Ex Parte Vasudevan et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

May 30, 2012

11291381 (B.P.A.I. May. 30, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

Ex parte RAMESH VASUDEVAN, JEREMY J. BLANCHARD, and
NEIL D. EVANS
____________

Appeal 2010-003469
Application 11/291,381
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JEAN R. HOMERE, and
CARL W. WHITEHEAD, JR., Administrative Patent Judges.

DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims
1-4, 6-19, and 22-30. Claims 5, 20, and 21 have been canceled. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
The claims are directed to defining relationships among collaboration
artifacts in a collaboration environment. Claim 1, reproduced below, is
illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A computer-implemented method for defining
relationships between collaborative entities in a collaborative
environment, the computer-implemented method comprising:

identifying an association between a plurality of
workspace artifacts in a collaborative workspace, the
association indicative of a commonality between the workspace
artifacts, wherein the workspace artifacts comprise objects
manipulated in conjunction with the workspace including user
identities and application identities;

defining a relationship between the identified plurality of
workspace artifacts,

capturing the workspace relationship by denoting the
related workspace artifacts as participant entities each having an
entity type and the relationship having a common relationship
type corresponding to the identified association; and

identifying the common relationship type of the
relationship, the identity of each participant in the relationship,
and the type of each participant entity.

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REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Hao

Robertson

Spataro

Geyer
US 5,844,553

US 2002/0173984 A1

US 2006/0053380 A1

US 7,296,023 B2
Dec. 1, 1998

Nov. 21, 2002

Mar. 9, 2006
(filed Nov. 15, 2004)

Nov. 13, 2007
(filed Jan. 15, 2004)

REJECTIONS1
Claims 1-3, 6-15, 22-24, and 28-30 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §
103(a) as being unpatentable over Spataro and Robertson.
Claims 4 and 16-19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Spataro, Robertson, and Hao.
Claims 25-27 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Spataro, Robertson, and Geyer.

ANALYSIS
The Obviousness Rejection over Spataro and Robertson
Claim 1
Appellants contend that Spataro does not disclose “identifying an
association between a plurality of workspace artifacts . . . wherein the

1 We list all the outstanding rejections based on the Final Rejection (Final
Rej. 11-21), as the Examiner’s Answer only repeats those rejections
specifically argued by Appellants (see Ans. 3-9; App. Br. 13-24).
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workspace artifacts comprise objects manipulated in conjunction with the
workspace including user identities and application identities” (App. Br. 14).
Appellants also contend that the Examiner incorrectly defines the word
“artifact,” and that Spataro’s use of artifacts precludes “identifying an
association between a plurality of workspace artifacts . . . .” (App. Br. 15).
Further, Appellants contend that Robertson does not disclose a “common
relationship type corresponding to the identified association” (App. Br. 16).
Appellants also contend that neither Spataro nor Robertson discloses
“capturing the workspace relationship by denoting the related workspace
artifacts as participant entities each having an entity type and the relationship
having a common relationship type corresponding to the identified
association” (App. Br. 17). Additionally, Appellants also contend that there
is no motivation to combine Spataro and Robertson (App. Br. 20-21).
We disagree. Spataro discloses that a “‘collaboration object’ can
include any object in the system that coordinates, facilitates, or otherwise
tracks the actions of the participants and can reference a particular meeting
or conference or collaboration” (Spataro, ¶ 0090). The objects or artifacts of
a collaboration “can be the artifacts or objects remaining from previous
instantiations of a collaboration place as well as the new objects or artifacts
that are introduced in the current instantiation of the collaboration place”
(Spataro, ¶ 0135). An “artifact” is defined as “information that results from
one or more user activities in a collaboration place and that can be stored for
later retrieval” (Id.). Spataro further describes the object model of the
collaboration software as follows:
[E]very object has a “collaboration designation.” The
“collaboration designation” is inherited by all artifacts of any
collaboration activity . . . and makes it possible, for example, to
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return to any of them for futher collaboration and continued
activity. . . . [N]ot just obvious meeting artifacts (for example,
meeting minutes) but, in fact, the full range of all possible
objects (including, for instance, all kinds of ordinary
documents) are recognized as being characterized by a
“collaboration designation.”

(Spataro, ¶ 0146). Spataro discloses relationships among the different types
of objects that form the content of a meeting:
As known by those of ordinary skill in the art, several
separate classes of objects can be associated with a meeting (or,
more generally, a collaboration activity): an invitation, an
agenda, notes, attachments and/or handouts, and minutes (e.g.,
audio, textual, or video). The disclosed systems and methods
support the collapse of these several classes into a single class.
Some of the benefits of this collapse include enhanced
accessibility, mutability, navigation, and searchability of
meeting content, an ability to access contextually-related
objects (e.g., to interpret interrelationships among objects), and
an ability to access a convenient template for cloning a meeting
(e.g., to obtain a starting point for a follow-up meeting).

