Ex Parte Yen et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJan 30, 201311181146 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 30, 2013) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte JOHN YEN, XIAOCONG FAN, SHUANG SUN, and MICHAEL MCNEESE ____________ Appeal 2011-010246 Application 11/181,146 Technology Center 3600 ____________ Before MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, and BIBHU R. MOHANTY, Administrative Patent Judges. CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2011-010246 Application 11/181,146 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner’s final decision rejecting claims 2 to 7, 9 to 17, 19, and 22. We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). Appellants appeared for oral hearing on January, 16, 2013. We REVERSE. Claim 22 is illustrative: 22. An improved decision-malting process, comprising the steps of: providing a collaborative, team-oriented computer architecture wherein human and software agents interact through a shared mental model including an experience knowledge base; receiving information regarding a current situation to be analyzed; consulting the experience knowledge base to qualify the received information based upon any similarities to the current situation; presenting the qualified information to a user through one of the agents; interacting with the user to receive assistance in the form of assumptions or expectancies about the situation; providing the refined information and assumptions or expectancies to other agents; utilizing cues in the experience knowledge base to contact one or more external information sources to gather missing, relevant information, if any, in support of the assumptions or expectancies; using the missing, relevant information in conjunction with other collected information to determine whether a decision about the situation is evolving in an anticipated direction; and, if so: informing the user and updating the experience knowledge base to enhance the quality or timeliness of future decisions regarding similar situations. Appeal 2011-010246 Application 11/181,146 3 Claims 22, 2 to 7, 9 to 13, and 15 to 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over John A. Sokolowski, MODELING THE DECISION PROCESS OF A JOINT TASK FORCE COMMANDER, 1-127 (May 2003) (hereinafter “Sokolowski”), Major John D. Hall, Decision Making in the Information Age, Field Artillery, 28-32 (Sep./Oct. 2000) (hereinafter “Hall”), Sullivan (US 6,999,990 B1, iss. Feb. 14, 2006), and Bonissone (US 6,643,799 B1, iss. Nov. 4, 2003). Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Sokolowski, Hall, Sullivan, Bonissone, and Robert J. Sternberg, Environmental effects on Cognitive Abilities, 228-31 (2001) (hereinafter “Sternberg”). Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Sokolowski. ANALYSIS The Appellants argue that Sokolowski does not disclose “utilizing cues in the experience knowledge base to contact one or more external information sources.” We agree. The Examiner has directed our attention to page 65 of Sokolowski lines 25 to 27 for disclosure of this subject matter. We find that Sokolowski discloses at page 65 that when the Recognition Agent receives a decision request, it performs a lookup of the decision type in the experience database. If a match is found, the Recognition Agent reads into the computer memory the experience data associated with the decision. It is here that the frame data structure is populated with the basic cues, goals, and actions related to the decision. Appeal 2011-010246 Application 11/181,146 4 This portion of Sokolowski does not relate to external information sources as the Recognition Agent and the experience database are within the Recognition-Primed Decision Agent itself (Figure 13). As such, this portion of Sokolowski does not disclose utilizing cues to contact one or more external information sources to gather missing relevant information as required by claim 22. In view of the foregoing, we will not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 22 and claims 2 to 7, 9 to 17, and 19 dependent thereon. DECISION We REVERSE the decision of the Examiner. REVERSED hh Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation