Ex Parte Espino

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jun 15, 2009

10115258 (B.P.A.I. Jun. 15, 2009)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE

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BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
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Ex parte MAYEL ESPINO
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Appeal 2009-005035
Application 10/115,258
Technology Center 2100
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Decided1: June 15, 2009
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Before ALLEN R. MACDONALD, Vice Chief Administrative Patent Judge,
HOWARD B. BLANKENSHIP, and STEPHEN C. SIU, Administrative
Patent Judges.

SIU, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

1 The two month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil
action, as recited in 37 CFR § 1.304, begins to run from the decided date
shown on this page of the decision. The time period does not run from the
Mail Date.
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Application 10/115,258

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the
Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-38. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b). We affirm.

The Invention
The disclosed invention relates generally to a method, system, and
computer program product for lightweight directory access protocol
applications (Spec. 2).
Independent claim 1 is illustrative:
1. A hand-held device, comprising:

an application for communicating with a directory server,

wherein the application submits a query to the directory server
in accordance with a lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP)
requesting data for the application,

in response to a query result that includes the requested data
from the directory server, the application stores the received data for
display on the hand-held device,

wherein the directory server is configured to request content
from a content server in response to the query.

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The References
The Examiner relies upon the following references as evidence in
support of the rejections:
Van Huben US 6,484,177 B1 Nov. 19, 2002
(filed Jan. 13, 2000)
Byrne US 6,490,619 B1 Dec. 03, 2002
(filed Dec. 07, 1999)
Merrells US 2002/0184230 A1 Dec. 05, 2002
(filed May 31, 2001)
Banerjee US 6,795,830 B1 Sep. 21, 2004
(filed May 31, 2001)

The Rejections
1. The Examiner rejects claims 1-3, 8, 18-23, 26-31, and 36-38 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Byrne and Merrells.
2. The Examiner rejects claims 5, 6, 9-17, 33, and 34 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Byrne, Merrells, and Banerjee.
3. The Examiner rejects claims 4, 7, 24, 25, 32, and 35 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Byrne, Merrells, and Van Huben.

ISSUE #1
Appellant asserts that Byrne fails to disclose or suggest “the directory
server to be ‘configured to request content from a content server in response
to the query’” (App. Br. 6) and that Merrells also fails to disclose or suggest
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“a directory server requesting content from a content server responsive to a
query” (id.).
Did Appellant demonstrate that the Examiner erred in finding that the
combination of Byrne and Merrells discloses or suggests a directory server
configured to request content from a content server response to a query?

FINDINGS OF FACT
The following Findings of Facts (FF) are shown by a preponderance
of the evidence.
1. Merrells discloses that “[t]he client constructs an LDAP message
containing a request and sends the message to the server. The server
processes the request and sends a result . . . back to the client as a
series of LDAP messages” (¶[0020]).
2. Merrells discloses that “[t]h LDAP server (102) retrieves the entry
from the database and sends the entry to the client (100) in an LDAP
message (step 106)” (¶[0020]).
3. Byrne discloses that “[a]n LDAP directory can be distributed among
many servers, with parts of data residing on a set of machines” (col.
2, ll. 1-2).
4. Byrne discloses that “there are several reasons for splitting
directories across multiple machines” (col. 2, ll. 11-12) such as “the
directory may be too large to make it practical to store on a single
server” (col. 2, ll. 12-13) or “network administrators may want to
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keep the physical location of the server close to the expected clients
to minimize network traffic” (col. 2, ll. 14-16).

PRINCIPLES OF LAW
Obviousness
The question of obviousness is resolved on the basis of underlying
factual determinations including (1) the scope and content of the prior art,
(2) any differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art, and
(3) the level of skill in the art. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17-
18 (1966).
“The combination of familiar elements according to known methods
is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results.”
KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 416 (2007).

