Ex Parte Bertolini et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jul 27, 2018

12569260 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 27, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/569,260 09/29/2009
32864 7590 07/31/2018
FISH & RICHARDSON, P.C. (SAP)
PO BOX 1022
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55440-1022
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Marco Bertolini
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
13913-0547001/2009P00155 7947
EXAMINER
WONG,HUEN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2155
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/31/2018 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):
P ATDOCTC@fr.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte MARCO BERTOLINI and ANDREAS DIEBOLD
Appeal2018-000229
Application 12/569,260
Technology Center 2100
Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, SCOTT B. HOW ARD and
JASON M. REPKO, Administrative Patent Judges.
REPKO, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
rejection of claims 10, 13, 24--28, 30, and 32-36. App. Br. 2. 2 Claims 1-9,
11, 12, 14--23, 29, and 31 were canceled. We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse.
1 Appellants identify the real party in interest as SAP SE. App. Br. 2.
2 Throughout this opinion, we refer to the Final Rejection ("Final Act.")
mailed December 1, 2016; the Appeal Brief ("App. Br.") filed May 10,
2017; the Examiner's Answer ("Ans.") mailed September 21, 2017; and the
Reply Brief ("Reply Br.") filed October 6, 2017.
Appeal2018-000229
Application 12/569,260
THE INVENTION
Appellants' invention controls access to documents.
Spec. 1: 14--22. The invention uses a "customer attribute" to uniquely
identify objects, such as documents, in the customer-management
system. Id. at 7: 5-7. The system authorizes editing, deleting, or
adding data to the objects by checking the customer attribute.
Id. at 7: 10-12. The system can also manage a group of objects
hierarchically. See id. at 10:1-12. The hierarchical framework uses
parent objects and node objects. Id. at 10: 13. In particular, the
hierarchical framework assigns only the parent objects to the
customer. Id. at 10:22-25. The parent objects must be accessed
before accessing the node objects. Id. at 10:25-27. In this way, the
system protects node objects from unauthorized access without the
need to explicitly store the customer assignment at every node.
Id. at 10:20-27.
Claim 10 is reproduced below with our emphasis:
10. A computer-implemented method for controlling customer
access to documents, the method comprising:
storing, by a computing system, a group of documents for
a plurality of customers, wherein:
(i) each of the documents in the group is either a
parent document or a node document,
(ii) the documents in the group include multiple
parent documents and multiple node documents,
(iii) each of the node documents is directly linked to
one or more of the parent documents or are indirectly
linked to one or more of the parent documents through
other of the node documents, and
(iv) the plurality of customers are associated with a
plurality of customer records such that each of the
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Application 12/569,260
customers is associated with a customer record from the
plurality of customer records;
authorizing, by the computing system, each customer in
the plurality of customers to access only a respective subset of
the documents from the group of documents by assigning each
document in the group of documents to a respective customer
record from the plurality of customer records, wherein:
(i) the assigning of each document to the respective
customer record involves including, for each of the parent
documents, a reference to a customer attribute that
identifies the respective customer record, the customer
attribute being included in a plurality of customer
attributes, and
(ii) only the parent documents in the group of
documents are assigned to the customer records such that
the node documents do not include references to customer
attributes;
receiving, by the computing system, a request to access
documents for a particular customer, and in response:
(i) authorizing the particular customer to access
each parent document that includes a particular customer
attribute that identifies the respective customer record
associated with the particular customer, wherein the
computing system authorizes the access to the parent
document by referencing the particular customer attribute;
(ii) authorizing the particular customer to access
each node document that is linked to each of the parent
objects that include the customer attribute, wherein the
computing system authorizes the access to the node
document by referencing the parent document that include
the particular customer attribute without first accessing the
node document; and
managing, by the computing system, the group of
documents for the plurality of customer records, wherein
the group of documents and the plurality of customer
attributes are stored in a database.
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Appeal2018-000229
Application 12/569,260
THE EVIDENCE
The Examiner relies on the following as evidence:
Elza et al.
Boehm et al.
US 2004/0230903 Al
US 2007 /0208769 Al
Nov. 18, 2004
Sept. 6, 2007
Steve Muench, Building Oracle XML Applications (Oct. 2, 2000),
http://academic.safaribooksonline.com/book/xml/ 1565926919 ("Muench").
Francesco De Francesca et al., A general framework for XML Document
Clustering (2003) ("De Francesca").
Itzik Ben-Gan et al., Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008: T-SQL
Programming (Sept. 23, 2009),
http://academic.safaribooksonline.com/book/ databases/microsoft-sq l-
server/9780735639928 ("Ben-Gan").
THE REJECTIONS
Claims 10, 24, 26-28, 32, and 34--36 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ I03(a) as unpatentable over Ben-Gan, Muench, and De Francesca.
Final Act. 13-21.
Claims 13 and 30 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § I03(a) as
unpatentable over Ben-Gan, Muench, De Francesca, and Elza.
Final Act. 21-24.
Claims 25 and 33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § I03(a) as
unpatentable over Ben-Gan, Muench, De Francesca, and Boehm.
Final Act. 24--25.
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Appeal2018-000229
Application 12/569,260
THE OBVIOUSNESS REJECTION OVER BEN-GAN, MUENCH, AND
DE FRANCESCA
The Examiner's Findings
The Examiner finds that Ben-Gan teaches every limitation recited in
representative claim 10 except for ( 1) authorizing access by more than one
record for each parent and (2) the recited node and parent documents.
Final Act. 13-17. In concluding that claim lO's subject matter would have
been obvious, the Examiner cites Muench and De Francesca as teaching
these features. Id. Of relevance to the limitation at issue, the Examiner
finds that Ben-Gan's "Customer" and "Order" XML elements are parent and
node objects, and De Francesca represents documents as nodes. Id. at 13,
17. The Examiner concludes that it would have been obvious to combine
these teachings to cluster XML documents. Id. at 17. The Examiner also
finds that Ben-Gan's XML nodes are "subdocuments" of XML documents.
Ans. 4.
Appellants ' Contentions
Appellants argue that the cited references do not teach or suggest
storing node documents linked to parent documents and authorizing each
customer "to access only a respective subset of the documents." App. Br. 8.
According to Appellants, De Francesca's nodes represent documents for
clustering, but these nodes are not documents themselves. Id. at 10.
Appellants contend that one of ordinary skill in the art would not consider
each of Ben-Gan's XML tags within an XML document to be a document.
Id.; Reply Br. 2.
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Appeal2018-000229
Application 12/569,260
Analysis
Claim 10 recites, in part, "authorizing the particular customer to
access each node document that is linked to each of the parent objects that
include the customer attribute" ( emphasis added). Regarding the recited
node document, we agree with Appellants that neither De Francesca's nor
Ben-Gan's nodes can reasonably be interpreted as documents. See
App. Br. 8-10; Reply Br. 2.
Appellants' Specification discloses a hierarchical framework, which
uses parent objects and node objects. Spec. 10: 13. This hierarchical
framework assigns only the parent objects to the customer. Id. at 10:22-25.
The parent objects must be accessed before accessing the corresponding
node objects. Id. at 10:25-27. Notably, these objects can be documents.
Id. at 6:6-8. In the limitation at issue, claim 10 expressly recites a "node
document."
We agree with Appellants that the Examiner erred in finding that Ben-
Gan's XML nodes are "subdocuments" of XML documents, and thus, the
recited node document. Ans. 4. The term "subdocument" is not recited in
claim 1. Nor does the Examiner offer a definition for this term. See id.
Nevertheless, claim 10 recites a "node document," not a node in a document.
The Examiner has provided little support for interpreting a "node document"
to be a part of a document. For example, the Examiner has not shown, nor
do we find, embodiments in the Specification that are consistent with the
Examiner's interpretation. See, e.g., Spec. 6:6-8, 10:13-27.
Indeed, as the Examiner acknowledges (Ans. 4), Ben-Gan's node is
only a part of the XML document. See Ben-Gan Section 13.1.1. In
particular, the Examiner finds that the "Customer" element is a parent to the
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Appeal2018-000229
Application 12/569,260
child "Order" element. Final Act. 13 (citing Ben-Gan 13.1.1, 13.1.2.2).
Appellants highlight these features in a figure, which we reproduce below.
Reply Br. 2.
