Ex Parte Chang et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Aug 22, 2016

12559407 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 22, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/559,407 09/14/2009
63675 7590 08/24/2016
PATTERSON & SHERIDAN, LLP/IBM SVL
24 Greenway Plaza
SUITE 1600
HOUSTON, TX 77046-2472
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Yuan Chi CHANG
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.
S VL92009005lUS1 8360
EXAMINER
PEACH, POLINA G
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2165
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/24/2016 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 AIR_eofficeaction@pattersonsheridan.com
PSDocketing@pattersonsheridan.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte YUAN CHI CHANG, MANOJ KUMAR, and
CHUNG-SHENG LI
Appeal2015-002334
Application 12/559,407 1
Technology Center 2100
Before JOHN P. PINKERTON, JEFFREY A. STEPHENS, and
CARLL. SILVERMAN, Administrative Patent Judges.
SILVERMAN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
Final Rejection2 of claims 1-6, 8-14, 16-22, and 24, which are the only
pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We AFFIRM.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The invention relates to building and executing analytical solutions.
Abstract.
1 Appellants identify the real party in interest as International Business
Machines Corporation. App. Br. 3.
2 The rejections under 35 U.S.C § 112 are withdrawn. Ans. 2-3.
Appeal2015-002334
Application 12/559,407
Claim 1, reproduced below, is exemplary of the subject matter on
appeal:
1. A computer-implemented method for composing an analytics
solution, comprising:
receiving a selection of one or more elements listed in a
glossary to include in the analytics solution, wherein each of the
selected elements is associated with a respective mapping specifying a
function invoked to move data from one or more underlying data
sources to a target data store, wherein the elements listed in the
glossary identify data resources that are available from within an
enterprise network infrastructure, and wherein the elements listed in
the glossary identify the data resources independently from the
underlying data sources, and wherein at least one of the underlying
data sources comprises a real time data feed available from within the
enterprise network infrastructure;
receiving a selection of one or more analytics tools listed in the
glossary to include in the analytics solution, wherein each of the
selected analytics tools is associated with a respective mapping
specifying an implementation of the respective each analytics tool
provided within the enterprise network infrastructure and wherein the
analytics tools listed in the glossary identify analytics methods
independently from the implementation of the one or more analytics
tools provided within the enterprise network infrastructure, and
wherein one or more of the analytics methods are performed to
evaluate risks associated with the data moved to the target data store;
receiving a selection of one or more of the selected elements
from the glossary to provide as inputs to one or more of the selected
analytics tools; and
generating, by a processor, a graphical representation of each
selected element from the glossary and each selected analytics
solution, wherein the graphical representation represents a data flow
for the analytics solution, wherein the analytics solution evaluates the
data moved to the target data store using the selected analytics
tools to determine a measure of risk associated with the data.
App. Br. 20. (Claims App.).
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Appeal2015-002334
Application 12/559,407
THE REJECTION
Claims 1-6, 8-14, 16-22, and 24 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Bursey (US 2009/0157419 Al;
published June 18, 2009) in view of Wu et al. (US 2004/0181543 Al;
published Sept. 16, 2004) ("Wu") and Kennis et al. (US 2005/0209876 Al;
published Sept. 22, 2005) ("Kennis"). Final Act. 6-21.
ANALYSIS
Appellants argue the combination of Bursey, Wu, and Kennis does not
teach the claim 1 limitations. App. Br. 9-19; Reply Br. 2---6. As discussed
below, we are not persuaded by these arguments and, instead, agree with the
Examiner's findings and conclusions. Final Act. 6-19; Ans. 22-27.
Appellants argue Bursey does not teach "receiving a selection of one
or more elements listed in a glossary to include in the analytics solution" and
"receiving a selection of one or more analytics tools listed in the glossary to
include in the analytics solution." App. Br. 10-11. According to
Appellants, the Examiner's cited paragraphs of Bursey are disconnected and
do not teach the limitations. Id.
The Examiner finds Bursey discloses a cloud system with sources and
resources available for selection, that the cloud system is a "platform
independent" system with "atomic" resources and remote, external sources,
and that it includes an indexed platform independent registry. Ans. 22
(citing i-fi-1287, 255, 317, 44, 322, 297). The Examiner further finds "[ t ]he
indexed, registry catalog of available resource [and data] is analogous to [a]
glossary" and "[s]uch index catalog is [a] platform independent registry of
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Application 12/559,407
available sources and resources and their descriptions ([0325])." Id. at 22-
23.
We are not persuaded by Appellants' arguments and, instead, agree
with the above Examiner's findings.
Appellants argue Bursey fails to teach "how the catalog registers
relate to the claimed glossary," and that "none of these passage[s] describe a
glossary of any kind." App. Br. 11-12, 16.
The Examiner finds the specification does not provide an explicit
definition for the term glossary nor does it detail any specific special
meaning and, therefore, the term is given a plain meaning in view of its
dictionary definition - "a collection of difficult or specialized terms with
their meanings" (Merriam Webster Dictionary 2005). Ans. 23-24. With
this definition, the Examiner finds "a catalog with available services and
their description is a glossary- 'a catalog registry of support data i.e., data
granules and/or services that can deliver data' ([0403])." Id.
We agree with the above Examiner's findings. Appellants present no
persuasive evidence the Examiner's interpretation of "glossary" to include
the teachings of Bursey is unreasonable or overbroad. Claim terms in a
patent application are given the broadest reasonable interpretation consistent
with the specification, as understood by one of ordinary skill in the art. In re
Crish, 393 F.3d 1253, 1256 (Fed. Cir. 2004). However, great care should be
taken to avoid reading limitations of the Specification into the claims. E-
Pass Techs., Inc. v. 3Com Corp., 343 F.3d 1364, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2003).
Appellants argue Bursey fails to teach "generating, by a processor, a
graphical representation of each selected element from the glossary and each
selected analytics solution." App. Br. 11-12; 16-17.
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Appeal2015-002334
Application 12/559,407
The Examiner finds Bursey teaches users accessing a graphical
interface of the SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) system wherein the
user selects the elements from the cloud and the elements are registered and
published in the catalog registry (glossary) and, therefore, it is reasonable to
conclude that the user selects available elements from the glossary itself
through the graphical representation of selected element as shown in Figure
3. Ans. 24--25 (citing Fig. 3 user 312, 392; i-f 62). The Examiner
additionally finds Wu shows a workflow graphically presented to the user
with graphical representation of each selected element. Id. (citing Wu i-fi-1
234, 236, 262, 603). The Examiner also notes Appellants do not provide any
arguments regarding Wu. Id. at 25.
We are not persuaded by Appellants' arguments and, instead, agree
with the above Examiner's findings.
Appellants argue Bursey does not disclose a glossary of business
terms and analytics tools, where, as claimed the terms and tools "listed in the
glossary identify the data resources independently from the underlying data
sources" or where "analytics tools listed in the glossary identify analytics
methods independently from the implementation of the one or more
analytics tools provided within the enterprise network infrastructure."
App. Br. 12-16. According to Appellants, the paragraphs cited by the
Examiner are disconnected and describe relationships to the glossary
identified data resources and analytics methods, rather than being
independent. Id; see also Reply Br. 2-5.
The Examiner notes claim 1 does not recite "business terms." Ans.
25. The Examiner refers to the above-discussed finding regarding glossary
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Application 12/559,407
and finds "the atomic service [of Bursey] by definition is [an] independent
service." Id. at 26. In particular, the Examiner finds:
In summary, Bursey teaches that remote sources and services are
discovered and are registered in the XML catalog of the computing
cloud. The cloud is an independent system in itself. The registered
sources are remote and external (i.e. FTP, NSF) and the registered
services are autonomous, clearly, sources and services are
independent of each other. The registered data is pulled into a staging
area of the cloud, characterized into a standard format ([0411 ]-
[0412], [0414]), where it can be selected by different "remote users",
with different operating systems and platforms, packaged into a job
and executed in the cloud environment ([0278], [0405]). Once again,
remote, external data sources are independent of autonomous services.
The whole invention of Bursey is "to facilitate interoperability
between disparate components", which creates a tailored, business
solution for "disparate", remote sources and users, who can
communicate with each other's sources and resources through the
computing cloud, "without knowledge of' of each other's systems and
plat forms.
Ans. 26-27.
We agree with the above Examiner's findings. While Bursey's
glossary may have a relationship, e.g., linking, to the underlying data source
or the implementation of the analytics tools, the underlying data sources and
the implementation of the analytics tools are cloud based, autonomous, and
independent. Appellants present no persuasive evidence the Examiner's
interpretation of "independent" to include the teachings of Bursey is
unreasonable or overbroad. In re Crish, 393 F.3d at 1256; see also Spec. i-f
19 ("The analytics solution may perform an analytics task using operational
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data distributed across a variety of independently created and governed data
repositories in different departments of an organization.").
Appellants argue Kennis does not teach a "measure of risk" because
"the confidence value determines how likely" and "the measure of risk, as
claimed, determines a measure of how much." App. Br. 17-18.
The Examiner finds the determination of "how much" is not required
by the claim as the claim "requires a 'measure', which is 'an amount or
degree of something' (see any dictionary)" and "[t]he value of 'confidence'
associated with risk, disclosed by Kennis is a degree, thus a measure of
risk." Ans. 27. Therefore, the Examiner finds "Kennis fully teaches
'determine a measure of risk associated with the data."' Ans. 27; see also
Final Act. 10 (citing Kennis i-fi-1311-12). The Examiner also notes
Appellants do not provide any arguments regarding Wu. Id. at 27.
As discussed above, we are not persuaded by Appellants' arguments
and, instead, agree with the Examiner's findings. Therefore, we sustain the
rejection of claim 1 and the rejection of independent claims 9 and 1 7 as
these claims recite the disputed limitations and are not argued separately.
We also sustain the rejection of dependent claims 2-6, 8, 10-14, 16, 18-22,
and 24. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv).
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1---6, 8-14, 16-22,
and 24.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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