Kim, Peter S. et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Sep 12, 2019

14178366 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Sep. 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.
14/178,366 02/12/2014 Peter S. Kim 7175-227172 1925
69781 7590 09/12/2019
Barnes & Thornburg LLP (Hill-Rom)
11 S. Meridian Street
Indianapolis, IN 46204
EXAMINER
REYES, REGINALD R
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3626
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/12/2019 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):
indocket@btlaw.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
________________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
________________

Ex parte PETER S. KIM, ERIC D. AGDEPPA, DAVID L. RIBBLE,
DAN R. TALLENT, RICHARD J. SCHUMAN, WILLIAM B. BISHOP,
and KEITH A. HUSTER1
________________

Appeal 2018-007761
Application 14/178,366
Technology Center 3600
________________

Before JON M. JURGOVAN, SHARON FENICK, and
RUSSELL E. CASS, Administrative Patent Judges.

CASS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final
rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 of claims 1–13, 16, and 19–23, which
constitute all the claims pending in this Application. Appeal Br. 1.2 Claims
14, 15, 17, and 18 have been cancelled. We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

1 Appellants list Hill-Rom Services, Inc. as the real party in interest. Appeal
Brief filed April 2, 2018 (“Appeal Br.”) 2.
2 Rather than repeat the Examiner’s positions and Appellants’ arguments in
their entirety, we refer to the above mentioned Appeal Brief, as well as the
following documents for their respective details: the Final Action mailed
September 29, 2017 (“Final Act.”); the Examiner’s Answer mailed May 25,
2018 (“Ans.”); and the Reply Brief filed July 18, 2018 (“Reply Br.”).
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BACKGROUND
The present invention relates to a system and method for associating
patients with hospital beds in a healthcare facility. Spec. ¶ 2. In Appellants’
proposed system, patient data is manually entered and encoded onto a
wristband using a write device. Id. ¶ 26. In one embodiment, the wristband
then sends a signal to a radio frequency (RF) reader on or nearby a hospital
bed. Id. ¶ 28. Based on the signal from the wristband, circuitry in the
hospital bed determines the patient’s name and displays it on a screen
associated with the bed. Id. ¶ 30. The bed circuitry then transmits data
(including bed identification, patient identification, and a medical record
number (MRN)) to a bed status computer, which may be part of a nurse call
system. Id. ¶ 31. The bed status computer sends the MRN and room
number from the bed status computer to an admitting, discharge and transfer
(ADT) computer, which verifies the data and sends a message back to the
bed circuitry indicating that the correct patient is in or near the bed. Id. ¶ 32.
The bed circuitry then displays a message on the screen indicating that the
patient ID has been verified. Id. ¶ 33. If the patient information from the
bed circuitry does not match the patient information in the ADT system, the
bed status computer discards the bed data associated with the non-matching
patient, and sends a message back to the bed circuitry, which causes the
bed’s display screen to display a message indicating failure to verify the
patient’s identification. Id. ¶ 46.
Claim 1 is illustrative of the claims at issue:
1. A method comprising:
entering patient data manually at an admission,
discharge and transfer (ADT) computer,
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encoding via a signal transmitted by a writer coupled to
the ADT computer at least some of the patient data entered
at the ADT computer into memory of a wristband to be worn
by the patient,
receiving with a reader a wireless signal transmitted by
the wristband, wherein the reader is located in a room
assigned to the patient,
displaying a name of the patient on a display screen of a
hospital bed in response to the reader receiving the wireless
signal,
transmitting from circuitry of the hospital bed to at least
one bed status computer that is remote from the hospital bed
and remote from the ADT computer at least some
information included in the wireless signal,
communicating messages between the bed status
computer and an ADT server of an ADT system that
includes the ADT computer to attempt to verify that the
patient is in the room that has been assigned and to
determine a verification failure if the at least some of the
information indicates that the patient does not match the
patient data of the ADT system, wherein verification and
verification failure is determined without the need for any
manual data entry at the hospital bed and without the need
for any manual data entry at the bed status computer,
communicating a verification message or a verification
failure message from the bed status computer to the circuitry
of the hospital bed,
displaying a verification message on the display screen
of the hospital bed if the patient is in the room that has been
assigned and displaying a verification failure message if the
patient is not verified, wherein the patient's name is
displayed on the display screen of the hospital bed prior to
determining patient verification and prior to determining
patient verification failure, and
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temporarily storing bed status data of the hospital bed at
the bed status computer until the verification message or
verification failure message is received by the bed status
computer, wherein the bed status computer transmits the bed
status data to an electronic medical records (EMR) computer
if the verification message is received, wherein the bed
status computer discards the bed status data if the
verification failure message is received.
Appeal Br. 27–28 (Claims Appendix).