(Spataro, ¶0273).
Appellants do not specifically explain (see App. Br. 13-17; Reply Br.
2-6) why the paragraphs cited above (Spataro, ¶¶ 0090, 0135, 0146, 0273),
which were relied on by the Examiner (see Ans. 3-5), fail to disclose
“identifying an association between a plurality of workspace artifacts.”
Although Appellants argue that the Examiner misconstrues the claim term
“artifact” (App. Br. 15; Reply Br. 3), we find that Spataro’s definition of
“artifact” (Spataro, ¶ 0135), which the Examiner relies upon (Ans. 4), is
consistent with Appellants’ own definition. That is, with respect to claim 1,
there is no practical difference between “information that results from one or
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more user activities in a collaboration place and that can be stored for later
retrieval” (Spataro, ¶ 0135) and “objects that may be manipulated within the
workspace” (App. Br. 15; Spec. 2:10-14). Whether Spataro’s “artifact” can
represent a workspace (see App. Br. 15; Reply Br. 3), in addition to
information within a workspace, is not pertinent because claim 1 is limited to
identifying associations among “workspace artifacts in a collaborative
workspace,” and not among workspaces. We are therefore not persuaded of
error in the Examiner’s finding that Spataro’s “collaboration designation”
(Spataro, ¶ 0146) discloses identifying an association indicative of a
commonality among workspace artifacts (see Ans. 4).
Appellants argue that Spataro’s paragraph 0022 fails to disclose
“wherein the workspace artifacts comprise objects manipulated in
conjunction with the workspace including user identities and application
identities” (App. Br. 14). However, paragraph 0022 of Spataro discloses
“changes to a user’s environment based on the attributes of a person . . . that
is ‘dragged’ into the environment.” This shows that some information
identifying users must be stored within the environment, i.e., workspace (see
Ans. 4, 10, and 11). Moreover, Spataro’s “collaboration object” is defined
as including “any object in the system that coordinates, facilitates, or
otherwise tracks the actions of the participants” (Spataro, ¶ 0090). An object
that tracks the actions of participants includes information regarding user
identities. Thus, we are also not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s
finding that Spataro’s collaboration objects include user and application
identities (see Ans. 4).
Regarding Appellants’ argument that Robertson does not teach a
common relationship type (App Br. 15-17), we note that the Examiner relies
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on Spataro for this feature (Ans. 4, 13-14). Specifically, the Examiner finds
that Spataro’s single class for collapsing associated objects (Spataro, ¶ 0273)
discloses a common relationship type (see Ans. 4, 13-14). Appellants
address paragraph 0273 of Spataro in the Reply Brief (Reply Br. 4), but
Appellants’ arguments are not persuasive. Specifically, Appellants argue
that Spataro’s single class is not a common relationship type, which
according to Appellants’ Specification, “denotes the nature of the
commonality between the entities (artifacts) . . . such as . . a common
meeting” (Reply Br. 4; Spec. 10:11-15). However, Spataro describes the
single class as the result of collapsing “several separate classes of objects
[which] can be associated with a meeting” (Spataro, ¶ 0273) (emphasis
added). Further, “the benefits of this collapse include enhanced
accessibility, mutability, navigation, and searchability of meeting content, an
ability to access contextually-related objects (e.g., to interpret
interrelationships among objects), and an ability to access a convenient
template for cloning a meeting (e.g., to obtain a starting point for a follow-
up meeting)” (Id.) (emphases added). Thus, Spataro’s single class denotes
the nature of a commonality among artifacts, such as being associated with a
meeting.
Additionally, although Appellants contend that neither Spataro nor
Robertson discloses the claimed “capturing the workspace relationship” step,
Appellants do not explain why the Examiner’s findings are in error (see
App. Br. 17; Reply Br. 4). Thus, we do not find this argument persuasive of
error in the Examiner's conclusion of obviousness.
Finally, we do not find persuasive Appellants’ argument (App. Br. 20-
21) that there is no motivation to combine Spataro and Robertson. The
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Examiner concludes that it would have been obvious to combine
Robertson’s defining and storing features with Spataro in order to achieve
persistence of a collaboration place (Ans. 17; Spataro, ¶ 0021). Appellants
argue that the claims do not recite limitations regarding persistence, and thus
the Examiner’s motivation to combine the references is irrelevant (Reply Br.
5-6). However, “[t]he reason or motivation to modify the reference may
often suggest what the inventor has done, but for a different purpose or to
solve a different problem.” MPEP § 2144 (citing In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977,
987 (Fed. Cir. 2006)). Moreover, achieving persistence is a desired outcome
in Spataro (see Spataro, ¶ 0021), and Appellants do not specifically explain
how combining Robertson’s defining and storing features would fail to
produce this outcome. We are therefore not persuaded that the Examiner
erred in rejecting independent claim 1, and claims 2, 6, 8, 13-15, 22-24, and
28-30 not separately argued. See In re Nielson, 816 F.2d 1567, 1569, 1572
(Fed. Cir. 1987) (dependent claims, not argued separately, fall with the
independent claim, even though the dependent claims were rejected based on
additional (or different) references.).

