 29, and 30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by Rudraraju; (2) Claims 4 and 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Rudraraju in view of Sabharwal; Appeal 2009-001887 Application 11/130,162 4 (3) Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Rudraraju in view of Meltzer; and (4) Claims 21-28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Rudraraju in view of Salo. II. FINDINGS OF FACT The following findings of fact (FF) are supported by a preponderance of the evidence. Rudraraju Rudraraju discloses that “when customer 110 submits a transaction request, user agent 202 is configured to convert this request into an XML message.” (¶ [0025].) III. PRINCIPLES OF LAW In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102, “[a] single prior art reference that discloses, either expressly or inherently, each limitation of a claim invalidates that claim by anticipation.” Perricone v. Medicis Pharm. Corp., 432 F.3d 1368, 1375 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (citing Minn. Mining & Mfg. Co. v. Johnson & Johnson Orthopaedics, Inc., 976 F.2d 1559, 1565 (Fed. Cir. 1992)). Appeal 2009-001887 Application 11/130,162 5 IV. ANALYSIS Grouping of Claims In the Brief, Appellants argue claims 1-11 and 13-30 as a group (App. Br. 5-14). For claims 2-11 and 13-30, Appellants in essence repeat the same argument made for claim 1. We will, therefore, treat claims 2-11 and 13-30 as standing or falling with claim 1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii). See also In re Young, 927 F.2d 588, 590 (Fed. Cir. 1991). The Anticipation Rejection We first consider the Examiner’s rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Rudraraju. Appellants contend that “RUDRARAJU et al. does not disclose or suggest extracting information, therefore this section of RUDRARAJU et al. cannot disclose or suggest a message handler including a processor configured to extract incoming information, as required by claim 1.” (App. Br. 7.) The Examiner found that “Rudraraju . . . receives a request and converts the request into an XML message . . . In order for the user agent of Rudraraju to convert the request from WML to XML, it inherently must extract the information from the WML request in order to populate the XML message. This is considered a part of conversion.” (Ans. 11.) Appeal 2009-001887 Application 11/130,162 6 Issue: Did the Examiner err in finding that Rudraraju inherently discloses extracting incoming information? The Examiner found that converting incoming information from one format to another format inherently includes extracting data from the incoming information (Ans. 11.) We agree. For example, Appellants agree with the Examiner findings that Rudraraju discloses converting a request into an XML message (App. Br. 7: FF). The Examiner further found that conversion processes inherently include extracting some sort of information and the Examiner cites several references to support this finding (e.g., Kihl, Cui, and Betts; see Ans. 11-12.) We endorse and adopt the Examiner’s findings. Appellants provided no evidence or convincing argument in the Appeal Brief to rebut this finding by the Examiner, and no Reply Brief was filed. Therefore, we are not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s findings that converting messages from one format to another format inherently includes an extraction function. Appellants reproduce other limitations from the claims in the Appeal Brief, but allege error in their rejection by relying on the same position regarding the supposed deficiencies of Rudraraju that we have found untenable supra. Appellants’ additional remarks are not separate arguments for patentability under the applicable rules. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (“A statement which merely points out what a claim recites will not be Appeal 2009-001887 Application 11/130,162 7 considered an argument for separate patentability of the claim.”). To the extent that any of Appellants’ additional remarks in the Appeal Brief could be considered to rise to the level of providing arguments for separate patentability, we refer to the Examiner’s findings in the Answer as a complete response to any such arguments. Thus, Appellants have not persuaded us of error in the Examiner’s conclusion of anticipation for representative claim 1. Therefore, we affirm the Examiner’s § 102 rejection of independent claim 1 and of claims 2, 3, 7- 11, 13-20, 29, and 30, which fall therewith. The Obviousness Rejection We now consider the Examiner’s rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Appellants have not provided separate arguments for the patentability of claims 4-6 and 21-28, but in essence submit that claims 4-6 and 21-28 are allowable for the reasons given with respect to claim 1. (App. Br. 11-14.) Because we find the arguments for claim 1 unpersuasive, we sustain the § 103(a) rejections of claims 4-6 and 21-28. V. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that Appellants have not shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1-11 and 13-30. Thus, claims 1-11 and 13-30 are not patentable. Appeal 2009-001887 Application 11/130,162 8 VI. DECISION In view of the foregoing discussion, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-3, 7-11, 13-20, 29, and 30 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) and claims 4-6 and 21-28 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv) (2009). AFFIRMED rwk VERIZON PATENT MANAGEMENT GROUP 1320 North Court House Road 9th Floor ARLINGTON VA 22201-2909