Ex Parte Snyder et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Sep 29, 2010

10758984 (B.P.A.I. Sep. 29, 2010)

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.
10/758,984 01/16/2004 Harry Snyder 2003P00652 US01 7911
7590 09/30/2010
Alexander J. Burke
Intellectual Property Department
5th Floor
170 Wood Avenue South
Iselin, NJ 08830
EXAMINER
VY, HUNG T
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2163
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/30/2010 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 HARRY SNYDER, RICHARD CULLEN, and
BRUCE E. ARNOLD, JR.
____________________

Appeal 2009-006548
Application 10/758,9841
Technology Center 2100
____________________

Before JOHN A. JEFFERY, JAY P. LUCAS, and JAMES R. HUGHES,
Administrative Patent Judges.

LUCAS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL2

1 Application filed January 16, 2004. Appellants claim the benefit under
35 U.S.C. § 119 of provisional application 60/440,830, filed January 17,
2003. The real party in interest is Siemens Medical Solutions USA Inc.
2 The two-month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil
action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304, or for filing a request for rehearing,
as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 41.52, begins to run from the “MAIL DATE”
(paper delivery mode) or the “NOTIFICATION DATE” (electronic delivery
mode) shown on the PTOL-90A cover letter attached to this decision.

Appeal 2009-006548
Application 10/758,984

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal from a final rejection of claims 1 to 19 under
authority of 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). The Board of Patent Appeals and
Interferences (BPAI) has jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).

We affirm the rejections.

Appellants’ invention relates to an information system that manages
user access to an application hosted by an application service provider
(“ASP”). (See claim 1.) In the words of Appellants:
[T]he system restricts access so that customer
account administrators [e.g., managers for a
hospital organization] have no access to user
accounts assigned to other organizations [e.g.,
other hospitals within the system], preferably by
adding a prefix representing the parent
organization in order to establish uniqueness.
(Spec. 3, ll. 1 to 4).
[Visual Basic] scripts … operat[ing] on the Active
Directory … enforce a user naming standard
HHRR prefix ensuring uniqueness of duplicate
names amongst many hospitals. For example, “Joe
Smith” at Hospital A can be resolved and
distinguished from “Joe Smith” at Hospital B.
When a system administrator creates a logon
name for a user account for the first time, the
system administrator adds a hospital code prefix to
the logon name. The prefix represents a hospital
region code associated with a particular hospital or
health care organization. The prefix ensures
uniqueness of a logon name because Microsoft ®
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Active Directory ® domain accounts cannot have
duplicate logon names.
(Spec. 14, ll. 12 to 20).

The following illustrates the claims:
Claim 1:
1. A system enabling individual organizations
of a plurality of different organizations to manage
access of their own respective employees to at
least one remotely located application hosted by an
application service provider, comprising:
at an application service provider site,

at least one database containing data
representing,

a plurality of user interface images
associated with corresponding plurality of
organizations, and

a plurality of executable procedures
associated with the corresponding plurality of user
interface images, an executable procedure
supporting a user of a particular organization of
said plurality of organizations in managing access
of employees of the particular organization to an
application hosted by an application service
provider and used by said plurality of
organizations; and

a command processor employing the at least
one database for initiating execution of a particular
executable procedure in response to a command
initiated at a remote location associated with the
particular organization using a particular
organization, the particular executable procedure
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Application 10/758,984

supporting the user in managing and granting
access of an employee of the particular
organization to an application and associated
application data specific to said particular
organization without intervention by the
application service provider and excluding access
to said application data specific to said particular
organization by employees of organizations other
than said particular organization.

The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Llewellyn US 2003/0061279 A1 Mar. 27, 2003
(filed May 14, 2002)
Gavrila US 2002/0026592 A1 Feb. 28, 2002

REJECTIONS
The Examiner rejects the claims as follows:

R1: Claims 1 to 3, 7, and 10 to 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e)
for being anticipated by Llewellyn.
R2: Claims 4 to 6, 8, and 9 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) for
being obvious over Llewellyn in view of Gavrila.

