Jerkeby, Christoffer

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Aug 12, 2019

14432976 - (R) (P.T.A.B. Aug. 12, 2019)

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.
14/432,976 04/01/2015 Christoffer Jerkeby 1009-1367 / P46104 US1 9824
102721 7590 08/12/2019
Murphy, Bilak & Homiller/Ericsson
1255 Crescent Green
Suite 200
Cary, NC 27518
EXAMINER
WYSZYNSKI, AUBREY H
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2434
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/12/2019 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):
official@mbhiplaw.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________________

Ex parte CHRISTOFFER JERKEBY
____________________

Appeal 2018-006987
Application 14/432,976
Technology Center 2400
____________________

Before MARC S. HOFF, BETH Z. SHAW, and JOYCE CRAIG,
Administrative Patent Judges.

SHAW, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REHEARING

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Appellant requests rehearing under 37 C.F.R. § 41.52(a)(1)
(“Request”) for reconsideration of our Decision on Appeal mailed May 22,
2019 (“Decision”).
We reconsider our decision in light of Appellant’s Request for
Rehearing, but we decline to change the decision.
Appellant contends we misapprehended or overlooked certain points
when we affirmed the Examiner’s rejections of claims 34–65 under 35
U.S.C. § 103. Request 2–8.

CONTENTIONS AND ANALYSIS
Independent Claim 34
By regulation, “[t]he request for rehearing must state with
particularity the points believed to have been misapprehended or overlooked
by the Board.” 37 C.F.R. § 41.52(a)(1). We are not persuaded that we
overlooked or misapprehended any arguments in the Appeal Brief or Reply
Brief. Rather, the Decision specifically addressed the arguments in
Appellant’s Appeal Brief and Reply Brief. Decision 2–6.
In the Request, Appellant “does not challenge” the Board’s conclusion
“that there is nothing in the record to demonstrate that the term ‘node
manager’ has any special meaning, and that Kirsch’s ‘identity repository’
could fall within the scope of that term, as broadly but reasonably
interpreted.” Request 2–3. Appellant contends, however, that “claim 34
specifies that one device receives, from another, a public key of the first
device (along with a nonce challenge), where that public key of the first
device is signed by the private key of the second device.” Request 3.
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Appellant argues “the Board finds that the public key of Kirsch’s
identity repository equates to the public key of the node manager in claim 34
and finds that this public key is signed by a private key from the Repository
Identity Signature Key Pair (RIS).” Id. Appellant argues:
What the Board overlooks is that this private key, which
forms one-half of Kirsch’s Repository Identity Signature Key
Pair (RIS), is the private key for the very same node to which
the public key belongs, i.e., the identity repository. (Reply Brief
at 4; Kirsch ¶¶ 0090-0092.) Thus, Kirsch describes that device
B (the identity repository) sends, to another device, a nonce (a
“challenge”) signed with the private key of device B (the
identity repository), along with the public key of device B, i.e.,
the public key of the very same device that signed the nonce.
(Kirsch ¶¶ 0090-0092.) Claim 34, by contrast requires that
device B sends a message that includes the public key of device
A, signed by the private key of device B.
Request 3 (emphasis omitted).
We considered, and were not persuaded by, this argument. Decision
3–4. We explained that the “Examiner points to Damm-Goossens as
teaching a challenge-response exchange of cryptographic keys (one public,
one private) and points to Kirsch as teaching the public key of the node
manager.” Id. We also explained that the “node manager” of the present
invention is referred to in the Specification as comprising “a processing
unit.” Id. at 4. We explained that “Appellant provides insufficient evidence
proving that the Specification or claims limit the ‘node manager’ in a way
that, under a broad but reasonable interpretation, is not encompassed by
Kirsch’s teachings.” Id.
Appellant argues
Kirsch’s paragraphs 0090 and 0091 describe nothing more than
that the identity repository sends out a “resource challenge” that
includes a nonce signed by the identity repository’s private key,
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which allows the recipient to verify that the resource challenge
originated with the identity repository. Kirsch’s paragraph 0092
simply adds that the identity repository’s public key might
optionally be sent along with that resource challenge for the
convenience of the recipient, who may, for example, have lost
the public key. (Public keys are commonly distributed through
digital certificates, signed by trusted third parties to verify the
correspondence between the public key and its owner.)
Even leaving aside that Kirsch’s paragraph 0092 does
not, as a matter of fact, disclose that the public key is signed by
the private key (compare with claim 34), what Kirsch’s
paragraphs 0090-0094 disclose is a message that carries a
public key of the sender, where at least part of that message (the
