Ex Parte Joa et al

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jul 23, 2013

12211987 - (R) (P.T.A.B. Jul. 23, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
12/211,987 09/17/2008 David Joa 104-026 9501
72822 7590 10/03/2013
Weiss & Arons, LLP
1540 Route 202, Suite 8
Pomona, NY 10970
EXAMINER
FIELDS, BENJAMIN S
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3624
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/03/2013 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE 1
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BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD 4
___________ 5
6
Ex parte DAVID JOA, DEBASHIS GHOSH, 7
DAVID N. JOFFE, THAYER ALLISON, 8
KURT D. NEWMAN, TIMOTHY J. BENDEL, 9
YANGHONG SHAO, NANCY G. CARRIER, 10
MARK KREIN, and PRESTON W. PORTS III 11
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13
Appeal 2011-006272 14
Application 12/211,987 15
Technology Center 3600 16
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Before ANTON W. FETTING, BIBHU R. MOHANTY, and 20
MEREDITH C. PETRAVICK, Administrative Patent Judges. 21
FETTING, Administrative Patent Judge. 22
DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REHEARING 23
Appeal 2011-006272
Application 12/211,987

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE 1
This is a decision on rehearing in Appeal No. 2011-006272. We have 2
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). 3
Requests for Rehearing are limited to matters misapprehended or 4
overlooked by the Board in rendering the original decision, or to responses 5
to a new ground of rejection designated pursuant to § 41.50(b). 37 C.F.R. 6
§ 41.52. 7
ISSUES ON REHEARING 8
Appellant raises a single issue in the Request for Rehearing. This issue 9
relates to whether the art describes length of service. 10
ANALYSIS 11
We found in our decision that the rejection of claims 1-22 under 35 12
U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Basch, Hultgren, and Williams is 13
proper, but we designated this as a new ground of rejection. (Decision 8). 14
The Appellants argue 15
Basch does not teach length of service as a basis for generating 16
a score related to risk. Therefore, Basch does not, and cannot, 17
inherently teach length of service for generating a score related 18
to risk. 19
Request 3. 20
The Appellants contend that 21
Basch does not form a score based on customer information 22
that corresponds to all the remaining data for the customer. 23
Rather, Basch selects certain types of financial events such as 24
events “reported from various account issuers, public agencies, 25
Appeal 2011-006272
Application 12/211,987

3
private data collection services, as score able transactions (even 1
if some do not involve an exchange of credit for goods, 2
services, or cash) to assess financial risk.” 3
Id. 4
We found that any transaction history as captured by Basch necessarily 5
describes the length of service across that history. This is simply a matter of 6
the meaning of the words “transaction” and “history.” 7
Appellants’ argument that length of service is not part of the basis for 8
scoring is not commensurate with the scope of the claims. See Decision 7. 9
Representative claim 1 has three steps. The first step receives customer 10
information corresponding to account history that includes length of service. 11
We found Basch received this inherently. The second and third steps 12
generate and incorporate a score. The second step recites “processing the 13
customer information using the information on the computer readable 14
medium to generate a wireless number risk score.” 15
This second step does not specify or narrow how the score is determined. 16
The phrase “processing the customer information . . . to generate” imposes 17
no requirement that any of the customer information, much less all of it, is 18
used to generate the score. App. Br. 11, Claims Appendix. Instead, the 19
process is the precursor to generating, and could be a simple trigger 20
function, as in the processing triggers the generation. But, as we found at 21
Decision 5, Basch scores the transaction data, which generates the score 22
from processing the data using at least some of the data. And, as we also 23
found, this same scoring of historical transaction data scores the transaction 24
data over the length of service. Thus, even length of service is necessarily 25
Appeal 2011-006272
Application 12/211,987

4
part of the information Basch scores with, just as a matter of the nature of 1
transaction data. 2
CONCLUSION 3
Nothing in Appellants’ request has convinced us that we erred as argued 4
by Appellant. Accordingly, we deny the request. 5
DECISION 6
To summarize, our decision is as follows: 7
 We have considered the REQUEST FOR REHEARING 8
 We DENY the request that we reverse the Examiner as to claims 9
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REHEARING DENIED 12
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rvb 16