We will review the rejections in the order argued and as grouped in
the Briefs. Arguments Appellants could have made but chose not to make in
the Briefs have not been considered and are deemed to be waived. See
37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).
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ISSUE
The issue is whether Appellants have shown that the Examiner erred
in rejecting the claims under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102(e) and 103(a). The issue
under § 102(e) specifically turns on whether the Llewellyn reference teaches
Appellants’ claim limitations “granting access … to said application …
without intervention by the application service provider” (claim 1) and
“excluding access to said application data specific to said particular
organization by employees of organizations other than said particular
organization” (claim 1).

FINDINGS OF FACT
The record supports the following findings of fact (FF) by a
preponderance of the evidence.
Disclosure
1. Appellants have invented a system for controlling access to an
application via an application service provider (“ASP”). (See claim 1;
Spec. 2, ll. 23 to 25.) The disclosure says that the ASP may be “a party”
(see Spec. 5, ll. 10 to 12) or something (i.e., a network of devices) that
“host[s]” a client application (id. at 12, ll. 10 to 12; Fig. 1). In a first
instance (i.e., when a particular user is originally granted access to
Appellants’ system), the Specification discloses that an administrator (i.e., a
human) determines which system parts a new user can access (id. at 18, ll. 7
to 10; 19, ll. 11 to 16; 21, ll. 15 to 17). After the administrator first
determines a particular user’s access rights, the system requires no further
human intervention (id. at 18, ll. 7 to 10; 3, ll. 4 to 6; 31, ll. 10 to 14).
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Llewellyn
2. The Llewellyn reference teaches a system for controlling access to an
application via an application service provider (“ASP”) (¶ [0078]). The
patent application publication says that the ASP “hosts” a client application
(id.). In a first instance (i.e., when a user is originally granted access to
Llewellyn’s system), Llewellyn discloses that an administrator specifies
which system parts are accessible to the user (¶ [0109]). After the
administrator first specifies a particular user’s access level, Llewellyn’s
system requires no further administrator intervention. (See ¶¶ [0176] and
[0177].) Llewellyn further teaches “permissions” (i.e., that the user’s access
level allows access to certain application features while excluding the user
from other features via a server initialization module) (¶ [0109]).

PRINCIPLE OF LAW
Appellants have the burden on appeal to the Board to demonstrate
Examiner error. See In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 985-86 (Fed. Cir. 2006).

ANALYSIS
Arguments with respect to the rejection
of claims 1 to 3, 7, and 10 to 19
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) [R1]

The Examiner rejected the above-noted claims as being anticipated by
the Llewellyn reference, pages 3 to 23. Appellants argue Llewellyn fails to
teach Appellants’ claim limitation “granting access … to said application …
without intervention by the application service provider” (claim 1) (App. Br.
8, middle to bottom).
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We disagree with Appellants’ argument. We find that Appellants
have invented a system for controlling access to an application via an
application service provider (“ASP”) (FF#1). The disclosure says that the
ASP may be someone (i.e., “a party,” a business entity, or a human) or
something (i.e., a network of devices) that “host[s]” a client application (id.).
In a first instance (i.e., when a particular user is originally granted access to
Appellants’ system), the Specification discloses that an administrator (i.e., a
human) determines which system parts a new user can access (id.). After the
administrator first determines a particular user’s access rights, the system
requires no further human intervention (id.).
In comparison, the Llewellyn reference teaches a system for
controlling access to an application via an application service provider
(“ASP”) (FF#2). The patent application publication says that the ASP
“hosts” a client application (id.). In a first instance (i.e., when a user is
originally granted access to Llewellyn’s system), Llewellyn discloses that an
administrator (i.e., a human) specifies which system parts are accessible to
the user (id.). After the administrator first specifies a particular user’s access
level, Llewellyn’s system requires no further administrator intervention (id.).
Llewellyn further discloses that the user’s access level allows access to
certain application features while excluding the user from other features via
a server initialization module (id.).
Interpreting Appellants’ claim phrase “without intervention” to mean
that the claimed “application service provider” is “not in communication
with” the claimed “application” would render claim 1 internally inconsistent
with the access mentioned in the previous limitation. We thus find that
Appellants’ claim limitation “granting access … without intervention by the
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Application 10/758,984

