Ex Parte Steinmetz

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 10, 2014

11350014 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 10, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
11/350,014 02/09/2006 Daphna Steinmetz 0005840USU/4247 7237
27623 7590 02/10/2014
OHLANDT, GREELEY, RUGGIERO & PERLE, LLP
ONE LANDMARK SQUARE, 10TH FLOOR
STAMFORD, CT 06901
EXAMINER
ZENATI, AMAL S
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2656
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/10/2014 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 DAPHNA STEINMETZ
__________

Appeal 2011-013381
Application 11/350,014
Technology Center 2600
__________

Before TONI R. SCHEINER, LORA M. GREEN, and
JEFFREY N. FREDMAN, Administrative Patent Judges.

SCHEINER, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
This is an appeal1 under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the final rejection of
claims directed to an identification manager for providing a caller-generated
identity to a destination party over a telecommunication network. The
claims have been rejected as obvious. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b).
We reverse.

1 Appellant identifies Comverse Ltd. as the Real Party-In-Interest (App. Br.
2).

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The present invention relates to providing user-generated
identities to destination parties, and . . . to providing the user-
generated identity over a telecommunication network. The
present invention is applicable to both voice and data traffic,
and to a wide variety of networks, including fixed and mobile
telephone, wireless fidelity (WiFi), cable and broadband
networks.
(Spec. 1: 10-14.)
Claims 1-4, 6, 8-23, 55, 60, and 61 are pending and on appeal.
Claim 1, with emphasis added, is reproduced below:
1. An identification manager, for providing a caller-generated identity of
a calling party to a telephone destination over a telephone connection,
comprising:
an identity store, for storing caller-generated identities; and
an identity provider associated with said identity store, for:
retrieving, from said identity store, a generated identity of said
calling party; thus yielding a retrieved identity;
determining a capability of a telephone network that provides
said telephone connection;
adapting said retrieved identity to said capability, thus yielding
a provided identity; and
providing said provided identity to said telephone destination in
accordance with said capability.
Claims 1-4, 6, 8-23, 55, 60, and 61 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Jones (US 2004/0165703 A1, published
August 26, 2004) and Saleh et al. (US 7,352,692 B1, issued April 1, 2008).

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FINDINGS OF FACT
The following findings of fact (FF) are supported by a preponderance
of the evidence of record.
1. Figure 1 of the Specification is reproduced below:

Figure 1 of the Specification is a simplified block diagram of an
identification manager.
[I]n the preferred embodiment identity provider 120 includes
environment sensor 130 and identity adapter 140. Environment
sensor 130 determines the characteristics of the connection and
identity adapter 140 adapts the identity provided to the
destination device to the determined characteristics. The
identity provided to the destination can thus be tailored to
provide an optimal presentation at the destination.
Environment sensor 130 allocates information about parameters
such as the destination device, network bandwidth and available
identification media. Identification provider 120 preferably
provides the caller identification to the destination device
according to the allocated information. The identity delivery
mechanism depends on the available network and
communication protocols.
(Spec. 11: 20-30.)

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2. According to the Specification:
[T]he connection characteristics include the capabilities of the
destination device. In an IMS network, the home subscription
system (HSS) may provide the type and capabilities of the
destination device to identity adapter 140. Identity adapter 140
may thus format or transcode the identity for presentation as
required by the destination device and/or select a delivery
mechanism (such as SMS, audio only, MMS, etc... ) suitable for
the destination device.
(Spec. 12: 1-7.)
3. Further according to the Specification:
[T]he connection characteristics include the telephone network
capabilities. For example, identity adapter 140 may adjust the
provided identity according to the network bandwidth,
configuration and/or congestion. Identity provider 120 may
thus generally provide the identity as video, but provide the
identity as text only at times of high congestion.
(Spec. 12: 12-16.)
4. Jones discloses:
[A] user defined calling caricature or avatar (i.e., visual display)
that is associated with a provisioned voice announcement,
which together, may be used to alert a called party of an
incoming call being placed over an IP network. In one
embodiment, the calling party accesses a web-based
provisioning tool to select the attributes of the caricatures along
with voice announcements . . . to accompany the visual
caricature during the alert. The visual caricatures may take the
form of a digital image, such as a digital picture of the calling
party, or an animated image representing some character,
interest, location, or other visual indicia (e.g., company
trademark, hobby, and the like) the caller desires to be
displayed to others.
(Jones ¶ 14.)