Claim 3
Appellants contend that Spataro does not disclose “dynamic
relationships operable to identify relationship participants based on a
predetermined selection criteria applicable to the plurality of artifacts” (App.
Br. 17-19). However, the rejection of claim 3 is based on the combination of
Spataro and Robertson, and the Examiner relies on Robertson, paragraphs
0306-0307, as well as Spataro for the argued feature (Ans. 5-6). Although
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Appellants argue that the Examiner’s Answer presents a new ground of
rejection (Reply Br. 4-5), Appellants’ Reply Brief does not present specific
arguments as to why the collective teachings of Spataro and Robertson fail
to disclose the “dynamic relationships” feature.
We are therefore not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting
claim 3, and claim 7 which depends therefrom and is not separately argued.

Claim 9
Appellants contend that neither Spataro nor Robertson, alone or in
combination, discloses “defining the relationship in a relationship table, the
relationship table indicative of the type of relationship and cardinality of the
relationship” (App. Br. 19). However, Spataro discloses defining a common
relationship type of a relationship as discussed above. Robertson discloses
the cardinality of a relationship among data entities (Robertson, ¶ 0315).
Appellants do not specifically explain why it would not have been obvious
to store this common relationship type data and cardinality data in a table,
such as one of the relational database tables Robertson discloses (Robertson,
¶¶ 0012-13). We are therefore not persuaded that the Examiner erred in
rejecting claim 9.

Claim 10
Appellants contend that, because neither Spataro nor Robertson
disclose a relationship table, as recited in claim 9, the references also do not
teach “storing, for each participant in the relationships, an entry in a
relationship artifact table” (App. Br. 20). However, Appellants’ arguments
that the cited references do not disclose a relationship table are not
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persuasive, as discussed above with respect to claim 9. Appellants offer no
other specific arguments regarding claim 10 (see App. Br. 20).
We are therefore not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting
claim 10, and claims 11 and 12 which depend therefrom and are not
separately argued.

The Obviousness Rejection over Spataro, Robertson, and Hao
Appellants contend that Robertson does not disclose a “selective
query identification operable to conditionally identify artifacts as participant
entities for inclusion in a relationship” (App. Br. 21-23). However,
Robertson discloses using an SQL query to search for data entities by
performing “find-by-criteria operations” (Robertson, ¶ 0362). The rejection
of claim 4 is based on the combination of Spataro, Robertson, and Hao (see
Ans. 7-8, 18-19), and Appellants have not specifically explained why
Robertson’s teaching of searching for data entities that satisfy certain criteria
in a query does not meet the limitation of identifying a query to
conditionally identify artifacts. Further, the limitation “for inclusion in a
relationship” is merely an intended purpose for the results of the query.
We are therefore not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting
claim 4, and claims 16-19 which are not separately argued, and which we
group with claim 4.

The Obviousness Rejection over Spataro, Robertson, and Geyer
Claim 25
Appellants contend that Geyer does not disclose “denoting
relationships between workspace artifacts corresponding to different
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applications” (App. Br. 23). Particularly, Appellants argue that Geyer does
not disclose, for example, “a relationship between an email and a web
conference” (Id.). However, this specific example is not recited in claim 25.
Appellants do not specifically explain why the collective teachings of
Spataro, Robertson, and Geyer do not disclose the claimed limitations. We
are therefore not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 25.

Claim 26
Appellants contend that Geyer does not teach “annotating the reason
for the relationship and the type of each participant collaboration entity to
capture user-meaningful metadata about a particular relationship” (App. Br.
23-24). However, Appellants do not specifically explain why Geyer, in
combination with Spataro and Robertson, does not teach the claimed feature.
We are therefore not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim
26.

Claim 27
Appellants contend that “the fact that Geyer may or may not limit
stored relationships to any particular type, would seem to be irrelevant to an
affirmative teaching of inverse relationship” (App. Br. 24). However,
Appellants do not argue that Geyer, in combination with Spataro and
Robertson, does not teach the claimed feature, and specifically explain why
the combination does not teach the claimed feature. We are therefore not
persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 27.
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CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1-4, 6-19, and 22-30
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).

DECISION
For the above reasons, we affirm the rejections of claims 1-4, 6-19,
and 22-30.
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). See 37
C.F.R. § 41.50(f).

AFFIRMED

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