Ex Parte Duvall et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jan 11, 2012

09946026 (B.P.A.I. Jan. 11, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE 1
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3
BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS 4
AND INTERFERENCES 5
___________ 6
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Ex parte ROGER WARREN DUVALL, 8
MICHAEL JORDAN REECE, 9
VINCENT J. HRABOSKY, and 10
DAVID JOHN BURTON 11
___________ 12
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Appeal 2010-008085 14
Application 09/946,026 15
Technology Center 3600 16
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Before MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, HUBERT C. LORIN, and 20
ANTON W. FETTING, Administrative Patent Judges. 21
FETTING, Administrative Patent Judge. 22
DECISION ON APPEAL 23
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Appeal 2010-008085
Application 09/946,026

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE1 1
Roger Warren Duvall, Michael Jordan Reece, Vincent J. Hrabosky, and 2
David John Burton (Appellants) seek review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 (2002) 3
of a non-final rejection of claims 31-34, the only claims pending in the 4
application on appeal. We have jurisdiction over the appeal pursuant to 5
35 U.S.C. § 6(b) (2002). 6
The Appellants invented a device sequence manager for managing the 7
operation of input devices employed by a point of sale system and receiving 8
and buffering data, as well as error and status messages, from those devices 9
and presenting the messages in the correct sequence to an executive 10
application program performing overall control of the system operation 11
(Specification 1:Field of the Invention). 12
An understanding of the invention can be derived from a reading of 13
exemplary claim 31, which is reproduced below [bracketed matter and some 14
paragraphing added]. 15
31. A method of operating a transaction processing system, 16
comprising: 17
[1] identifying disparate devices, 18
having associated disparate software 19
including device dependent service objects for 20
operating the disparate devices, 21
coupled to a point-of-sale terminal 22

1 Our decision will make reference to the Appellants’ Appeal Brief (“App.
Br.,” filed November 19, 2009) and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.”, filed April 1,
2010), and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed February 2, 2010).
Appeal 2010-008085
Application 09/946,026

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by a device sequence manager on the point-of-sale 1
terminal 2
which handles all communication between a 3
transaction processing application on the 4
point-of-sale terminal and the device 5
dependent service objects; 6
[2] enabling communication with the disparate devices 7
through device dependent service objects 8
by the device sequence manager; 9
[3] receiving data 10
produced by one or more of the disparate devices 11
from respective device dependent service objects 12
by the device sequence manager; 13
[4] creating one or more data objects by the device sequence 14
manage, [sic, manager] 15
each data object comprising 16
the data produced by and received from one of the 17
disparate devices and 18
first identifying information identifying the device 19
that produced the data; 20
[5] placing each of the one or more data objects into a queue by 21
the device sequence manager 22
where the data objects in the queue are ordered 23
by when the data in each data object was produced 24
by the respective disparate devices; 25
[6] receiving a data retrieval request 26
including second identifying information from a 27
transaction processing application of the point-of-sale 28
terminal by the device sequence manager, 29
[7] determining if the second identifying information matches 30
the first identifying information 31
Appeal 2010-008085
Application 09/946,026

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of the data object next in sequence for retrieval from the 1
queue by the device sequence manager; 2
and 3
[8] transferring the data object next in sequence for retrieval 4
from the queue 5
to the transaction processing application 6
if the second identifying information matches the first 7
identifying information by the device sequence manager. 8
The Examiner relies upon the following prior art: 9
Ito US 6,315,199 B1 Nov. 13, 2001
May US 6,574,674 B1 Jun. 3, 2003
Hanzek US 6,980,963 B1 Dec. 27, 2005
Claims 31 and 34 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as 10
unpatentable over Ito and May. 11
Claims 32 and 33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as 12
unpatentable over Ito, May, and Hanzek. 13
ISSUES 14
The issues of obviousness turn primarily on whether the combination of 15
the references describes determining if a second identifying information 16
matches the first identifying information, that identifies the device that 17
produced the data, of the data object next in sequence for retrieval from the 18
queue by the device sequence manager; and transferring the data object next 19
in sequence for retrieval from the queue to the transaction processing 20
application if the second identifying information matches the first 21
identifying information by the device sequence manager. 22
Appeal 2010-008085
Application 09/946,026

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FACTS PERTINENT TO THE ISSUES 1
The following enumerated Findings of Fact (FF) are believed to be 2
supported by a preponderance of the evidence. 3
Facts Related to the Prior Art 4
Ito 5
01. Ito is directed to a check-out device for reading an article code 6
recorded on an article in a machine readable form, and performing 7
registration of sold articles on the basis of the read article code 8
wherein a customer takes part in reading of an article code. Ito 9
1:10-15. 10
02. Ito measures the weight of an article being purchased and 11
compares that to a standard weight assigned to that article in a 12
database as verification that the item physically purchased is the 13
item that is identified for purchase. Ito 8:26-42. 14
May 15
03. May is directed to managing data shared by multiple instances of a 16
shared application program. A shared application program has 17
instances executing simultaneously on multiple computers and has 18
a copy of data that is being shared by each instance of the 19
application program. Each computer maintains a copy of the 20
shared data. When an instance of the shared application program 21
modifies the shared data, the modifications are sent to the other 22
computers. Each of these other computers stores the data in its 23
copy of the shared data. In addition, each instance of the 24
Appeal 2010-008085
Application 09/946,026

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application program at these computers updates its user interface 1
to reflect the modifications to the shared data. An object 2
management (OM) system provides services through which 3
shared application programs can manage the shared data. In 4
particular, each computer has a copy of the OM system. The OM 5
system, under the direction of the shared application program, 6
manages the adding, deleting, and modifying of the shared data. 7
The OM system also controls the transmitting of modifications to 8
the copy of the shared data to the other computers. May 2:16-35. 9
ANALYSIS 10
We are persuaded by the Appellants’ arguments that the combination of 11
the references fails to describe determining if a second identifying 12
information matches the first identifying information, that identifies the 13
device that produced the data, of the data object next in sequence for 14
retrieval from the queue by the device sequence manager; and transferring 15
the data object next in sequence for retrieval from the queue to the 16
transaction processing application if the second identifying information 17
matches the first identifying information by the device sequence manager. 18
Appeal Br. 6-8. 19
While we agree with the Examiner that May’s queued objects each have 20
a timestamp and an identifier that identifies the device that created the 21
object, the Examiner provides no findings as to whether or why Ito’s scales 22
would produce such objects. 23
As the Appellants point out, May uses its queue to duplicate the data 24
store of multiple instances of a single program, whereas Ito is simply 25
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retrieving a weight value from a scale and comparing that value to a stored 1
weight standard. The Examiner thus is forced to find that Ito’s weight is the 2
identifying information. While a weight value identifies the weight that is 3
measured, it does not identify the device that created the data. Thus, there 4
would be no need to use May’s queue controlling stored multiple instances 5
of data across multiple instances of a program to determine if Ito’s weights 6
were the same. Thus, if we take the various parts of Ito and May as 7
describing the claimed elements, those parts do not cooperate in the manner 8
required by the claim. 9
The remaining claims depend from claim 31. 10
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW 11
The rejection of claims 31 and 34 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as 12
unpatentable over Ito and May is improper. 13
The rejection of claims 32 and 33 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as 14
unpatentable over Ito, May, and Hanzek is improper. 15
DECISION 16
The rejection of claims 31-34 is reversed. 17
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REVERSED 19
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mls 23