Ex Parte Turgeon

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Apr 13, 2010

10365570 (B.P.A.I. Apr. 13, 2010)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
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Ex parte ANDRE TURGEON
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Appeal 2009-001734
Application 10/365,5701
Technology Center 2100
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Decided: April 14, 2010
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Before LANCE LEONARD BARRY, JAY P. LUCAS, and ST. JOHN
COURTENAY III, Administrative Patent Judges.

LUCAS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The Appellant appeals from a final rejection of claims 1 to 5, 7 to 11,
15, 16, and 20 to 21 under authority of 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). Claims 6, 12 to

1 Application filed February 12, 2003. The real party in interest is Symantec
Corp.
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Application 10/365,570

14 and 17 to 19 are cancelled (App. Br. 9). The Board of Patent Appeals
and Interferences (BPAI) has jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).

We affirm the rejections.

The Appellant’s invention relates to a method for chaining facts
relevant to a desired goal in an efficient manner. In the words of the
Appellant:
A system and method are disclosed for
providing an expert system. In an embodiment of
the present invention, a selected goal is received
and a first record obtained. The first record is used
to produce a second record, wherein the second
record has a record type associated with it. It is
then determined whether the record type is directly
associated with the selected goal, and the second
record is outputted if the record type is directly
associated with the selected goal.
(Spec. 16).

Claim 1 is exemplary:
1. A method for an expert system comprising:

receiving a selected goal relating to a
condition associated with a computer;

obtaining a set of records;

performing filtered forward chaining with
respect to one or more records, including
iteratively:

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determining whether predicates of a
rule are satisfied based at least in part on one
or more records included in the set of
records;

creating a new record using the one or
more records that serve as the predicates of
the rule to create a new record if the
predicates of the rule are determined to be
satisfied, wherein the new record has an
associated record type;

determining whether the record type
of the new record is directly associated with
the selected goal; and

outputting the new record to a user if
the record type is directly associated with
the selected goal; and

not outputting the new record to the
user if the record type is not directly
associated with the selected goal.

The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Ramakrishna US 5,072,405 Dec. 10, 1991
Carr US 2002/0169739 A1 Nov. 14, 2002
Jakobson US 6,941,557 B1 Sep. 06, 2005

Zerkle, NetKuang – a multi-host configuration vulnerability checker,
Sixth USENIX Security Symposium, July 1996.
REJECTIONS
The Examiner rejects the claims as follows:

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R1: Claims 1, 3, 5, 8 to 11, 16, and 20 to 21 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) for being obvious over Carr and Jakobson.
R2: Claims 2, 4, and 7 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) for being
obvious over Carr and Jakobson in view of Zerkle.
R3: Claim 15 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) for being obvious
over Carr and Jakobson in view of Ramakrishna.

The Appellant contends that the claimed subject matter is not rendered
obvious by Carr and Jakobson alone, or in combination with Zerkle or
Ramakrishna, for failure of the references to teach claimed limitations. The
Examiner contends that each of the claims is properly rejected.
The rejections will be reviewed in the order argued by the Appellant.
Claim 1 is representative. Arguments that the Appellant 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).

ISSUE
The issue is whether the Appellant has shown that the Examiner erred
in rejecting the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). The issue specifically turns
on whether Carr and Jakobson use backward chaining to filter results of
forward chaining, in the manner claimed, and if iteration of chaining is
taught in the references.

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FINDINGS OF FACT
The record supports the following findings of fact (FF) by a
preponderance of the evidence.
1. The Appellant invented a method for deriving facts related to a given
goal that utilizes two methods of execution: forward chaining and
backward chaining (Spec. 2). Forward chaining begins with a set of facts
and derives new facts using inference rules, to reach a goal. A huge
quantity of information is derived but is unfocused (Spec. 1, l. 17).
Backward chaining starts with a hypothesis and infers supporting facts
backwards, which is slow (Spec. 1, l. 20 to 2, l. 2). The invention is said
to combine these techniques by generating a set of candidate new records
by forward chaining and then outputting only those directly related to a
selected goal (App. Br. 7, middle).
2. Carr teaches rules based analysis process for analyzing configuration
information of an enterprise (¶ [0002], ¶ [0125]). Analyzers study the
enterprise information to find comparisons with rules stored in a database
and produce reports for management indicating issues and assessment
with respect to those rules (¶ [0126]). The various analyzers are
automatically chosen to satisfy a request for an audit (goal) of a certain
enterprise or specified issues with an enterprise (id., ¶ [0094]) The report
is both technical and general, providing management with guidance about
the enterprise (¶ [0096]).
3. Jakobson teaches an event correlation and reporting service for analyzing
information about an enterprise (Col. 4, ll. 40 to 50). Various messages
are received relative to a certain event under study (Col. 11, ll. 42 to 52).
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Filters in a management service cull the information relative to the goal
(Col. 12, ll. 5 to 15). Outputs of one channel are chained to the inputs of
another channel for repeated analysis (Col. 12, ll. 10 to 20).
PRINCIPLES OF LAW