ANALYSIS (ISSUE #1)
Since Appellant’s arguments have treated claims 1-38 as a single
group which stand or fall together with respect to issue #1, we select
independent claim 1 as the representative claim for this group with respect to
issue #1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).
As described above, Merrells discloses a LDAP server retrieving
requested data from a database or directory (FF 1-2) and Byrne discloses
that the database or directory from which an LDAP server retrieves data may
be “distributed among many servers, with parts of data residing on a set of
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machines” (FF 3). Byrne further provides reasons as to why one of ordinary
skill in the art would desire splitting data among different databases or
directories on different servers (FF 4).
We agree with the Examiner that, given the Merrells and Byrne
disclosures, that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art to retrieve data via an LDAP server from a database or directory as
explicitly disclosed by Merrells and to further distribute the data in the
database or directory “among many servers” as disclosed by Byrne since
doing so would, for example, alleviate the problem of a directory being “too
large to make it practical to store [the data] on a single server” (Byrne, col.
2, ll. 12-13). If the data desired by an LDAP server (responsive to a client
request) is distributed to a database on a different server as disclosed or
suggested by Merrells and Byrne, then it would have been obvious to
provide for the LDAP server to obtain the data from the server on which the
data is stored since such a practice would be a common sense approach to
obtaining the desired data.
Appellant argues that Merrells “is silent with respect to a separate
content server” (App. Br. 6). However, as outlined above, while Merrells
discloses a server obtaining requested data from a database or directory,
Byrne discloses that the requested data may be distributed to a different
server. Since the different server of Byrne is a “separate” server that stores
data (i.e., the requested data) and the stored data includes “content,” we are
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unpersuaded by Appellant’s contention that Merrells is allegedly “silent”
with respect to a content server.
Regarding claims 5, 6, 9-17, 33, and 34, Appellant argues that
“Banerjee et al. fails to provide for the deficiencies of Byrne et al. and
Merrells et al.” (App. Br. 10). Regarding claims 4, 7, 24, 25, 32, and 35,
Appellant argues that “Van Huben et al. fails to provide for the deficiencies
of Byrne et al. and Merrells et al.” (App. Br. 12). We are unpersuaded by
Appellant’s arguments because Appellant has not demonstrated any
“deficiencies” in Merrells and Byrne.
For at least the aforementioned reasons, we conclude that Appellant
has not sustained the requisite burden on appeal in providing arguments or
evidence persuasive of error in the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1, and of
claims 2-38, which fall therewith with respect to issue #1.

ISSUE #2
Appellant asserts that “no prima facie case of obviousness has been
established by the Examiner since no reasonable rationale is set forth as to
why the skilled artisan would have sought to combine Byrne et al. and
Merrells et al.” (App. Br. 9).
Did Appellant demonstrate that the Examiner erred in finding that it
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to have combined
the Byrne and Merrells references?

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ANALYSIS (ISSUE #2)
Since Appellant’s arguments have treated claims 1-38 as a single
group which stand or fall together with respect to issue #2, we select
independent claim 1 as the representative claim for this group with respect to
issue #2. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).
As described above, Merrells discloses a LDAP server retrieving
requested data from a database or directory (FF 1-2) and Byrne discloses
that the database or directory from which an LDAP server retrieves data may
be “distributed among many servers, with parts of data residing on a set of
machines” (FF 3) in the event that the “directory may be too large to make it
practical to store on a single server” (col. 2, ll. 12-13) (FF 4).
The combination of Merrells and Byrne would have entailed
combining known elements, such as accessing requested data in a database
or directory via an LDAP server (Merrells and Byrne) in which the data is
stored in databases or directories on different servers (Byrne). It would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to distribute the data among
different databases on different servers in order to, for example, alleviate a
potential problem of a single directory on one LDAP server being “too large
to make it practical to store on a single server” (FF 4) or in the event a
network administrator desired to “keep the physical location of the server
close to the expected clients to minimize network traffic” (id.), for example.
In addition, the combination of Merrells and Byrne would have
required no more than performing the respective known functions of
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Merrells and Byrne to achieve an expected and predictable result of
accessing data via an LDAP server from a database or directory stored on a
server or group of servers. Appellant has not shown that such a result of the
combination of the known elements of Merrells and Byrne would have been
unexpected or unpredictable, or that effecting such a combination was
“uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art.” See
Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir.
2007) (citing KSR, 127 S. Ct. at 1741). As such, we agree with the
Examiner that the combination of Merrells and Byrne would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art. KSR at 1395-66 (citing Sakraida
v. AG Pro, Inc., 425 U.S. 273, 282 (1976)).
For at least the aforementioned reasons, we conclude that Appellant
has not sustained the requisite burden on appeal in providing arguments or
evidence persuasive of error in the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1, and of
claims 2-18 which fall therewith with respect to issue #2.

CONCLUSION OF LAW
Based on the findings of facts and analysis above, we conclude that
Appellant has failed to demonstrate that the Examiner erred in:
1. finding that the combination of Byrne and Merrells discloses or
suggests a directory server configured to request content from a content
server in response to a query (issue #1), and
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2. finding that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art to have combined the Byrne and Merrells references (issue #2).

DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-38 under
35 U.S.C. § 103.
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).

AFFIRMED

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