Ex Parte Reeves et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMar 21, 201712262357 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 21, 2017) 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. 12/262,357 10/31/2008 Raymond Emilio Reeves 5700/SPRI. 140977 6067 32423 7590 03/23/2017 SPRINT COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY L.P. 6391 SPRINT PARKWAY KSOPHTO101-Z2100 OVERLAND PARK, KS 66251-2100 EXAMINER HICKS, CHARLES V ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2622 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/23/2017 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): 6450patdocs @ sprint.com steven.j.funk@sprint.com S printPTO @ shb. com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte RAYMOND EMILIO REEVES and RYAN ALAN WICK Appeal 2016-006624 Application 12/262,357 Technology Center 2600 Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, CATHERINE SHIANG, and LINZY T. McCARTNEY, Administrative Patent Judges. McCARTNEY, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims 1-19. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. Appeal 2016-006624 Application 12/262,357 STATEMENT OF THE CASE The present patent application concerns “the problem of associating a gesture, in contact with a touch screen on a device, with characters.” Spec. 11. Claim 1 illustrates the claimed subject matter: 1. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media having computer-useable instructions embodied thereon for performing a method of configuring a front surface of a device into a set of regions, the method comprising: receiving a request to configure the front surface of the device into the set of regions, wherein the device is selected from a group including a mobile phone, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a laptop, and a portable computing device; determining a configuration from a set of configurations in the device; when the configuration is selected, identifying on the front surface of the device each region in the set of regions, wherein each region of the set of regions is equal in size and the set of regions occupy an entire front surface of the device, and wherein the front surface has no character indication, no keyboard indication, or no keypad indication; defining boundaries of each region by associating each region with a set of coordinates; and using the set of coordinates for each region to detect a gesture on the front surface of the device, wherein the front surface detects the gesture in each region to represent a character, and wherein the gesture can start at any point on the front surface. REJECTIONS Claims 1-7 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Prior (US 2006/0082540 Al; Apr. 20, 2006) and Westerman et al. (US 2008/0316183 Al; Dec. 25, 2008). 2 Appeal 2016-006624 Application 12/262,357 Claims 8-19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Prior, Westerman, Guyout-Sionnest et al. (US 2008/0015115 Al; Jan. 17, 2008). ANALYSIS With respect to claim l,1 Appellants contend the teachings of Prior and Westerman cannot be combined because doing so would make Prior’s invention unsatisfactory for its intended purpose and change its principle of operation. See App. Br. 5-7. In particular, Appellants assert “Prior does not contemplate using a keyboard,” while “Westerman discloses implementing swipe gestures for touch screen keyboards.” Id. at 6-7 (emphases omitted). Therefore, according to Appellants, “[i]f Prior and Westerman were combined, Prior would have to incorporate a QWERTY virtual keyboard, which would make Prior unsatisfactory for its intended purpose.” Id. at 7 (emphases omitted). In Appellants’ view, the combination would also change Prior’s principle of operation because “Prior [would be] forced to incorporate the very keyboard that it says has drawbacks.” Id. (emphasis omitted); see also Reply Br. 4-5. The Examiner found Prior teaches or suggests each limitation recited in claim 1 except for “one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media having computer-useable instructions embodied thereon.” See Final Act. 3^4. The Examiner found Westerman is analogous art to Prior and teaches or suggests the recited “non-transitory computer-readable storage medium.” Id. at 5. The Examiner concluded it would have been obvious to 1 Appellants argue claims 1-7 together. As permitted by 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(i)(iv), we select claim 1 as representative of these claims. 3 Appeal 2016-006624 Application 12/262,357 one of ordinary skill in the art to combine this aspect of Westerman’s teachings with Prior’s apparatus to arrive at the claimed invention. See Id. The Examiner did not conclude it would have been obvious to combine Westerman’s keyboard with Prior’s apparatus, see id., and contrary to Appellants’ arguments, we see no reason one of skill in the art would have been forced to do so. “A person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton. ” KSRInt’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 421 (2007). We therefore find Appellants’ arguments unpersuasive. Appellants also contend Prior does not teach or suggest “wherein each region of the set of regions is equal in size and the set of regions occupy an entire front surface of the device, and wherein the front surface has no character indication, no keyboard indication, or no keypad indication.” App. Br. 7-10. According to Appellants, “an