P1,1p~'ned "h"ifm{DocimM:tll·" P11t1mr1~-d "'.A°'(~ik_, Dm~ument''
~ 1
, t;~~~~~lf ~~~ITr~~1~r+I~.~~~j~i;~~~±±~,~~;~mr1~n1:l~1S,:i[T"';,;1""J
<~<)i:~:::iif::::-·· t::r·~:·' }tr:.;.·~~·\ :)9E:l'.}:· :~~~···::~:;:·rr·::Jt;~:~·;~,.·~·::;?f;;>t-.. -i\:; .. ·;_.t.Tf:·(;;: nD ~ ~>)~1 ./:.:-:. ~
~ C.. ' ("",' ,: ~ ~{ .. , :-t=-~. L ,:-s ~
)., ... ._.,._,.,,,,,-.-.,,, •. ,,.,-,.,,.,.,.,._,,..,,.,,.,.,._._ . .,.,,,,..,,,. •. ,., .. ...,,..,.,,_,,,,,,.,..,,,. •. ,,.,.,,,..,.,.,.,._,,,,,.,,.,.,..., __ .,_,,,.,..,,,. ..... ,,.,.,...,_.,._,,,..,.,,._..,.,.,.,..,,....,._,,,,,,,-.,v.-A'>'-"'-"-'-'•· ,-.,-.-.v--,v,,,-.,v., ... ,.,..,,....,_,,,,,,,-.•.v.-,•v,v,-...._.._.,. ,-.,-.-.v.,,v,v,-..,._. •. ..,,...,..,,....,_,,,,,,,-.•,v.,,.._:,
In the above figure, Appellants annotate Ben-Gan's "Order" and "Customer"
elements with the Examiner's mapping. Reply Br. 2 ( citing Ben-Gan
13.1.1). To the extent that Ben-Gan teaches a node in a document, the
Examiner has not shown that Ben-Gan teaches or suggests the recited node
document itself-i.e., an entire document. Accord App. Br. 10; Reply Br. 2
We also agree with Appellants that De Francesca does not cure Ben-
Gan's deficiency in this regard. See App. Br. 10. The Examiner has not
explained, and it is not apparent, how or why Ben-Gan would be modified
by De Francesca's teachings to arrive at the claimed invention.
Specifically, De Francesca teaches a document-clustering technique.
De Francesca 2 ("Introduction"), cited in Final Act. 17; Ans. 4. De
Francesca explains that this technique treats document clustering as a graph-
partitioning problem. De Francesca 2 ("Introduction"). Accordingly, the
technique represents documents using a graph's nodes and then partitions
the graph. Id.
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Appeal2018-000229
Application 12/569,260
The Examiner has not explained how Ben-Gan's "Order" element or
nodes would then be modified by De Francesca's graph to arrive at a node
document. See Final Act. 17. Here, the Examiner reasons that one of
ordinary skill would have been motivated to modify Ben-Gan to perform
XML-document clustering. Id. But Ben-Gan's "Customer" element is not a
document to be clustered. As discussed above, the element is only part of
the document. So, even assuming one of ordinary skill would be motivated
to cluster XML documents, the Examiner has not explained how this
clustering is relevant to a part of an XML document. See id.; Ans. 4.
Accordingly, we agree that the Examiner has not shown that Ben-Gan and
De Francesca, individually or in combination, teach or suggest the recited
step of "authorizing the particular customer to access each node document."
See App. Br. 8-10.
Muench was not relied upon for this purpose, and thus, does not cure
the above-discussed deficiencies. See Final Act. 13-17. On this record, the
Examiner has not shown that Ben-Gan individually, or in combination with,
De Francesca and Muench teaches or suggests "authorizing the particular
customer to access each node document that is linked to each of the parent
objects that include the customer attribute," as recited in claim 10.
Therefore, we do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of claim 10.
We also do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of claim 28, which recites a
similar limitation, and dependent claims 24, 26, 27, 32, and 34--36 for the
same reasons.
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Appeal2018-000229
Application 12/569,260
THE REMAINING OBVIOUSNESS REJECTIONS
The Examiner rejects claims 13, 25, 30, and 33 as being obvious over
Ben-Gan, De Francesca, and Muench in combination with Elza or Boehm.
Final Act. 21-25. Because the Examiner does not rely on additional
references to teach the authorization limitation, the additional references do
not cure the deficiency discussed above. See id. Accordingly, we do not
sustain the Examiner's rejections of claims 13, 25, 30, and 33 for the same
reasons discussed above in connection with claims 10 and 28.
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner's rejection of claims 10, 13, 24--28, 30, and
32-36.
REVERSED
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