Ex Parte SueDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJan 16, 201511782563 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 16, 2015) 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. 11/782,563 07/24/2007 Ranny Q. Sue PD-207041 7788 20991 7590 01/16/2015 THE DIRECTV GROUP, INC. PATENT DOCKET ADMINISTRATION CA / LA1 / A109 2230 E. IMPERIAL HIGHWAY EL SEGUNDO, CA 90245 EXAMINER NGUYEN BA, HOANG VU A ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2421 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/16/2015 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 ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte RANNY Q. SUE ____________ Appeal 2012-010474 Application 11/782,563 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, JASON V. MORGAN, and MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judges. MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2012-010474 Application 11/782,563 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final rejection of claims 1–28. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. THE INVENTION Appellant’s claimed invention is directed to a system which includes a content management system having material identification and business rules for content including targets. Abstract. Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the subject matter on appeal. 1. A method comprising: providing business rules for content including targets at a content management system, said targets including a user device type; providing the targets and a material identification to a work flow system; obtaining content at the work flow system, said content having an associated business rule identification; associating the material identification with the content at the work flow system; associating the content with the business rules based on the business rule identification and the material identification at the content management system; generating a content list in response to the business rules at the content management system; selecting a selection from the content list; and communicating content to a user device in response to the selection. Appeal 2012-010474 Application 11/782,563 3 REFERENCES and REJECTIONS The Examiner rejected claims 1–28 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by Mourad (US 7,277,870 B2, issued Oct. 2, 2007). ISSUE The issue is whether the Examiner erred in finding that Mourad teaches the limitations of “providing business rules for content including targets at a content management system, said targets including a user device type; providing the targets and a material identification to a work flow system; obtaining content at the work flow system, said content having an associated business rule identification” as recited in claim 1. ANALYSIS Appellant argues that Mourad (col. 64–66) is directed to usage conditions and not business rules (App. Br. 5). According to Appellant the usage conditions of Mourad are directed to post-purchase conditions (i.e., “end-user rights” col. 64, l. 41). Appellant asserts that the usage conditions of Mourad are directed to metadata attached to and delivered along with the songs after purchase (App. Br. 5). Appellant argues that this is different from business rules (App. Br. 5). According to Appellant, “business rules” may include “various characteristics including the dollar amount, the various targets, such as which user devices are to receive the content, and various other profiles” (citing Spec. ¶ 87) (App. Br. 5). According to Appellant, “business rules” are concerned with the content listings and are therefore, directed to pre-purchase of content (App. Br. 5). Appeal 2012-010474 Application 11/782,563 4 Appellant further argues that Mourad does not teach the limitation of “said targets including a user device type,” but rather, just the type of media that the content will be saved upon (App. Br. 6). Appellant also argues that Mourad does not teach “obtaining content at a workflow system, said content having an associated business rule identification” (App. Br. 6 (citation omitted)). Appellant does not contest that Mourad teaches a workflow manager, but asserts that there is no teaching or suggestion of obtaining content having an associated business rule identification (App. Br. 6). Appellant similarly argues that Mourad, does not, teach “associating the content with business rules based on [a] business rule identification,” but rather, identifying songs in a queue, (i.e., songs awaiting download) (App. Br. 7). We do not agree with Appellant’s arguments. We adopt the Examiner’s findings and conclusions as our own and we add the following primarily for emphasis. We agree with the Examiner that Mourad’s usage conditions include “various characteristics including the dollar amount” (col. 65, ll. 4–5), “the price of the purchase/rental transaction under this usage condition,” “the various targets, such as which user devices are to receive the content” (col. 64, ll. 60–62, “onto what kinds of media can he/she make those copies (e.g., CD-Recordable (CD-R), MiniDisc, Personal Computer”) (Ans. 9). We also agree with the Examiner that a personal computer can be reasonably interpreted to be a user device, which is to receive the content (Ans. 9–10). We also agree with the Examiner (Ans. 12–13) that, to meet the claim requirement of obtaining content at the workflow system, Mourad in Figure 1A depicts Workflow Manager Tool 123, described (see col. 54, ll. 50–57) Appeal 2012-010474 Application 11/782,563 5 as a tool to manage the flow or order of processing based on a set of defined rules (i.e., business rules). Figure 1A shows item 121 which is an uncompressed PCM audio file provided as Content 113 by the Content Provider(s) 101 and the filename of which is input into the Work Flow Manager 154 Tool along with the Content Provider(s)’s 101 unique identifier for the Content 113 (see also table at top of columns 21–22, step 121) (Ans. 11–12). We also agree with the Examiner that Mourad teaches content having an associated business rule identification, (see col. 55, ll. 31– 58 and col. 59, ll. 43–55) by indicating that the content (i.e., the product or the audio file as mentioned above) with its unique identifier is identified by an operator (Ans. 12). The operator can manually enter information required to initiate the audio processing phase in parallel with the metadata acquisition (i.e., content having an associated business rule identification) and place it in a queue for the New Content Request Process 802 (Ans. 12). Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 and the rejections of claims 2–28 which were not separately argued. CONCLUSION The Examiner did not err in finding that Mourad teaches the limitations of “providing business rules for content including targets at a content management system, said targets including a user device type; providing the targets and a material identification to a work flow system; obtaining content at the work flow system, said content having an associated business rule identification;” as recited in claim 1. Appeal 2012-010474 Application 11/782,563 6 DECISION The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–28 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 rvb Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation