BlackBerry Limited

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 1, 2022

2021000586 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 1, 2022)

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. 15/843,912 12/15/2017 Chris Michael Griffin 29717-2301004 3039 94149 7590 03/01/2022 Fish & Richardson P.C. (Blackberry) P.O.Box 1022 Minneapolis, MN 55440 EXAMINER MACILWINEN, JOHN MOORE JAIN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2442 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/01/2022 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): patdoctc@fr.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE _____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD _____________ Ex parte CHRIS MICHAEL GRIFFIN, BASHAR JANO, JIN WOO LEE, MIHAELA KAMENOVA MIHAYLOVA, and CHRISTOPHER JAMIESON WILSON,1 _____________ Appeal 2021-000586 Application 15/843,912 Technology Center 2400 ______________ Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, MARC S. HOFF, and ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judges. PER CURIAM. DECISION ON APPEAL This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Final Rejection of claims 23 through 26, 31 through 34, and 38 through 41. The Examiner has identified claims 28 through 30, 36, and 37 as reciting allowable subject matter. We AFFIRM. 1 “Appellant” refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. According to Appellant, BlackBerry Limited is the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 1. Appeal 2021-000586 Application 15/843,912 2 INVENTION The invention is directed to a method to display chat histories for chat threads currently engaged in by a given mobile terminal. Abstr., Spec. ¶ 7. Claim 23 is illustrative of the invention and is reproduced below: 23. A method for displaying a chat thread on a display of wireless mobile terminal comprising the display and a user input device, the chat thread comprising a plurality of sent and received chat thread messages, each of the plurality of sent and received chat thread messages comprising message content, the method comprising: receiving an inbound chat thread message from a chat thread recipient, the received inbound chat thread message further comprising speech content; receiving a selection from the user input device of the chat thread; in response to the received selection, displaying in a common interface: the plurality of sent and received chat thread messages; an option to send an outbound chat thread message; and the received inbound chat thread message as one of the plurality of received chat thread messages, the displayed received inbound chat thread message comprising an indication that the received inbound chat thread message comprises speech content, the indication visually distinguishing the received inbound chat thread message comprising speech content from received chat messages of the chat thread not comprising speech content; transmitting a chat thread message from the wireless mobile terminal to at least one user-selected recipient, the transmitted chat thread message comprising at least speech content; and displaying, in response to transmitting the chat thread message, an indication of the transmitted chat thread message with at least a portion of the transmitted chat thread message, the indication of the transmitted chat thread message visually distinguishing the transmitted chat thread message comprising Appeal 2021-000586 Application 15/843,912 3 speech content from transmitted chat messages of the chat thread not comprising speech content. Appeal Br. 14 (Claims App.). REJECTION AT ISSUE The Examiner rejected claims 23 through 26, 31 through 34, and 38 through 41 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Brown (US 2007/0067404 A1; pub. Mar. 22, 2007), Speicher (US 6,282,515 B1; iss. Aug. 28, 2001), and Aravamudan (US 6,301,609 B1; iss. Oct. 9, 2001).2 Final Act. 4-7.3 ANALYSIS We have reviewed Appellant’s arguments in the Appeal Brief, the Examiner’s rejection, and the Examiner’s response to Appellant’s arguments. Appellant’s arguments have not persuaded us of error in the Examiner’s rejection of claims 23 through 26, 31 through 34, and 38 through 41 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). Appellant argues that the Examiner’s obviousness rejection is in error for two reasons. Appeal Br. 6-12, Reply Br. 2-3. First, Appellant argues that the combination of Brown, Speicher, and Aravamudan does not teach transmitting a chat thread message comprising a speech content and displaying an indication of the transmitted chat message with a portion of the chat message, where the indication visually distinguishes the transmitted chat thread message comprising speech content from a chat message not 2 The Examiner’s rejection identifies this reference, to Murali Aravamudan et al. as Murali. 3 Throughout this Opinion, we refer to the Appeal Brief, filed August 5, 2020 (“Appeal Br.”), the Reply Brief, filed October 29, 2020 (“Reply Br.”), the Examiner’s Answer, mailed August 31, 2020 (“Ans.”), and the Final Office Action, mailed April 7, 2020 (“Final Act.”). Appeal 2021-000586 Application 15/843,912 4 comprising speech content, as recited in the independent claims. Appeal Br. 7-11. Second, Appellant argues that the Examiner has not demonstrated a proper teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine the references. Appeal Br. 11-12. The Examiner provides a comprehensive response to Appellant’s arguments directed to the first point on pages 3 through 7 of the Answer. We have reviewed this response and the teachings of Brown and Speicher relied upon by the Examiner. We concur with the Examiner’s findings and conclusions and we adopt them as our own. Appellant’s arguments directed to the first point focus on Speicher, teaching an icon indicating an audio portion associated with a message in a display of received messages, as not meeting the claim as it is not an indication related to transmitted messages. Appeal Br. 7-8 (citing Fig. 14 and col. 18, ll. 8-20). This argument is not persuasive, as the Examiner is not relying upon Speicher alone to teach this feature. The Examiner has shown that Brown teaches the claimed feature of a display of transmitted chat messages and that Brown also teaches an indication (visually distinct from other chat messages) is also provided with a certain chat message along with a portion of the chat message. Ans. 3-4 (citing Brown Figs. 10, 15, ¶¶ 103-104, 118, which discusses that chat messages from different users or topics include different indicators). Further, the Examiner finds that Brown teaches that the chat message can include communication including text and voice, but that Brown does not discuss an indication, that the communication includes voice, in the display. Ans. 4 (citing Brown ¶ 51). The Examiner relies upon Speicher to teach using an indication that a communication includes a voice/speech/audio portion in a display of communications for the purpose of alerting the user of Appeal 2021-000586 Application 15/843,912 5 the audio content. Ans. 4 (citing Speicher Fig. 14, col. 18, ll. 9-18, and Brown Fig. 15). Thus, we are not persuaded by Appellant’s arguments as we concur with the Examiner that the combination of the references teaches the claimed display of a transmitted chat message with the claimed indication. As such, Appellant’s arguments have not convinced us the Examiner erred, concluding the combination of Brown, Speicher, and Aravamudan do not teach transmitting a chat thread message comprising a speech content and displaying an indication of the transmitted chat message with a portion of the chat message, where the indication visually distinguishing the transmitted chat thread message comprising speech content from a chat message not comprising speech content as recited in the independent claims. Appellant’s arguments directed to the second point have not persuaded us that the Examiner erred in finding the skilled artisan would have combined the teachings of Brown and Speicher. The Examiner concludes that: Given Brown’s disclosure that messaging sessions can contain a combination of voice and text content, and given Brown’s lack of illustrating how the voice content would be indicated in the conversation, would of ordinary skill in the art at the time of invention would have looked for other disclosures that provided an interface for displaying the indication of voice content. Speicher is one such disclosure. The Examiner maintains that ensuring a conversation participant is aware of all the media exchanged within a conversation is a logical, rationale underpinning, and supports the combination made under 35 USC 103. Ans. 8. We concur and consider the Examiner’s rationale to adequately demonstrate that the combination represents known elements performing Appeal 2021-000586 Application 15/843,912 6 their known function. “The combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007). We are not persuaded by Appellant’s argument that: Brown has not shown to contemplate that any of the messages displayed in the message window of FIG. 15 represents a text portion of a speech message, or a text that is translated from a speech message. Cf. Application at [0044]. In contrast, Brown merely discusses outputting a message in an audio form (See e.g., [0102, 0104]). Appellants respectfully submit that using audio to output a message is different from translating speech message into a text message. As such, there is no motivation to modify Brown’s system to identify whether some of the messages displayed in the message window contains speech content because Brown has not been cited to show that these messages include speech content in addition to the displayed text. Appeal Br. 12. As identified above, Brown teaches that a chat can include text and voice (see Brown ¶ 51) and neither the rejection nor the claim discusses text to speech translation. Further, we are not persuaded by Appellant’s argument that: While Speicher discusses displaying an icon indicating whether the received message has audio or video content with a time stamp of the message, Speicher does not contemplate transmitted messages, or displaying transmitted messages. As such, there is no motivation to modify Speicher’s system to identify whether any transmitted messages have speech content. Appeal Br. 12. As discussed above, the Examiner is not modifying Speicher to identify transmitted messages, but rather is relying upon Speicher’s teaching of providing an indication that a message includes a speech content, and using it in Brown’s chat system. Thus, Appellant’s arguments have not Appeal 2021-000586 Application 15/843,912 7 persuaded us the Examiner has not demonstrated a proper teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine the references. Appellant, did not separately argue claims 24 through 26, 31 through 34, and 38 through 41, which are similarly rejected, in the Appeal Brief. Appeal Br. 10. As such, these claims are grouped with claim 23 and we similarly sustain the Examiner’s rejection of these claims. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (2019). CONCLUSION The Examiner’s rejection is AFFIRMED. DECISION SUMMARY In summary: Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 23-26, 31-34, 38 -41 103(a) Brown, Speicher, Aravamudan 23-26, 31- 34, 38 -41 TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED