11668686 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 30, 2018)

Ex Parte Vasey

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 30, 2018

11668686 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 30, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 11/668,686 01/30/2007 34845 7590 Anderson Gorecki LLP 2 Dundee Park Dr. Suite 301A Andover, MA 01810 04/03/2018 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Philip E. Vasey 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 ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 760-024 4258 EXAMINER SCHALLHORN,TYLERJ ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2176 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 04/03/2018 ELECTRONIC 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. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address( es): handerson@andersongorecki.com jgorecki@smmalaw.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte PHILIP E. VASEY Appeal2016-004758 Application 11/668,686 Technology Center 2100 Before TONI R. SCHEINER, JEFFREY N. FREDMAN, and ULRIKE W. JENKS, Administrative Patent Judges. JENKS, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134(a), Appellant 1 appeals from the Examiner's decision to reject the claims directed to a method of displaying a master document as obvious. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b ). We AFFIRM. STATEMENT OF THE CASE The Specification describes generating customized documents from document templates called master documents by using a mark-up notation. Spec. 1 :3-6. The mark-up allows portions of document content included in the master document to be included in a final customized document only if 1 Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Business Integrity Limited. Appeal Br. 2. Appeal 2016-004758 Application 11/668,686 certain conditions are satisfied. Id. at 1: 16-18. This mark-up can be represented in a graphical form, such as a table, which is more easily understood and edited by non-experts in the syntax of the mark-up. Id. at 5: 11-14. A graphical representation of a simple mark-up example is reproduced below, as shown on page 7 of the Specification. Lenders Multi Currency Facility i Syndicated ,/ True ! Term Loan i Single Bank False ! Revolving Credit i Term Loan and Revolving Credit Revolving Credit and Bills Swingline Id. at 7:9-10. The above table shows a graphical representation of the markup of a condition of the form "Variable IS 'Value'," where the variable and the value depend on the particular element checked. Id. at 7:6-8. The condition shown above requires that the "Lenders" variable have the value "Syndicated" for the condition to be satisfied. Id. at 7:8-9. The Specification describes different graphical representations of a mark-up, such as composite conditions using logical operators like "OR," as well as more complicated examples. Id. at 9:10-13, 12:5-9. Graphical representations are not limited to tabular representations, id. at 13:3-5, and in one embodiment only those elements actually required by the existing mark-up are shown, id. at 14:20-22. A user may modify the mark-up via the graphical representation and save it for future use. Id. at 14:8-24. Claims 1-18 are on appeal, and can be found in the Claims Appendix of the Appeal Brief. Claim 1 is representative of the claims on appeal, and reads as follows: 1. A method for displaying a master document of the type used in a document generation system, the master document 2 Appeal 2016-004758 Application 11/668,686 comprising conditional content and non-graphical mark-up which is evaluated based on input to determine whether the conditional content is included in a customized document, the method comprising the steps of: analyzing the non-graphical mark-up associated with at least a portion of the master document; generating a graphical representation of how the non- graphical mark-up is related to the conditional content, including conditions under which the conditional content is included in the customized document; and responsive to modification of the graphical representation, modifying the non-graphical mark-up associated with the master document. Appellant requests review of the following ground of rejection made by the Examiner: 2 Claims 1-18 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Vasey3 in view of Titemore. 4 Analysis Appellant contends that the combined references do not teach all the claim limitations. See Appeal Br. 11 ("Allowing the user to modify rules does not imply modifying non-graphical mark-up responsive to modification of a graphical representation"). "Rather, the customized document [in V azey] is created as a separate and distinct document with content selected from the document template (master document) based on the user input via 2 Appellant has not addressed the Examiner's holding that certain terms in claims 16-18 invoke 35 U.S.C. Â§ 112, sixth paragraph. See Final Act. 4. As such, the Appellant has not rebutted the Examiner's construction of claims 16-18 and rejection based on 35 U.S.C. Â§ 112, sixth paragraph and the teachings of the prior art. 3 Vasey, US 2003/0140053 Al, publ. July 24, 2003 ("Vasey"). 4 Titemore et al., US 2007/0011608 Al, publ. Jan. 11, 2007 ("Titemore"). 3 Appeal 2016-004758 Application 11/668,686 the questionnaire and the rules." Reply Br. 13. Because Appellant does not argue the features recited in independent claims 1, 14, and 16 separately, we focus on claim 1 in our discussion below. Appeal Br. 10-19. Appellant provides separate arguments for claims 2-12 (id. at 16-18), which directly or indirectly depend on claim 1, but each argument effectively relies on the same rationale used for claim 1. Id. at 11-16. Thus, we do not consider such arguments separately as they are addressed by our analysis of claim 1. The Examiner relies on Vasey's Figures 4, 5, 10-19 and associated description to disclose a method for "displaying a master document" by "generating a graphical representation of how the mark-up is related to the conditional content." Final Act. 5. 5 Specifically, the Examiner points us to where Vasey describes "generating a graphical representation of how the mark-up is related to the conditional content, including conditions under which the conditional content is included in the customized document." Id. (emphasis removed) (citing Vasey i-f 48, "FIGs. 11-19: The radio buttons and checkboxes indicate to the user which content items will be included in the document"). Vasey teaches displaying a questionnaire interface (Vasey, e.g. FIGs. 10a-10g, I la, 12a, 13a, etc.) which is related to the master document. Vasey, FIG. 9. For example, Vasey's teaching provides associating rules with content for the inclusion into a final document. One such rule and content combination is shown below: 5 Final Office Action mailed July 7, 2015 ("Final Act."). 4 Appeal 2016-004758 Application 11/668,686 ,t!&}~................. ------Â·Â·Â·"'' ______ ,, .. ~ .................... 1 [LAW i l t'Th" Â·"i;'""'"'"''- x1 i;; :<11 '-"''P"Â·d> hy tk L<1w-< <>f \ I ;~;:~~~:5~:~:;~~'.~:~_Â·:~:,;~~~il~~;::~!;;,::::~,~ 1 ~E,:;;~:;;;~::~'.i:~~:;,:::\. 1,,,',,,. l !..cm(l<.1rt, :::.wJ. ~i.1~;Â· .. 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"""""".,,,,,,._~~~~Â·--~~~~~~~,,,,J n:~----- .......... --.. -------------------- ................ --- ......... 1 l :~~::~:~:;~;~Â·:;:~'.~:~, ~:;::::~~;;;E1~~~:~1~~Â·~i'.'.';,;:E:~~~_,_._,_t_;_:_Â·; ___ ;_,_,_, __ 1 .. ,,,,.! }i.,g;-c.;;:mt:::~~ Â·~h.:iH ~()-= ~-~.ri.~u~hl â€¢-~ thi:: Hi;;~~ f)mrt. i'd l:di~~bJ..iT.~!~, ::i.i:-i~ _ 1 in<;-S<Â·~~ ... b~y a.tâ€¢i:l 1.h'J.:.:â€¢.nKli~in:1~~:~Â· .s .... bm.ii w ~lx-. C~â€¢-:'o}~.--.:-.;.:;d11-$~V\:'-,tu~â€¢".t._~ .t:~~~.:~i.1:~'.~~-~~:--.~~~~''''''''"'Â·' ' ............ -. --- ------ Fig. 5a---c, reproduced above, shows "clauses, and their association with the rules, [that] are identified in the document template by means of mark-up-- namely, left and right square brackets for surrounding the clauses together with superscript and subscript numerals associating the clauses with their corresponding rules which are themselves preceded by corresponding numerals." Id. i-f 52. In this example, if jurisdiction "England and Wales" is selected then only the text in Fig. 5b is included in the custom document produced by Vasey's method. Vasey teaches creating custom documents using an input form in the form of a graphical questionnaire for capturing the values of the variables that are included in the custom document. See id. i-fi-172, 114, 115. An example of such a questionnaire is reproduced below: Fig lla 5 Appeal 2016-004758 Application 11/668,686 Fig. 11 a, shown above, asks the user to select a jurisdiction for which to draft a document. See id. i-f 114. "Full or partial information by a user, the rule evaluations (or non-evaluations) that are deduced from the information provided . . . and the fully or partially customized documents that are generated as a result." Id. Vasey also does not limit the type of input that can be linked into the custom document and can include sources such databases and other expert systems. Id. i-f 122. The Examiner finds that Vasey teaches all the claimed elements but for the limitation of "responsive to modification of the graphical representation, modifying the non-graphical mark-up associated with the master document" as recited in claim 1. Final Act. 5. The Examiner relies on Titemore for "displaying a user interface with a template and rules for reusing document content, and allowing the user to modify the rules under which the content is inserted and preview the results." See Final Act. 6. Titemore teaches an editor that allows "reusing document text (e.g. repeated phrases or lists) in a newly created document having a predetermined document type (e.g. medical record)." Titemore Abstract. "Users can create rules that retrieve section text from an existing document and add the text to the user's current dictation," the user can select specific sections or all reusable sections. Id. i-f 51. Titemore's dialog box is a graphical representation that allows the user to create rules that determine what text to include in a document. 6 Appeal 2016-004758 Application 11/668,686 150 "\ 154 156 158 Choo~;:: from th<> cri!