PRINCIPLES OF LAW
I. SECTION 101
An invention is patent-eligible if it claims a “new and useful process,
machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.” 35 U.S.C. § 101.
However, the Supreme Court has long interpreted 35 U.S.C. § 101 to include
implicit exceptions: “[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract
ideas” are not patentable. E.g., Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208,
216 (2014).
In determining whether a claim falls within an excluded category, we
are guided by the Supreme Court’s two-step framework, described in Mayo
Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66 (2012), and
Alice. Alice, 573 U.S. at 217–18 (citing Mayo, 566 U.S. at 75–77). In
accordance with that framework, we first determine what concept the claim
is “directed to.” See Alice, 573 U.S. at 219 (“On their face, the claims
before us are drawn to the concept of intermediated settlement, i.e., the use
of a third party to mitigate settlement risk.”); see also Bilski v. Kappos, 561
U.S. 593, 611 (2010) (“Claims 1 and 4 in petitioners’ application explain the
basic concept of hedging, or protecting against risk.”).
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Concepts determined to be abstract ideas, and thus patent ineligible,
include certain methods of organizing human activity, such as fundamental
economic practices (Alice, 573 U.S. at 219–20; Bilski, 561 U.S. at 611);
mathematical formulas (Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584, 594–95 (1978)); and
mental processes (Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67 (1972)). Concepts
determined to be patent eligible include physical and chemical processes,
such as “molding rubber products” (Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 191
(1981)); “tanning, dyeing, making water-proof cloth, vulcanizing India
rubber, smelting ores” (id. at 183 n.7 (quoting Corning v. Burden, 56 U.S.
252, 267–68 (1853))); and manufacturing flour (Benson, 409 U.S. at 69
(citing Cochrane v. Deener, 94 U.S. 780, 785 (1876))).
In Diehr, the claim at issue recited a mathematical formula, but the
Supreme Court held that “[a] claim drawn to subject matter otherwise
statutory does not become nonstatutory simply because it uses a
mathematical formula.” Diehr, 450 U.S. at 176; see also id. at 191 (“We
view respondents’ claims as nothing more than a process for molding rubber
products and not as an attempt to patent a mathematical formula.”). Having
said that, the Supreme Court also indicated that a claim “seeking patent
protection for that formula in the abstract . . . is not accorded the protection
of our patent laws, . . . and this principle cannot be circumvented by
attempting to limit the use of the formula to a particular technological
environment.” Id. (citing Benson and Flook); see, e.g., id. at 187 (“It is now
commonplace that an application of a law of nature or mathematical formula
to a known structure or process may well be deserving of patent
protection.”).
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If the claim is “directed to” an abstract idea, we turn to the second
step of the Alice and Mayo framework, where “we must examine the
elements of the claim to determine whether it contains an ‘inventive
concept” sufficient to ‘transform’ the claimed abstract idea into a patent-
eligible application.” Alice, 573 U.S. at 221 (citation omitted). “A claim
that recites an abstract idea must include ‘additional features’ to ensure ‘that
the [claim] is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the
[abstract idea].’” Id. (alterations in original) (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 77).
“[M]erely requir[ing] generic computer implementation[] fail[s] to transform
that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.” Id.
II. USPTO SECTION 101 GUIDANCE
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) recently
published revised guidance on the application of § 101. USPTO,
2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. 50
(Jan. 7, 2019) (“2019 Guidance”). Under the 2019 Guidance, we first look
to whether the claim recites the following:
(1) any judicial exceptions, including certain groupings of abstract
ideas (i.e., mathematical concepts, certain methods of organizing
human activities such as a fundamental economic practice, or mental
processes); and
(2) additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a
practical application (see MPEP §§ 2106.05(a)–(c), (e)–(h)).
See 2019 Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. at 52–55.
Only if a claim (1) recites a judicial exception and (2) does not
integrate that exception into a practical application, do we then look to
whether the claim:
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(3) adds a specific limitation beyond the judicial exception that is not
“well-understood, routine, conventional” in the field (see MPEP
§ 2106.05(d)); or
(4) simply appends well-understood, routine, conventional activities
previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of
generality, to the judicial exception.
See 2019 Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. at 56.