Appellants have the burden on appeal to the Board to demonstrate
error in the Examiner’s position. See In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 985-86
(Fed. Cir. 2006) (“On appeal to the Board, an applicant can overcome a
rejection [under § 103] by showing insufficient evidence of prima facie
obviousness or by rebutting the prima facie case with evidence of secondary
indicia of nonobviousness.”) (quoting In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1355
(Fed. Cir. 1998)).

“In reviewing the [E]xaminer’s decision on appeal, the Board must
necessarily weigh all of the evidence and argument.” In re Oetiker, 977
F.2d 1443, 1445 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
“[T]he words of a claim ‘are generally given their ordinary and
customary meaning.’” Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1312 (Fed.
Cir. 2005) (en banc) (internal citations omitted). “[T]he ordinary and
customary meaning of a claim term is the meaning that the term would have
to a person of ordinary skill in the art in question at the time of the invention,
i.e., as of the effective filing date of the patent application.” Id. at 1313.

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ANALYSIS
The Appellant presents a number of arguments for our review.

Arguments with respect to the rejection
of claims 1, 3, 5, 8 to 11, 16, and 20 to 21
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) [R1]

The Examiner has rejected the noted claims for being obvious over
Carr and Jakobson. The Appellant first argues that Carr does not use
“backward chaining to filter the results of forward chaining” nor does Carr
“describe nor even mention filtering such results based on ‘record type’ as
recited in claim 1.” (App. Br. 6, middle).
The Examiner points out that backward chaining is not mentioned
anywhere in the claim, which we find to be true (Ans. 13, middle). Thus
this argument does not comport with the limitations of the claim and is not
convincing of error. Concerning the Appellant’s argument related to filtering
results, the Examiner points to the filtering action of the templates and rules
of Carr, noted in ¶ [0125] (id.). We also note the teaching of filtering the
results in Jakobson, which is joined in this rejection (Jakobson, col. 12, ll. 9
to 14). Thus we do not find the Appellant’s argument credible, and thus we
do not find error in this reject with respect to the Appellant’s first argument.
The Appellant next argues that “Carr does not describe ‘iteratively’
performing forward chaining (App. Br. 6, middle). The Examiner indicates
that Jakobson was cited for providing that teaching of iterative forward
chaining (Ans. 14, top). Reviewing Jakobson, we find that results of
chaining the selection process are taught: “it may be useful to chain together
outputs of one channel to the inputs of another to create a notification
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chain.” (Col. 12, ll. 14 to 16). The process includes passing messages
threaded through filters to the various services and then to outputs (Col 12,
ll. 10 to 17). We thus do not find error in the rejection for the lack of a
teaching of iteratively forward chaining, as claimed.

Arguments with respect to the rejection
of claims 2, 4, 7 and15
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) [R2 and R3]

The Appellant relies on the same arguments to find error in the
rejections of the dependent claims and independent claims 20 and 21 (App.
Br. 7, bottom). As we do not find the arguments convincing of error in the
claims of Rejection [R1], we decline to extend a finding of error to other
claims.

CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
Based on the findings of facts and analysis above, we conclude that
the Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1 to 5, 7 to 11, 15, 16, and 20 to
21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).

DECISION
The Examiner’s rejections [R1, R2 and R3] of claims 1 to 5, 7 to 11,
15, 16, and 20 to 21 are affirmed.

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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).

AFFIRMED

peb

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