Ex Parte Germanetti

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Jan 9, 2009

10463856 (B.P.A.I. Jan. 9, 2009)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

Ex parte SERGE GERMANETTI
____________

Appeal 2008-4507
Application 10/463,8561
Technology Center 2100
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Decided: January 9, 2009
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Before LANCE LEONARD BARRY, ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, and
CAROLYN D. THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judges.

THOMAS, C., Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection
of claims 1-6 and 8-21 mailed February 14, 2007, which are all the claims
remaining in the application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).

1 Application filed June 18, 2003. The real party in interest is Eurocopter.
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We affirm.

A. INVENTION
Appellant invented a system for maintaining a complex system in an
aircraft. The maintenance device comprises electronic equipments each
having test means and a memory for recording information relating to a
fault. A central unit connected to the electronic equipments comprises a test
means, a memory, and a computer which receives information from the
electronic equipments indicating the test means that detected the fault, which
determines from this information, a faulty element. (Spec., Abstract.)

B. ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIM
The appeal contains claims 1-6, and 8-21. Claims 1 and 14 are
independent claims. Claim 1 is illustrative:
1. A maintenance device for maintaining a complex system,
particularly an aircraft, which comprises at least:
(a) a plurality of electronic equipments which are
mounted on said complex system, each of said electronic equipments
comprising:
(i) at least one built-in first test component that
detects a fault while the complex system is in operation;
(ii) at least one first test memory that records,
when a fault is detected by said first test component, information
relating to this fault; and
(iii) an interface that provides access to said first
test memory; and
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(b) a central unit mounted on said complex system,
connected to said electronic equipments and which comprises:
(i) at least one built-in second test component that
detects a fault while the complex system is in operation;
(ii) at least one second test memory that records,
when a fault is detected by said second test component, information
relating to this fault;
(iii) a computer which receives, when a fault is
detected, information from said electronic equipments indicating the
first test component that detected the fault, which attempts to
determine, from this information, at least one faulty element in said
complex system and which indicates on a display screen:
while the complex system is operating,
automatically, the occurrence of a fault and, if it has been determined,
the corresponding faulty element;
at the end of operation of the complex
system, on request, a list of the faults that occurred during operation,
with the corresponding faulty elements; and
on request, at the end of operation of the
complex system, at least a diagnostic table which represents a
compilation comprising, for each fault, at least the following
information:
the test or tests performed;
the element or elements likely to be
responsible for the fault; and
the probability of each element, which
is likely to be responsible for the fault; being faulty, or
any other indicator associated with this probability;
(iv) at least one maintenance memory that records
all the information processed by said computer; and
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(v) at least one interface that provides access to
said second test memory and to said maintenance memory.

C. REFERENCES
The references relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal are as follows:
Ellis US 5,184,312 Feb. 2, 1993
Smith (‘452) US 5,729,452 Mar. 17, 1998
Smith (‘877) US 5,931,877 Aug. 3, 1999

D. REJECTIONS
The Examiner entered the following rejections which are before us for
review:
(1) Claims 1-6, 8, 9, and 14-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Ellis in view of Smith (‘452).
(2) Claims 10-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Ellis in view of Smith (‘452) and further in view of
Smith (‘877).

II. PROSECUTION HISTORY
Appellant appealed from the Final Rejection and filed an Appeal Brief
(App. Br.) on May 14, 2007. The Examiner mailed an Examiner’s Answer
(Ans.) on September 10, 2007. Appellant filed a Reply Brief (Reply Br.) on
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November 13, 2007. An Oral Hearing was held at the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office on December 11, 2008.

III. FINDINGS OF FACT
The following findings of fact (FF) are supported by a preponderance
of the evidence.
Smith ‘452
1. Smith ‘452 discloses “a system and method for predicting the
cause of an automobile’s failure of an emissions test” (col. 1, ll. 7-9).
2. Smith “looks for significant correlations between vehicle or test
characteristics and successful repair actions. This knowledge is applied to
predict the most likely causes of failure for a specific vehicle based on its
characteristics and emissions test results” (col. 18, ll. 37-41).
3. In Smith, “[t]he failure probability table 101 includes the rule name
and associated failure category and failure probability values” (col. 21, ll. 3-
5).
4. Smith discloses “a listing of potential failure categories and
subcategories which reflect groups of repair actions that exhibit similar
symptoms” (col. 5, ll. 54-56).
5. Smith discloses that “[w]hile each category listed above includes
subcategories, these subcategories can include subcategories of their own.
As the classifier table becomes more accurate, more subcategories can be
addressed by the rules independently as a category” (col. 7, ll. 21-25).

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IV. PRINCIPLES OF LAW
Appellant has the burden on appeal to the Board to demonstrate error
in the Examiner’s position. See In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 985-86 (Fed. Cir.
2006) (“On appeal to the Board, an applicant can overcome a rejection
[under § 103] by showing insufficient evidence of prima facie obviousness
or by rebutting the prima facie case with evidence of secondary indicia of
nonobviousness.”) (quoting In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1355 (Fed. Cir.
1998)).
The claims measure the invention. See SRI Int’l v. Matsushita Elec.
Corp., 775 F.2d 1107, 1121 (Fed. Cir. 1985) (en banc). Our reviewing court
has repeatedly warned against confining the claims to specific embodiments
described in the specification. Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1323
(Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc). During prosecution before the USPTO, claims
are to be given their broadest reasonable interpretation, and the scope of a
claim cannot be narrowed by reading disclosed limitations into the claim.
See In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re Zletz, 893 F.2d
319, 321 (Fed. Cir. 1989); In re Prater, 415 F.2d 1393, 1404-05 (CCPA
1969). “An essential purpose of patent examination is to fashion claims that
are precise, clear, correct, and unambiguous. Only in this way can
uncertainties of claim scope be removed, as much as possible, during the
administrative process.” In re Zletz, 893 F.2d at 322.