application service provider” is no different from Llewellyn’s teachings of a
server initialization module negotiating access to a client after the first
instance when an administrator sets permissions for the user of a client
module.
Appellants then argue that Llewellyn teaches away from the claimed
invention (App. Br. 9, bottom). More particularly, Appellants argue that the
claimed “without intervention” is not taught because the reference teaches
that an “‘administrator of a server station’ is an [ASP] administrator” and it
is “the administrator [who] controls the operations … [in] Llewellyn.” (Id.).
In essence, Appellants’ argument is that any human intervention in granting
access teaches away from “granting access … to said application … without
intervention,” as required in claim 1. (See id.)
Appellants disclose a human administrator granting access for a
particular user account by adding a prefix to the account when first created.
(See FF#1 and FF#2.) Thus, in light of the Specification (see In re Van
Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 1184 (Fed. Cir. 1993)), we do not construe the
recited “without intervention” as precluding all human intervention (id.).
Appellants further argue Llewellyn fails to teach Appellants’ claim
limitation “excluding access … to said particular organization by employees
of organizations other than said particular organization” (claim 1) (App. Br.
8, middle to bottom).
We find unconvincing Appellants’ argument that the “excluding”
limitation of claim 1 is not taught in Llewellyn. As noted above, we find
that Appellants’ claimed system allows a “particular user,” as claimed,
access to certain application features while excluding the “particular user”
from other features (FF#1). In comparison, we find that Llewellyn teaches
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“permissions” (i.e., that a user’s access level allows access to certain
application features while excluding the particular user from other features)
(FF#2; e.g., Llewellyn ¶ [0109] at ll. 3 to 4). We thus find that Appellants’
“excluding” step (claim 1) reads on Llewellyn’s teachings for “permissions.”
For all of the above-stated reasons, Appellants have not demonstrated
error in the rejection R1 of claim 1.
Appellants have separately argued dependent claims 3, 12, and 16 to
19 in accordance with 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii). Appellants argue, for
example, that Llewellyn fails to teach the claimed “processor” that “excludes
access” (Brief 11, bottom to 12); Llewellyn fails to teach the claimed
“prevent[ing] replication of user identification information” of claim 12
(Brief 12, middle); and that since Llewellyn teaches “centralized
management” and “centralized administration,” the reference teaches away
or fails to teach what is claimed (Brief 15, middle). We adopt and endorse
the Examiner’s findings with respect to the separately argued claims. We
refer Appellants to the “Response to Arguments” section of the Answer for
further details (Ans. 25 to 31).
For all of the reasons given, Appellants have not demonstrated error
regarding the rejection R1. Accordingly, we affirm.

Arguments with respect to the rejection
of claims 4 to 6 and 8 to 9
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) [R2]

The Examiner rejected the above-noted claims for being obvious over
the combination of the Llewellyn and Gavrila references, pages 23 to 25.
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Regarding dependent claims 4 and 5, Appellants argue that the
proposed combination would be inoperable (see Brief 25, middle) and that
Gavrila’s mere disclosure of revocation of membership does not suffice to
teach the claimed arrangement. (See id. at bottom.) Concerning claim 6,
Appellants argue Gavrila’s disclosure of adding a permission-inheritance arc
is unrelated to Appellants’ removing “the permission of the user and
employees of the particular organization in response to addition of the
particular organization as a new organization” (claim 6) (App. Br. 27, top).
We carefully considered the Brief, the Answer, the cited portions of
the prior art references, and the Examiner’s proposed rationale for
combining the references. Upon review, we adopt and endorse the
Examiner’s findings with respect to the combination of Llewellyn and
Gavrila’s disclosure. We refer Appellants to the “Response to Arguments”
section of the Answer for further details (Ans. 31 to 35). We thus affirm the
rejection R2.

CONCLUSION OF LAW
Based on the findings of facts and analysis above, we conclude that
Appellants have not shown error in the Examiner’s rejections R1 and R2 of
claims 1 to 19.

DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejections R1 and R2 of claims 1 to 19.

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).
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Appeal 2009-006548
Application 10/758,984

AFFIRMED

peb

ALEXANDER J. BURKE
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT
5th FLOOR
170 WOOD AVENUE SOUTH
ISELIN, NJ 08830
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