nonce) is signed by the private key of the sender. Claim 34, on
the other hand, requires that the message received at device A
(the node manager) from device B (the node device) comprise
the public key of device A, signed by the private key of device
B. That is, the message is signed by the sender, using the
sender’s private key, but includes the public key of the
recipient.
Request 4–5 (emphasis omitted).
Appellant appears to agree that Kirsch teaches sending a signed nonce
and a public key. Id. (“at least part of that message (the nonce) is signed by
the private key of the sender” (emphasis omitted)). We understand
Appellant’s argument to be a dispute that the combination of references
teaches “receiving, from the node device, . . . the public key of the node
manager, . . . being signed by a private key of the node device,” as recited in
claim 34. We considered and were not persuaded by this argument. As
discussed in the Decision, Damm-Goosens teaches a challenge-response
exchange of cryptographic keys (one public, one private). Decision 3. As
the Examiner explained, and as we agreed, Kirsch teaches sending a signed
nonce challenge and a public key, and “[i]t would have been obvious to one
of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed
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invention, to modify Kirsch to include a signed nonce challenge and public
key, in order to validate the challenge identity.” Ans. 11; Final Act. 4.
As Appellant acknowledges, Kirsch teaches a table of “Repository
Identity Signature Key Pair (RIS),” which lists encryption keys that may be
shared by various access device and control devices. See Kirsch ¶ 90 and
Table 1; see also Kirsch ¶ 76 (describing Table 1). As Appellant admits in
the Request, “public key[s] can be freely shared (hence the name ‘public’
key).” Request 4. Appellant also recognizes “[p]ublic keys are commonly
distributed through digital certificates, signed by trusted third parties to
verify the correspondence between the public key and its owner.” Id.
The Examiner’s combination of the cited teachings of Damm-Goosens
and Kirsch is no more than a simple arrangement of old elements with each
performing the same function it had been known to perform, yielding no
more than one would expect from such an arrangement. KSR Int’l Co. v.
Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007). The ordinarily skilled artisan, being
“a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton,” would be able to fit the
teachings of the cited references together like pieces of a puzzle to
predictably result in a system including a signed nonce challenge and public
key to validate a challenge identity. Id. at 420–21. Because Appellant has
not demonstrated that the Examiner’s proffered combination would have
been “uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art,”
we agree with the Examiner that the proposed modification, previously
discussed in the Final Action, Answer, and Decision (i.e., including a signed
nonce challenge and public key to validate the challenge identity), would
have been within the purview of the ordinarily skilled artisan. Leapfrog
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Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir. 2007)
(citing KSR Int’l Co., Inc. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007)).
Accordingly, Appellant has not persuaded us that our Decision
misapprehended or overlooked any point in the Briefs.
Dependent Claim 35
In the Decision, we concluded “Appellant provides insufficient
evidence that the Specification or claims limit the claimed ‘personal
identification number code’ recited in dependent claim 35 in a way that,
under a broad but reasonable interpretation, is not encompassed by Damm-
Goossens’ teachings of the identifier of a login session.” Decision 5. We
explained that “Damm-Goossens describes that ‘authentication server 60
generates a Ticket ID suitable for identifying the login session.’” Id. at 4–5
(citing Damm-Goossens, 8:26–40.) “‘The generated Ticket ID includes an
identifier of the login session.’” Id. at 5.
Appellant argues that our conclusion “is simply incorrect – when
claim 35 is read in conjunction with its parent claim 34, as it must be, the
claim language compels an interpretation that the ‘identity’ at issue, and
hence the ‘personal identifier number code’ of claim 35, is an identity of a
device.” Request 7 (emphasis omitted). However, we considered and were
not persuaded by this argument. Decision 4–5. A Request for Rehearing is
not an opportunity to merely express disagreement with a Decision without
setting forth points believed to have been misapprehended or overlooked.
The proper course for an Appellant dissatisfied with a Board decision is to
seek judicial review, not to file a Request for Rehearing to reargue issues
that have already been decided. See 35 U.S.C. §§ 141, 145.

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CONCLUSION
We have reconsidered our Decision in light of Appellant’s arguments
in the Request. We have granted Appellant’s Request for Rehearing to the
extent that we have reviewed our Decision and considered the arguments
made in the Request. We are not persuaded of error in our previous
Decision.

DECISION
The Request for Rehearing is denied.

DENIED