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5. Jones teaches that:
The exemplary IP telephony communications network
environment 100 comprises a plurality of subscriber devices
1201 , through 120n (collectively, subscriber devices 120), an IP
telephony communications service provider (SP) 110, and at
least one IP network 102. The IP network 102 may include
private IP networks, as well as public IP networks, such as the
Internet 104.
The IP telephony service provider 110 is any service
provider having access to resources capable of providing the
various voice over IP (VoIP) services described herein, such as
a telephone company, a cable television company, a wireless
communications provider, among others. The service provider
110 provides IP telephony services, which include
animated/digitally depicted interactive voice session (ADDIVS)
services of the present invention.
(Jones ¶¶ 16, 17.)
6. In addition, Jones teaches that:
The subscriber devices 120 serve as endpoints in the
network environment 100, and preferably utilize session
initiation protocol (SIP) signaling for establishment,
modification, and termination of conferencing and telephony
sessions over the IP network 102. . . . [T]he SIP negotiates the
features and capabilities of the session at the time the session is
established. For example, codecs may be provided at each of
the endpoints to negotiate a common set of voice and video
compression algorithms prior to establishing the session.
(Jones ¶ 27.)
7. Saleh discloses a method of restoring “a failed virtual path in a
mesh topology optical network by reserving resources for restoration for a
virtual path provisioned in the optical network” (Saleh, col. 2, ll. 18-20).
Multiple restoration related parameters are configured at the
time of provisioning of the virtual path. The combination of
these parameters is defined as class of service. In the event a
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virtual path fails, the class of service determines if and how the
virtual path will be restored. The class of service defines a
relative restoration priority of the virtual path in the network.
Mission-critical virtual paths are assigned a higher class of
service to ensure a guaranteed maximum acceptable restoration
time.
(Id. at col. 2, ll. 20-29.)
DISCUSSION
The Examiner finds that Jones discloses an identification manager that
meets all the limitations of claim 1, including “determining a capability of a
telephone network that provides [a] telephone connection . . . ; adapting said
retrieved identity to said capability, thus yielding a provided identity; and
providing said provided identity to said telephone destination in accordance
with said capability” (Ans. 4). That is, the Examiner finds that “Jones
teaches determining a capability of a telephone network such as [a] common
compression algorithm” (id.), i.e., a codec2 (id. at 10), but “does not
specifically disclose more types/details of determining network capability”
(id.).

2 “Codec” is
(1) Short for compressor/decompressor, a codec is any
technology for compressing and decompressing data. Codecs
can be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination of
both. Some popular codecs for computer video include MPEG,
Indeo and Cinepak.
(2) In telecommunications, (short for coder/decoder) a device
that encodes or decodes a signal. For example, telephone
companies use codecs to convert binary signals transmitted on
their digital networks to analog signals converted on their
analog networks.
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/codec.html
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However, the Examiner finds that Saleh discloses “determining
network capability and [that] these capabilit[ies] can [be] dynamically
adjusted to ensure the quality of service” (id. at 5), and concludes that it
would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art “to provide
more details about network capability as taught by Saleh in Jones, in order to
determine network capability and let the network capability dynamically
adjust[] to ensure the quality of service” (id.).
Appellant contends that Jones “identifies the level of service of the
calling party” (App. Br. 8), and the “determination of whether to send a
caricature, e.g., an avatar, is based on the level of service of the calling
party” (id.). Appellant contends that Jones’ method “does not include a step
of determining a capability of network environment 100, and therefore does
not include a step of adapting an identity to a determined capability of
network environment 100” (id.).
Appellant acknowledges that “a codec may be regarded as affecting
network capability,” but contends that Jones “does not indicate that any
determination is made based on the presence or absence of a codec” (id.),
That is, Appellant contends, Jones “does not describe any situation in which
an evaluation of network capability, e.g., presence or absence of a codec,
leads to a decision to not transmit an avatar” (id.).
Appellant further acknowledges that Saleh “suggests that network
bandwidth or congestion can be determined, and that some operation may be
altered based on the determined network bandwidth or congestion” (id. at
10). However, Appellant contends that the reference “is directed towards a
method for reserving resources for restoration of a failed virtual path . . .
according to the virtual path’s class of service” (id. at 9 (emphasis omitted)),
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and “does not describe adapting the class of service to the determined
network bandwidth or congestion” (id. at 11 (emphasis omitted)).
Appellant contends that “the cited combination . . . neither discloses
nor suggests: determining a capability of a telephone network . . . ; and
adapting a retrieved identity to said capability, thus yielding a provided
identity, as recited in claim 1” (id. at 11-12 (emphasis omitted)).
We agree with Appellant that Jones discloses adapting a caller-
generated identity based on the capabilities of the call origination and
destination devices (e.g., whether the destination device is capable of
receiving a video transmission), and “does not describe any situation in
which an evaluation of network capability, e.g., presence or absence of a
codec, leads to a decision to not transmit an avatar” (App. Br. 8). Inasmuch
as Jones distinguishes between the capabilities of the telephone network and
the capabilities of the endpoint device(s) (contrast FFs 2, 3), we agree with
Appellant that Jones’ adaptation of the caller-generated identity based on the
service level and/or capabilities of the origination and destination devices
does not meet the requirements of the claims. Moreover, the Examiner has
not explained how Salah’s disclosure of prioritizing virtual path restoration
based on the virtual path’s level of service or criticality would have led one
of ordinary skill in the art to modify Jones to adapt a caller-generated
identity to the capabilities of the telephone network.
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SUMMARY
The rejection of claims 1-4, 6, 8-23, 55, 60, and 61 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Jones and Saleh is reversed.
REVERSED
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