ANALYSIS
I. THE SECTION 101 REJECTION
A. The Examiner’s Rejection and Appellants’ Contentions
In the Final Office Action, the Examiner determines that claim 1
recites an abstract idea including the steps of “entering patient data,”
“encoding via a signal transmitted,” “receiving . . . a wireless signal,”
“displaying a name of the patient . . .,” “verify[ing] that the patient is in the
room,” “determin[ing] a verification failure,” “communicating a verification
message,” “displaying a verification message,” and “temporarily storing bed
status of the hospital.” Final Act. 3–4. “[T]he additional computer
elements,” according to the Examiner, are “recited at a high level of
generality” and merely “provide conventional computer functions that do not
add meaningful limits to practicing the abstract idea.” Id. at 4. In particular,
the Examiner determines that the claimed “computer,” “wristband,”
“circuitry,” “hospital bed,” and “display screen” are “well-understood,
routine and conventional activities previously known to the industry” and,
thus, “do not amount to significantly more than the underlying abstract
idea.” Id. at 4–5. And, the Examiner concludes, “[t]here is no indication
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that the combination of elements improves the functioning of a computer or
improves any other technology,” because their “collective functions merely
provide conventional computer implementation.” Id. at 5–6.
Appellants argue that the Examiner oversimplifies claim 1 and ignores
the fact that the claim
recites a set of specific structural elements including “an
admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) computer,” “a writer
coupled to the ADT computer,” “a wristband to be worn by the
patient,” “a reader . . . located in a room assigned to the
patient,” “a hospital bed,” which has “a display screen” and
“circuitry,” “at least one bed status computer that is remote
from the hospital bed and remote from the ADT computer,” and
“an electronic medical records (EMR) computer.”
Appeal Br. 13. Appellants argue that these “multitude of particular
structural elements . . . render claim 1 narrow and specific, not abstract,” and
thus, the claim is not directed to an abstract idea. Id. Appellants further
disagree with the Examiner’s argument that claim 1 is not directed to a
technological improvement, arguing that claim 1 is “an improvement in the
technology of patient-to-room assignment in a healthcare facility” that
“requires less manual input by caregivers in various portions of a healthcare
information technology system than has been previously known in the prior
art.” Id. at 17.
B. Analysis under Step 2A, Prong 1, of the 2019 Guidance
Under Step 2A, Prong 1, of the 2019 Guidance, we first must
determine whether any judicial exception to patent eligibility is recited in the
claim. The 2019 Guidance identifies three judicially excepted groupings:
(1) mathematical concepts, (2) certain methods of organizing human activity
such as fundamental economic practices, and (3) mental processes. 2019
Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. at 52–53. Based on existing Supreme Court and
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Federal Circuit precedent, the 2019 Guidance has identified “methods of
organizing human activity” that may constitute an abstract idea, including
“fundamental economic principles or practices (including hedging,
insurance, mitigating risk); commercial or legal interactions (including
agreements in the form of contracts; legal obligations; advertising,
marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations); managing
personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including
social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions).” See 2019
Guidance, 84 F3d. Reg. at 52.
Here, claim 1 falls into the category of managing interactions between
people, which is one of the categories of “organizing human activity”
recognized by the 2019 Guidance. See id. at 52 n.13. Specifically, claim 1
recites managing interactions between hospital staff and patients to
determine whether a patient is located in the correct bed. For example,
claim 1 recites the steps of “entering patient data manually,” “encoding . . .
at least some of the patient data entered” on “a wristband to be worn by the
patient,” “displaying a name of the patient on a display screen of a hospital
bed.” These are steps that can be performed by persons, such as hospital
staff, to provide identification on a patient’s body and on a hospital bed.
See Spec. ¶ 3 (describing the manual entry of information regarding patient-
to-location, patient-to-equipment, and patient-to-bed associations in current
healthcare communication systems). Such identifications are interactions
between patients and hospital staff that qualify as an abstract idea.
Claim 1 further recites “transmitting from . . . the hospital bed”
information about the patient to a location “that is remote from the hospital
bed” and keeps track of bed status, “communicating messages between” the
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bed status location and an “admission, discharge and transfer (ADT)”
location “to attempt to verify that the patient is in the room that has been
assigned,” at the ADT location. These are steps that can be performed via
interactions (such as by telephone) between hospital personnel at multiple
locations, such as a nurse at a patient’s bedside, a nurse at a call station who