entire front surface of the device” “means the entire surface of the device is intended and not just the display portion or some other portion.” Id. at 8. Appellants argue Prior’s touch- sensitive device surface does not teach or suggest the recited “an entire front surface of the device” because the surface does not make up the entire front face of Prior’s device. See id. at 7-8. Appellants contend the Examiner has read the term “touch sensitive” from the written description into the claims and ignored the plain and ordinary meaning of the words “entire surface.” See id. at 8-10 (citing Figs 1-3A and 4A-6C); see also Reply Br. 7-11.. The plain and ordinary meaning of the words “entire” and “surface” respectively include “whole” and “plane” or “an external part.” Entire, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed. 2003); Surface, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed. 2003). And in this context, the article “an” means “one or more.” Baldwin Graphic Sys., Inc. v. 4 Appeal 2016-006624 Application 12/262,357 Siebert, Inc., 512 F.3d 1338, 1342 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (explaining “[t]his court has repeatedly emphasized that an indefinite article ‘a’ or ‘an’ in patent parlance carries the meaning of ‘one or more’ in open-ended claims containing the transitional phrase ‘comprising’” (alternation in original) (quoting KCJ Corp. v. Kinetic Concepts, Inc., 223 F.3d 1351, 1356 (Fed.Cir.2000))). Therefore, the plain and ordinary meaning of “an entire front surface of the device” includes one or more whole front planes or external parts of the device. Under this construction of “an entire front surface of the device,” we agree with the Examiner’s finding that Prior’s touch-sensitive display teaches or suggests this claim element. As shown in Figure 8A, the touch- sensitive display 54 is a whole front plane and a whole front external part of device 50. See Prior Fig. 8A; see also Fig. 4 (depicting a display 14 as a whole front surface of mobile telephone 10). Contrary to Appellants’ arguments, in making this finding, the Examiner did not import the term “touch sensitive” from the written description into the claims. Instead, the Examiner found Figures 3B and 3C, among others, indicate that the claimed “surface” may be a touch-sensitive portion of a device. See Final Act. 18. We note the above construction is consistent with Appellants’ written description. Although the written description does not explicitly define “an entire front surface of the device,”2 the written description describes a device 2 To the extent Appellants assert Figures 1A-3A and 4A-6C show separate embodiments in which the front part of the device includes only a surface, Appellants have not persuaded us this is the case. The written description generally describes the surfaces shown in these figures as a “surface located on the device” or “a surface of a device” but these figures show only the surface, not the rest of the device. See, e.g., Spec. Tflf 26, 31. Only Figures 3B and 3C appear to show the device described in the written description. 5 Appeal 2016-006624 Application 12/262,357 that includes a display screen 375 and a “surface 305 on the device,” where both the display screen 375 and the surface 305 appear on the front the device. Spec. y42; see also Fig. 3B (depicting the device described in paragraph 42 of Prior). The written description discloses the surface 305 encompasses a “touch screen located on the device, divided into the regions 310, 315, 320” and that surface 305 is “also seen as the surface 105 in FIG. 1 and the surface 205 in FIG. 2.” Id. yy 38, 42. As shown in Figure 3B and described in paragraph 42, surface 305 does not make up the whole front portion of the device; rather, surface 305 and display screen 375 collectively comprise the front portion of the device.3 See id. 142, Fig. 3B. Finally, Appellants take issue with the Examiner’s findings concerning claim 3,11, and 15 in the Reply Brief. See Reply Br. 6-7. Appellants have waived these arguments by failing to raise them in the Appeal Brief. See 37 C.F.R. §§ 41.37(c)(l)(iv), 41.41(b)(2); In reLovin, 652 F.3d 1349 (Fed. Cir. 2011). For the above reasons, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1. Because Appellants have not presented separate, persuasive arguments for claims 2-7, we also sustain the Examiner’s rejection of these claims. Appellants rely on arguments substantially similar to those discussed above for claims 8-19. See, e.g., App. Br. 11-12. We find these arguments 3 Even if Appellants were correct that “an entire front surface of the device” requires that Prior’s touch-sensitive display make up the entire front face of device 50, the Examiner found that touch-sensitive surfaces that comprise the entire front surface of a device were well known in the art. See, e.g., Final Act. 18 (citing Kerr et al. (US2006/0197750 Al; Sept. 7, 2006)). It would have been obvious to combine such a surface with the teachings of Prior and Westerman to provide a larger touch-sensitive surface and thereby facilitate interacting with the device through touch. 6 Appeal 2016-006624 Application 12/262,357 unpersuasive for the above reasons and therefore sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 8-19. DECISION We affirm the rejections of claims 1-19. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). AFFIRMED 7 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation