Ex Parte Buford et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 24, 2013

10907484 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 24, 2013)

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.
10/907,484 04/02/2005 John F. Buford 925.002US01 4484
7590 09/24/2013
Fogg & Powers LLC
Suite 100
5810 W. 78th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55439
EXAMINER
EVANS, KIMBERLY L
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3629
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/24/2013 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 JOHN F. BUFORD, LUNDY M. LEWIS
and GABRIEL JAKOBSON
____________

Appeal 2011-008735
Application 10/907,484
Technology Center 3600
____________

Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, KALYAN K. DESHPANDE,
and BARBARA A. PARVIS, Administrative Patent Judges.

SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2011-008735
Application 10/907,484

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Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Final Rejection
of claims 1-14 and 16-20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellants’ invention relates to a method and apparatus for situation-
based management (SBM) of a domain (see Spec. [¶ 23] – [¶ 31]).
Exemplary Claim
Independent claim 1 is exemplary and reads as follows:
1. A method for coordinating a situation manager
process and an event correlator process in situation-based
management comprising:
scheduling a situation manager process running on a first
processor to process one or more events received from an event
correlator process running on a second processor; and
scheduling the event correlator process to provide the one or
more events to the situation manager process; wherein the one or
more events provided to the situation manager process include at least
one new event or at least one new quality of an event inferred by the
event correlator process from a collection of events.

The Examiner’s Rejections
Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, and 16-20 stand rejected under U.S.C
102(e) as being anticipated by Long (US 7,277,448 B1).
Claims 3, 6, 7, 10, 13, and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Long and Blelloch (US 6,434,590 B1).
1

1
The Examiner has withdrawn various claim rejections under 35 U.S.C.
§ 112, first and second paragraphs, and based on non-statutory obviousness-
type double patenting. (See Ans. 3).
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Appellants’ Contentions
1. With respect to claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 16, and 17, Appellants contend
that the Examiner erred in rejecting the claims as anticipated by Long
because:
a. The claimed term “inferring” has been improperly
equated with “determining” as “infer” is defined by “Dictionary.com”
as “to derive by reasoning; conclude or judge from premises or
evidence” and further described in Appellants’ Specification (App. Br.
6-7 (citing Spec. 7:11-13 and 43:3-6)).
b. In the process of “pop” or remove an entry from the child
schedule, Long’s “determining to defer an entry because no entry is
available does not teach or suggest inferring when to defer the entry”
(App. Br. 7-8).
c. Long’s entries are not the same as the claimed events
(App. Br. 8).
d. Creation of the corresponding deferral entry in Long is
not based on any entry (App. Br. 8-9).
e. In contrast with the claimed requirement for the events
to be provided to the situation manager process, the deferral entry of
Long is not provided to a parent schedule (App. Br. 9).
2. With respect to claims 8, 9, 11, 12, and 18-20, Appellants point
to the same arguments presented for claim 1 to assert the patentability of
claim 8 and conclude that Long does not disclose all the recited elements
(App. Br. 9-10).
3. Similarly, Appellants argue the patentability of dependent
claims 3, 6, 7, 10, 13, and 14 by relying on similar arguments discussed
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above and state that nothing in Blelloch cures the alleged deficiencies of
Long (App. Br. 11).

ISSUE
Based on Appellants’ arguments in the briefs, the principal and
dispositive issue presented in this appeal is as follows:
Has the Examiner erred in rejecting the claims as being anticipated by
Long because the reference does not teach all the recited features of claim 1?

ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’
arguments that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellants’
conclusion. We adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by
the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken and (2) the
rebuttals to arguments expressed by the Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer
in response to Appellants’ Appeal Brief (see Ans. 15-32).
We specifically agree with the Examiner (Ans. 23), that the cited
portion in column 2 of Long discloses push and pop events among different
levels in a scheduling hierarchy, resulting in selecting an entry in the child
schedule to propagate to the parent schedule (Ans. 23). We also agree with
the Examiner that the deferral queue is optionally created when the child
schedule is not eligible to push an entry in response to a parent pop request
(id. (citing Long, col. 3, ll. 39-66)). As such, we disagree with Appellants’
discussion of when to defer an entry (Reply Br. 2) because creating the
deferral queue is optional, which means that it merely holds the “overflow”
entries based on the readiness of the parent schedule. We further observe
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that, based on the broadest reasonable claim interpretation, adding an
optional deferral queue is not precluded by claim 1. Therefore, we see no
difference between Long’s adding the scheduled entries and the claimed
recitation of providing one or more events to the situation manager process
required in appealed claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 16, and 17. In fact, the pushed
“entries,” whether deferred or not, include at least “one new event” or entry
determined or inferred by the scheduler from a collection of events or a
collection of child entries.
We also agree with the Examiner’s discussion of Long’s teachings
that meet the requirements of claims 8, 9, 11, 12, and 18-20, as well as the
analysis of Blelloch to conclude that the subject matter of claims 3, 6, 7, 10,
13, and 14 is taught or suggested by the combination of this reference with
Long (see Ans. 25-31).

CONCLUSION
On the record before us, we conclude that, because Long teaches all
the claim limitations, the Examiner has not erred in rejecting claim 1 as
being anticipated by Long. Therefore, we sustain the rejection of claim 1
and of the remaining claims not argued separately.

DECISION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-14 and 16-20 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).
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AFFIRMED

ELD