keeps track of bed status, and personnel at a central location in the hospital
that handles patient admission, discharge, and transfer. See Spec. ¶ 4
(describing known nurse call systems with a communication link to hospital
beds that receive bed status data and correlates it with patient information),
¶ 6 (describing systems where patient-to-location and/or patient-to-
equipment associations can be communicated from one location to another
location where the associations are manually verified).
Claim 1 additionally recites “determin[ing] a verification failure if the
at least some of the information indicates that the patient does not match the
patient data of the ADT system,” “communicating a verification message or
a verification failure message” from the bed status location to the hospital
bed. These also are steps that can be carried out by communications
between hospital staff, by having a person at the central admitting,
discharge, and transfer location check the patient’s bed status against the
central system’s records, and communicating to staff at a nurse call station
whether the records match up or not. See Spec. ¶ 6 (sending patient-to
location associations to another location where they can be manually
verified).
Claim 1 further recites “displaying a verification message on the
display screen of the hospital bed if the patient is in the room that has been
assigned,” “displaying a verification failure message if the patient is not
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verified,” having “the patient’s name [be] displayed on the display screen of
the hospital bed prior to determining patient verification and prior to
determining patient verification failure.” These limitations recite steps that
can be performed by having a nurse at a patient’s bedside indicate whether
the patient is in the correct bed, either by writing manually using a
whiteboard or similar device or entering that information using a keyboard
associated with a display screen.
Finally, claim 1 recites “temporarily storing bed status data of the
hospital bed” at a bed status location “until the verification message or
verification failure message is received,” “transmit[ting] the bed status data”
to a location where medical records are stored if the verification message is
received, and having the bed status location “discard[] the bed status data if
the verification failure message is received.” These limitations recite steps
that can be performed by communications between hospital personnel at a
central admitting, discharge, and transfer location (who can manually check
the patient’s records received from the nurse call station against those at the
central ADT location) and personnel at a nurse call station (who can
manually update patient and bed information if the records match and
discard them if they don’t).
In summary, the claim limitations above all involve managing
interactions that can be performed manually by hospital personnel and
patients in order to keep track of patients and beds. They, therefore, qualify
as methods of organizing human activity under the 2019 Guidance. For this
reason, we are persuaded that claim 1 recites one or more abstract ideas.
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C. Analysis under Step 2A, Prong 2, of the 2019 Guidance
Having determined that the claims recite a judicial exception, we next
determine whether the claims recite “additional elements that integrate the
[judicial] exception into a practical application.” See 2019 Guidance,
84 Fed. Reg. at 54; MPEP §§ 2106.05(a)–(c), (e)–(h). We agree with the
Examiner that the present claims do not recite sufficient additional elements
to integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. See Final Act.
4–6.
Appellants argue that claim 1 integrates the judicial exception into a
practical application because it includes a “multitude of particular structural
elements,” specifically
“an admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) computer,” “a
writer coupled to the ADT computer,” “a wristband to be worn
by the patient,” “a reader . . . located in a room assigned to the
patient,” “a hospital bed,” which has “a display screen” and
“circuitry,” “at least one bed status computer that is remote
from the hospital bed and remote from the ADT computer,” and
“an electronic medical records (EMR) computer.”
Appeal Br. 13. We do not find this argument persuasive. These structural
elements are all generic components that are used to automate a manual
process for keeping track of patients and beds, which would previously have
been carried out by communications between hospital personnel. See Spec.
¶¶ 3–6. It is well settled that “mere automation of manual processes using
generic computers does not constitute a patentable improvement in computer
technology.” Credit Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Servs., 859 F.3d 1044,
1055 (Fed. Cir. 2017).
In this regard, the present case is analogous to Voter Verified, Inc. v.
Election Systems & Software LLC, 887 F.3d 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2018), which is
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cited in the 2019 Guidance. See 2019 Guidance, 84 F3d. Reg. at 52 n.13. In
Voter Verified, the claim at issue recited a computerized voting station that
presented an election ballot to the voter, accepted input of votes from the
voter, printed out the election ballot recording the vote, and recorded the
votes in the computer. Voter Verified, 887 F.3d at 1385. The Federal