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V. ANALYSIS
Grouping of Claims
In the Brief, Appellant argues claims 1-6 and 8-21 as a group (App.
Br. 6-11). For claims 2-6 and 8-21, Appellant repeats the same argument
made for claim 1. We will, therefore, treat claims 2-6 and 8-21 as standing
or falling with claim 1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii). See also In re
Young, 927 F.2d 588, 590 (Fed. Cir. 1991).

The Obviousness Rejection
We now consider the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-6 and 8-21
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
Appellant has not presented any arguments to dispute the Examiner’s
specific findings with respect to Ellis and Smith ‘877. Instead, Appellant
contends that “[t]he Final Rejection fails to establish a prima facie case that
Ellis and Smith ‘452 suggest the feature recited in claim 1 of a diagnostic
table that identifies, for each detected fault, both: (1) the element or elements
likely to be at fault and (2) the probability, or an indicator thereof, of each of
these elements being faulty” (App. Br. 6-7). Appellant further contends that
“Smith ‘452 teaches identifying the fault probability for each category of
elements rather than for each element individually” (App. Br. 7). Finally,
Appellant contends that “the system proposed in the Examiner’s Answer
identifies the probability that a class or group of elements defined by a
category or subcategory includes a faulty element” (Reply Br. 4).
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The Examiner found that “Smith ‘452 discloses a diagnostic table
(Fig. 7, elements 41 and 101) and a failure analysis module 41 [that]
performs a lookup in the appropriate classifier table file and retrieves a
failure probability for each failure category to be diagnosed” (Ans. 14). The
Examiner further found that “Smith ‘452 discloses while each category
listed above includes subcategories, these categories can include
subcategories of their own. As the classifier table becomes more accurate,
more subcategories can be addressed by the rules independently as a
category” (Ans. 14-15).
Issue: Has Appellant shown that the Examiner erred in finding that
Smith ‘452 discloses the probability of each element being faulty?
Smith ‘452 discloses a method for predicting the cause of an
automobile’s failure of an emissions test (FF 1) by looking for correlations
between the vehicle and successful repair actions (FF 2). In Smith ‘452, a
failure probability table is generated that includes the test performed, the
associated failure category and a failure probability value (FF 3). Smith
‘452 further discloses that the classifier table can become more accurate
whereby more subcategories (individual repair elements) can be addressed
by the rules independently (FF 4-5).
In other words, while Smith ‘452 lists categories (i.e., groups) of
failures and the associated probability values associated with such groups
(see Smith ‘452 Figs. 3a-3d, i.e., the air induction group for example), Smith
‘452 also allows for the subcategories to be treated independently by the
rules, and hence the probability indicators.
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Also, we find that while the terms “category” and “subcategory” may
ordinarily suggest encompassing multiple items, Smith ‘452’s Specification
appears to be attaching a special definition, i.e., a more individualized
definition, to at least the term “subcategory.” For example, in Smith ‘452’s
listing of the potential failure categories and subcategories starting at the
bottom of col. 5, l. 66 to col. 7, l. 20, each subcategory (i.e., repair action)
represents an individual potential cause to the category failure. For instance,
for the “air injection” category, there are six individual repair actions, e.g.,
belt, check valve, control, pump, tubes, valves. Smith ‘452 further discloses
that as the classifier table becomes more accurate, more subcategories can be
addressed by the rules independently as done for a category. This appears to
be the case for the O2 sensor category and the vacuum leak category, both of
which only include a single subcategory (i.e., repair action). Therefore, if
the rules were applied to the O2 sensor subcategory, we would receive a
probability value for that individual element. Therefore, we find that the
above-noted statements in Smith ‘452 suggest that its’ learning process can
conceivably become more accurate so as to independently apply the rules
(including the probability indicator) to individual repair actions as oppose to
the entire category.
Thus, we find that the scope of the claimed “probability of each
element, which is likely to be responsible for the fault, being faulty” broadly
encompasses Smith ‘452’s ability to independently list failure subcategories
and failure probability values for each subcategory.
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Therefore, we do not find that Appellant has shown error in the
Examiner’s rejection of illustrative claim 1. Instead, we find the Examiner
has set forth a sufficient initial showing of obviousness. Appellant has not
shown that the combination of Ellis and Smith ‘452 lacks the above-noted
disputed features of claim 1. Therefore, we affirm the rejection of
independent claims 1 and 14, and of claims 2-6, 8-13, and 15-21, which fall
therewith.

VI. CONCLUSIONS
We conclude that Appellant has not shown that the Examiner erred in
rejecting claims 1-6 and 8-21.
Thus, claims 1-6 and 8-21 are not patentable.

VII. DECISION
In view of the foregoing discussion, we affirm the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1-6 and 8-21.

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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)(1)(iv) (2007).

AFFIRMED

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