Ex Parte Cook et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 26, 2014

10792286 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 26, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
10/792,286 03/04/2004 Colin N.B. Cook 2540-0707 3146
42624 7590 02/27/2014
DAVIDSON BERQUIST JACKSON & GOWDEY LLP
4300 WILSON BLVD., 7TH FLOOR
ARLINGTON, VA 22203
EXAMINER
DISTEFANO, GREGORY A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2175
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/27/2014 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 COLIN N.B. COOK, WARREN K. UNICE,
and ADAM J. BOYLE1
__________

Appeal 2012-000723
Application 10/792,286
Technology Center 2100
__________

Before ERIC B. GRIMES, JEFFREY N. FREDMAN, and
JAMES C. HOUSEL, Administrative Patent Judges.

GRIMES, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 involving claims to a method
of synchronizing the positions of a logical mouse and an actual mouse,
which have been rejected as obvious. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b).
We reverse.

1 Appellants identify the Real Party in Interest as Avocent Utah (App. Br. 1).
Appeal 2012-000723
Application 10/792,286

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The Specification states that “products have been created to facilitate
remote control of a computer using devices that remotely project the
keyboard, video and mouse. These are typically called keyboard-video-
mouse (KVM) devices.” (Spec. 1, ¶ 3.) “KVM systems generally employ
relative movements of the mouse to keep the mouse in sync (e.g., move 5
pixels left from where you are). The use of the relative movements is
common because real physical mice use relative movements.” (Id. at 2, ¶ 4.)
However, the mouse movement messages can be lost if the operating system
is busy with other tasks, in which case the virtual pointer will be out of sync
with the originating system (id.).
The Specification discloses using a human interface descriptor (HID),
such as a PC tablet, “which support[s] moving a pointer to an absolute
position (e.g., move to coordinates x543, y234)” (id. at 12, ¶ 35). “If a
remote KVM device uses one of these absolute descriptors, then it will not
lose mouse sync and the physical and virtual mouse pointer will always be in
sync” (id.).
Claims 1, 2, and 12-15 are on appeal. Claim 1 is the only independent
claim and reads as follows (emphasis added):
1. A method of providing mouse synchronization between a logical
mouse and an actual mouse, comprising:
testing an operating system of the logical mouse to determine if the
operating system of the logical mouse supports the use of a USB-based
human interface descriptor (HID) using absolute movement of a mouse
cursor to an absolute position other than the origin;
utilizing a universal serial bus (USB) protocol to provide absolute
movement of the mouse cursor on a host computer to an absolute position
other than the origin if the operating system supports the use of a USB-
Appeal 2012-000723
Application 10/792,286

3
based human interface descriptor (HID) using absolute movement of the
mouse cursor to an absolute position other than the origin; and
synchronizing the position of a logical mouse and the position of an
actual mouse using the absolute movement to the absolute position other
than the origin without operator intervention.

DISCUSSION
The Examiner has rejected claims 1, 2, 12, 13, and 15 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as obvious based on Schneider2 and Poley3 (Ans. 5). The Examiner
has rejected claim 14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious based on
Schneider, Poley and Kameda4 (Ans. 8). The same issue is dispositive for
both rejections.
The Examiner finds that Poley teaches the “testing” step of claim 1
(id. at 6) and that Schneider teaches the “utilizing” and “synchronizing”
steps (id. at 5-6). The Examiner concludes that it would have been obvious
“to have modified the cursor control method of Schneider with the system
testing of Poley” because Poley teaches that it is desirable to provide USB
support in new computer products and Schneider discusses testing systems
(id. at 6-7).
Appellants argue that Schneider discloses using “a series of relative
movements to try to arrive at an absolute position, but ‘relative’ and
‘absolute’ cannot be considered to be synonymous as they are, in fact,
antonyms” (App. Br. 5). Appellants argue that the Examiner “has not shown
that [Schneider] teaches the limitation of ‘utilizing a universal serial bus

2 US 2002/0038334 A1, published March 28, 2002.
3 US 7,162,407 B2, patented January 9, 2007.
4 US 5,828,372, patented October 27, 1998.
Appeal 2012-000723
Application 10/792,286

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(USB) protocol to provide absolute movement of the mouse cursor on a host
computer to an absolute position other than the origin,’” as required by the
claims (id. at 7).
We agree with Appellants that the Examiner has not shown that
Schneider discloses the disputed limitation. The Examiner cites paragraph
87 of Schneider as disclosing a USB protocol that provides absolute
movement of the mouse cursor (Ans. 5). Schneider discloses that if the
digitized mouse pointer on a target computer is updated too slowly to allow
accurate control (Schneider 9, ¶ 86), the controlling computer generates a set
of cross-hairs to indicate where the mouse cursor should be (id. at 9, ¶ 87),
and
the digitizer control application 220 . . . sets the cursor of the
target computer to a known location. For example, by sending
to the target computer a series of mouse commands, it is
possible to drive the cursor to the upper left hand-corner (the
0,0 corner), no matter where the cursor was prior the series of
commands. The original cursor is then forced back down to be
aligned with the cross-hairs.
(Id.)
We agree with Appellants that this describes using “a series of
relative movements to try to arrive at an absolute position” (App. Br. 5), not
using a USB protocol to “provide absolute movement of the mouse cursor
on a host computer to an absolute position other than the origin” (claim 1).
The Examiner “interprets ‘absolute movement’ to be loosely define[d]
as any movement of the cursor which causes the cursor to arrive at an
absolute position” (Ans. 11). In our view, however, this is an unreasonably
broad interpretation of the claim language.
Appeal 2012-000723
Application 10/792,286

5
The Specification makes a clear distinction between “relative
movement” and “absolute movement.” The Specification states that
“relative movement” corresponds to a command such as “move 5 pixels left
from where you are,” as is common with real physical mice (Spec. 2, ¶ 4).
This type of command is contrasted with the inventive method in which “the
USB protocol is utilized to provide movement of the mouse to an absolute
position . . . (e.g., move to coordinates x543, y234)” (id. at 12, ¶ 35). The
claim language – requiring “absolute movement . . . to an absolute position
other than the origin” – therefore cannot reasonably be interpreted to
encompass commands that cause a series of relative movements that move a
cursor to the upper left-hand corner and back down to the position of another
location, as disclosed by Schneider.
Because the Examiner’s rejections rely on an unreasonably broad
interpretation of the claim language, the Examiner has not made out a prima
facie case that the claimed method would have been obvious to a person of
ordinary skill in the art based on Schneider and Poley. The Examiner points
to no disclosure in Kameda that makes up for the deficiency discussed above
(see Ans. 9).
SUMMARY
We reverse both of the rejections on appeal.

REVERSED

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