Circuit explained that this claim merely automated abstract ideas, namely the
“concept of voting, verifying the vote, and submitting the vote for
tabulation,” which have traditionally been performed by humans for many
years. Id. The Federal Circuit also found that the use of standard structural
elements, such as “a standard personal computer,” “a visual display device,”
“a keyboard,” “data storage devices,” a “scanner,” and “a laser printer” were
“not sufficient to transform abstract claims into patent-eligible subject
matter.” Id. at 1386. Similarly here, the structural elements in claim 1 such
as a “writer,” a “wristband,” a “hospital bed,” a “display screen,” “circuitry,”
and various general purpose computers (an ADT computer, bed status
computer, and EMR computer) are all standard and generic, and do not
transform the abstract ideas of the claim into a patent-eligible invention.
We also agree with the Examiner that Appellants have not established
that the invention of claim 1 “improves the functioning of a computer or
improves any other technology,” because the structural elements in claim 1
“merely provide conventional computer implementation.” Final Act. 5–6.
We do not find persuasive Appellants’ argument that the claim 1 is patent-
eligible because it is “an improvement in the technology of patient-to-room
assignment in a healthcare facility” that “requires less manual input by
caregivers in various portions of a healthcare information technology system
than has been previously known in the prior art.” Id. at 17. As discussed
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above, the “improvement in the technology of patient-to-room assignment in
a healthcare facility” merely automates activities that can be performed by
individual hospital personnel and patients using generic computer
components and peripherals. Appellants have not established that the
invention improves the functioning of the computer itself, as opposed to
simply improving the efficiency of the process of managing patients and
beds. Appellants also do not establish that there is any improvement to the
design or operation of the other structural elements in claim 1, such as the
wristband, hospital bed, writer, or display screen. Rather, these merely
appear to be generic components used in the manner in which they were
intended to function.
D. Analysis under Step 2B
Under Step 2B, we determine whether claim 1 includes additional
elements individually or in combination that provide an inventive concept
and, therefore, amount to significantly more than the exception itself. Here,
Appellants have not established that claim 1 includes any such “inventive
concept,” or that claim 1 adds any limitations beyond the judicial exception
that are not “well-understood, routine, or conventional” in the field. See
MPEP § 2106.05(d). Again, Appellants point to the structural elements of
“writer,” a “wristband,” a “hospital bed,” a “display screen,” “circuitry,” and
various general purpose computers (an ADT computer, bed status computer,
and EMR computer). We agree with the Examiner, however, that these
structural elements are all generic and qualify as well-understood, routine, or
conventional, and Appellants have failed to provide sufficient evidence to
the contrary. Thus, claim 1 simply appends well-understood, routine, and
conventional components previously known to the industry, specified at a
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high level of generality, to the judicial exception. See 2019 Guidance, 84
Fed. Reg. at 56.
Consequently, Appellants have not established that the Examiner
erred in rejecting claim 1 as being directed to patent-ineligible subject
matter. We likewise sustain this rejection, as well as the rejection of
independent claims 9 and 16, which include similar limitations
E. Dependent Claims
The Examiner determines that dependent claims 2–8 and 10–13 are
also patent ineligible “because the additional recited limitation(s) fail(s) to
establish that the claim(s) is/are not directed to an abstract idea without
significantly more,” and that these claims “fail to remedy the deficiencies of
their parent claims.” Final Act. 6. Appellants argue that these claims “have
not been properly analyzed by the [E]xaminer” and that the Examiner’s
analysis is “terse and conclusory.” App. Br. 18–19 (emphasis omitted), 21–
22. We find that, given the analysis set forth with respect to the independent
claims, the Examiner has made out a prima facie case as to these dependent
claims. Moreover, Appellants have failed to articulate any reason why the
dependent claims recite additional elements that “integrate the [judicial]
exception into a practical application,” under Step 2A, prong 2 of the 2019
Guidance, or “provide an inventive concept” under Step 2B. Therefore,
Appellants have failed to establish that the additional limitations dependent
claims render the claims patent eligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. See
37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (“A statement [that] merely points out what a
claim recites will not be considered an argument for separate patentability of
the claim.”). Consequently, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of
dependent claims 2–8 and 10–13.
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DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–13, 16, and 19–23
under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to non-statutory subject matter. 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).

AFFIRMED