Ex Parte Arling et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jan 30, 2015

12059609 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 30, 2015)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
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Ex parte PAUL D. ARLING, CHRISTOPHER CHAMBERS,
WAYNE SCOTT, and MARK MOMOT
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Appeal 2012-007653
Application 12/059,6091
Technology Center 2400
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Before MARC S. HOFF, ANDREW J. DILLON, and
JENNIFER L. McKEOWN, Administrative Patent Judges.

HOFF, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a Non-Final Rejection
of claims 1–5. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
Appellants’ invention is a system and method for facilitating a user
accessing content stored at an appliance located in the home of a user, via a
portable device located remotely from the home. The appliance receives
long-range command codes, such as from a remote user sending command
codes from a portable phone or via the Internet, which initiate the saving and

1 The real party in interest is Universal Electronics Inc.
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recalling of media and device states (Spec. 24). In an embodiment, the
command codes cause the appliance to stream content over the Internet to
the portable device located remotely from the home (Spec. 24).
Claim 1 is exemplary of the claims on appeal:
1. A method for using the Internet to directly facilitate a
user accessing content stored at an appliance located in a home
of the user via a portable device located remotely from the
home, comprising:
receiving directly from the Internet at the appliance
located in the home of the user a play command that was
transmitted to the appliance located in the home of the user
from the portable device located remotely from the home via
the Internet; and
causing the appliance located in the home of the user to
stream directly to the Internet at least a portion of the content
stored at the appliance located in the home of the user in
response to the appliance located in the home of the user
receiving the play command that was transmitted from the
portable device located remotely from the home via the Internet
to thereby facilitate rendering of the content stored at the
appliance located in the home of the user by the portable device
located remotely from the home.

The Examiner relies upon the following prior art in rejecting the
claims on appeal:
Thomas US 2002/0059621 A1 May 16, 2002
Krzyzanowski US 6,792,323 B2 Sept.14, 2004

Claims 1–3 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being
anticipated by Krzyzanowski.
Claims 4 and 5 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Krzyzanowski in view of Thomas.

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Throughout this decision, we make reference to the Appeal Brief
(“App. Br.,” filed Nov. 14, 2011), the Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed
Apr. 10, 2012), Non-Final Action (“Non-Final Act.” mailed June 9, 2011),
and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed Feb. 16, 2012) for their
respective details.

ISSUE
Appellants argue, inter alia, that Krzyzanowski does not disclose an
embodiment in which an appliance receives a command directly from the
Internet, the command being transmitted from a remote location. Appellants
contend that one embodiment requires a central control server, and thus the
appliance would receive such a command only indirectly (App. Br. 5–6).
With respect to the peer-to-peer embodiment in Krzyzanowski, that does not
require such a server, Appellants argue that there is no device capable of
receiving a command directly from the Internet (Reply Br. 4–5).
Appellants’ contentions present us with the following issue:
Does Krzyzanowski disclose receiving directly from the Internet, at
the appliance located in the home of the user, a play command that was
transmitted to the appliance located in the home of the user from the portable
device located remotely from the home via the Internet?

PRINCIPLES OF LAW
“A rejection for anticipation under section 102 requires that each and
every limitation of the claimed invention be disclosed in a single prior art
reference.” See In re Buszard, 504 F.3d 1364, 1366 (Fed. Cir. 2007)
(quoting In re Paulsen, 30 F.3d 1475, 1478–79 (Fed. Cir. 1994)).
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ANALYSIS
CLAIMS 1-3
Claim 1 recites “receiving directly from the Internet at the appliance
located in the home of the user a play command that was transmitted to the
appliance . . . from the portable device located remotely from the home.”
The Examiner finds that Krzyzanowski discloses a system that can
operate, and in which devices can directly communicate with each other in a
network, with or without a central control server (Ans. 9). However,
Krzyzanowski further discloses that a portable device enables a user to
control device functions and operations from any location within the
controlled environment (col. 4, ll. 53–56).
The “controlled environment” of Krzyzanowski is one “such as a
home, business, school, etc.” The residential environment “pertains to the
confines of a home, apartment, mobile home, houseboat, or other types of
residences” and “includes the surrounding area of the residence, as well as
any shelters, constructs, improvements, or the like, within a designated
perimeter” (col. 4, ll. 10–19). Similarly, “non-residential environments”
also include “not only the actual confines of the aforementioned structures
but also their surroundings within a designated perimeter” (col. 4, ll. 24–28).
Appellants originally argued that Krzyzanowski does not disclose that
a command is capable of being received directly from the Internet by an
appliance having stored content, because such a command would be
received by centralized command and control center 114, whereupon the
centralized command and control center would indirectly access and control
other devices within the controlled environment (App. Br. 5–6).
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In response, the Examiner pointed out the disclosure of a peer-to-peer
communications embodiment in Krzyzanowski, in which system
components exchange audio, video, other data, and/or control messages
directly with each other and without being centrally managed by control
server 114 (Ans. 8; Krzyzanowski col. 7, ll. 22–25). “In such decentralized
embodiments, the control and management functions for the
communications network 180 are distributed and shared by multiple system
components . . .” (col. 7, ll. 27–29).
We are persuaded by Appellants’ argument that the peer-to-peer
embodiment disclosed in Krzyzanowski is not capable of receiving
commands from the Internet (Reply Br. 4). Appellants point out that
Krzyzanowski describes control server 114, a component of communications
network 180, as the (only) component configured to support Internet
Protocol (IP) communications (Reply Br. 4; see Krzyzanowski col. 9, ll. 31–
44). We agree with Appellants that the peer-to-peer embodiment disclosed
does not expressly provide for “external,” Internet communications to be
used to command operations of devices (Reply Br. 4). We have reviewed
Krzyzanowski, and we do not find disclosure that any component other than
control server 114 can be configured to support IP communications.
We find, as a result, that Krzyzanowski does not disclose receiving,
directly from the Internet, at the appliance located in the home of the user, a
play command that was transmitted via the Internet from a portable device
remote to the home (i.e., outside the controlled environment), as is claimed.
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We find that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1–32 under § 102, and
we do not sustain the rejection.
CLAIMS 4 AND 5
As explained supra, we find that Krzyzanowski does not disclose all
the elements of claim 1, from which claims 4 and 5 depend. The Examiner’s
rejection does not find that Thomas discloses the elements which we find to
be missing from Krzyzanowski (see Non-Final Act. 4–6). We have
reviewed Thomas and we find that it does not remedy the deficiencies of
Krzyzanowski which we have noted. Accordingly, we do not sustain the
Examiner’s rejection of claims 4 and 5.

CONCLUSION
Krzyzanowski does not disclose receiving directly from the Internet,
at the appliance located in the home of the user, a play command that was
transmitted to the appliance located in the home of the user from the portable
device located remotely from the home via the Internet.

DECISION
The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–5 is reversed.

REVERSED

2 We note that Appellants do not seek review of the rejection of claims 3–5.
Nevertheless, the rejections of these claims, each of which depends from
claim 1, are untenable in the face of our finding that Krzyzanowski does not
disclose all the elements of claim 1.
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