Ex Parte Hada et alDownload PDFBoard of Patent Appeals and InterferencesMay 30, 201210651691 (B.P.A.I. May. 30, 2012) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________________ BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS AND INTERFERENCES ____________________ Ex parte SATOSHI HADA, MICHIHARU KUDO, NAISHIN SEKI, AKIHIKO TOZAWA, and ROBBERT C. VAN DER LINDEN ____________________ Appeal 2009-013155 Application 10/651,691 Technology Center 2100 ____________________ Before ERIC S. FRAHM, KRISTEN L. DROESCH, and BRUCE R. WINSOR, Administrative Patent Judges. FRAHM, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2009-013155 Application 10/651,691 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1-37, all the claims pending in the application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. Exemplary Claim Exemplary independent claim 1 under appeal reads as follows, with emphasis added: 1. A method for controlling access to structured documents, the method comprising the steps of: (a) providing an access control policy for a structured document comprising a plurality of nodes, wherein the access control policy comprises a plurality of access control rules; (b) generating a path for each of the plurality of nodes in the structured document; and (c) generating a value expression for each path based on at least one of the plurality of access control rules, wherein the value expression is an executable statement utilized during access control evaluation to determine whether a user is allowed to access a node in the structured document. The Examiner’s Rejection The Examiner rejected claims 1-37 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) over Ernesto Damiani, A Fine-Grained Access Control System for XML Documents, ACM TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION AND SYSTEM SECURITY, VOL. 5, NO. 2, pp. 169-202 (May 2002) (hereinafter, “Damiani”). Ans. 3-16. Appeal 2009-013155 Application 10/651,691 3 Appellants’ Contentions 1 Appellants contend (App. Br. 7-11) that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1-37 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) for numerous reasons, including: (1) Damiani’s signs in Figure 5 (p. 186) are not the same as the “value expression” recited in claim 1, because signs are not an “executable statement” as required by claim 1 (Br. 9-10); (2) Damiani’s compute-view algorithm in Figure 6 (p. 189) is not the same as the “value expression” recited in claim 1, because the compute-view algorithm is not specific to any particular path, whereas claim 1 recites generating a value expression for each path (Br. 9-10); (3) the reading of the signs in the access authorizations table shown in Figure 5 into the compute-view algorithm show in Figure 6 during execution is not the same as the “value expression” recited in element (c) of claim 1 (Br. 9-10); (4) as shown in Damiani’s Figure 8, during execution of the compute- view algorithm in Damiani’s Figure 6, all node authorizations are evaluated, thus, the algorithm is not specific to a particular path or node (Br. 10-11); and (5) Damiani fails to disclose, teach, or suggest element (c) as recited in claim 1, “generating a value expression for each path based on at least one 1 Separate patentability is not argued for dependent claims 2-37 (Br. 11). We select independent claim 1 as representative of the group of claims consisting of claims 1-37, pursuant to our authority under 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii). Appeal 2009-013155 Application 10/651,691 4 of the plurality of access control rules, wherein the value expression is an executable statement utilized during access control evaluation to determine whether a user is allowed to access a node in the structured document” (Br. 8 and 11). Issue on Appeal Based on Appellants’ arguments in the Appeal Brief, the issue presented on appeal is: Did the Examiner err in rejecting claims 1-37 as being anticipated because Damiani fails to disclose the “value expression” limitation at issue in element (c) of claim 1? ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’ arguments in the Appeal Brief (App. Br. 7-11) that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellants’ contentions. We adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken, and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer in response to Appellants’ Appeal Brief (see Ans. 3- 20). We concur with the conclusion reached by the Examiner, and highlight and address specific findings and arguments for emphasis as follows. We agree with the Examiner (Ans. 16-17) that the access authorization described in Section 5.2 and shown in Figure 5 of Damiani (pp. 185-186) is a value expression as set forth in element (c) of claim 1. The access authorization is a value expression with five parts: subject, object, action, sign, and type (p. 185). The sign indicates whether a user is allowed/forbidden access to a node in a structured document that is specified by a path expression (p. 186). We agree with the Examiner that the object Appeal 2009-013155 Application 10/651,691 5 section of the access authorization includes a path expression that is an executable statement (Ans. 17-20). Because the access authorization includes an expression for each path (e.g., each horizontal row across the access authorizations shown in Figure 5), and includes a sign that is used during access control evaluation (e.g., access control is evaluated using compute-view algorithm shown in Fig. 6), Damiani’s access authorization constitutes “an executable statement utilized during access control evaluation to determine whether a user is allowed to access a node in the structured document,” as set forth in claim 1. Because Damiani’s Figure 5 shows access authorizations (i.e., value expressions) for each path, and the algorithm of Figure 6 performs access control evaluation for each path, Damiani evaluates each node authorization associated with a path. Appellants’ arguments (Br. 10-11) that the compute- view algorithm evaluates all nodes and is not specific to any path are unpersuasive, because the algorithm evaluates each node individually and the sum of the individual nodes is equal to all of the nodes. In other words, the language of claim 1 does not preclude all of the nodes from being evaluated, and merely requires that a value expression be generated for each path. Damiani’s Figure 8 (p. 192) summarizes all of the execution steps of the compute-view algorithm, and does not show or prove that the algorithm is not specific to a particular path as Appellants’ contend (see Br. 10-11). In view of the foregoing, we will sustain the Examiner’s rejection of representative claim 1, as well as claims 2-37 depending therefrom. Appeal 2009-013155 Application 10/651,691 6 CONCLUSIONS (1) The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1-37 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). (2) Claims 1-37 are not patentable. DECISION The Examiner's rejection of claims 1-37 is affirmed. 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). AFFIRMED ELD Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation