Ex Parte Ranjan et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 27, 201613595389 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 27, 2016) Copy Citation 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. 13/595,389 08/27/2012 Amit Ranjan 82965474 3280 22879 HP Tnr 7590 12/29/2016 EXAMINER 3390 E. Harmony Road Mail Stop 35 RAHMJOO, MANUCHEHR FORT COLLINS, CO 80528-9544 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2667 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/29/2016 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): ipa.mail@hp.com barbl@hp.com y vonne.bailey @ hp. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte AMIT RANJAN and PRAPHUL CHANDRA Appeal 2016-000718 Application 13/595,3891 Technology Center 2600 Before KRISTEN L. DROESCH, CARL L. SILVERMAN, and MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-19, which are all the claims pending in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP. App. Br. 3. Appeal 2016-000718 Application 13/595,389 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellants’ application relates to a method and system for preventing unauthorized publication of a media object. Abstract. Claim 10 is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal and reads as follows: 10. A system to prevent an unauthorized publication of a media object, comprising: a user interface to receive a request from a user to prevent the unauthorized publication of the media object; a camera to establish a video link with the user upon receipt of said request; and a privacy management module to: obtain an image of the user from the video link; determine whether the image of the user correspond with an image in the media object; and perform an action with regard to the unauthorized publication of the media object if the image of the user correspond with an image in the media object. The Examiner’s Rejection Claims 1-19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as anticipated by Nurmi (US 2011/0202968 Al; Aug. 18,2011). Final Act. 2-6. ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in consideration of Appellants’ contentions and the evidence of record. Appellants persuade us the Examiner fails to establish the claims are unpatentable over the cited prior art. 2 Appeal 2016-000718 Application 13/595,389 The independent claims of the present application are claim 1 (method), claim 10 (system), and claim 15 (non-transitory computer readable medium). The Examiner rejects all three independent claims as anticipated by Nurmi using the same rationale. See Final Act. 3-4. Claim 10 is a system claim that recites functions performed by a “privacy management module.” We conclude this privacy management module invokes pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 112, | 6, and the functional language, therefore, limits the scope of the system to cover the corresponding structure described in the Specification and its equivalents. See Williamson v. Citrix Online, LLC, 792 F.3d 1339, 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (enbanc) (“Generic terms such as ‘mechanism,’ ‘element,’ ‘device,’ and other nonce words that reflect nothing more than verbal constructs may be used in a claim in a manner that is tantamount to using the word ‘means’ because they ‘typically do not connote sufficiently definite structure’ and therefore may invoke § 112, para. 6.”). We select claim 10 as representative. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv). Appellants argue the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 10 because Nurmi does not disclose “a camera to establish a video link with the user upon receipt of said request” or a “privacy management module to[] obtain an image of the user from the video link.” See App. Br. 7-10. In particular, Appellants argue Nurmi discloses a user registers features with the privacy service, but Nurmi does not disclose a camera establishes a video link with the user upon registration to obtain images of the user from the video link. Reply Br. 6. Appellants argue Nurmi does not establish a link upon registration, and there would be no reason to do so because the features that 3 Appeal 2016-000718 Application 13/595,389 will be used to determine whether to prevent unauthorized publication have already been provided to the system in the form of the reference images. Id. The Examiner finds Nurmi teaches establishing a video link and obtaining an image from that link in paragraph 24. Ans. 8. In paragraph 24, Nurmi discloses a user initiating a privacy service by registering features to identity with the media privacy platform. Nurmi 124. These features will be used by the platform to identify specific content in media items. Id. The features may include reference images, such as a facial image of the user. Id. Appellants have persuaded us of Examiner error because Nurmi does not disclose obtaining an image of a user from a video link, wherein the privacy management module determines whether the image of the user corresponds with an image in the submitted media object. Nurmi discloses a user submitting reference images which may be used for later comparison against media items to determine whether those items should be authorized for publication. Nurmi 124. The cited portion of Nurmi does not disclose the user submitting a media item and an image captured from a video link being compared to that submitted media item. Id. Accordingly, on this record, we do not sustain the rejection of claim 10. We also do not sustain the rejections of independent claims 1 and 15, which contain similar limitations, or dependent claims 2-9, 11-14, and 16-19. DECISION We reverse the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-19. REVERSED 4 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation