Ex Parte Hohensee et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jul 17, 2013

10798045 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 17, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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.
10/798,045 03/11/2004 Reinhard H. Hohensee BLD20030031US1 4968
50441 7590 07/17/2013
DUFT BORNSEN & FETTIG, LLP
1526 SPRUCE STREET
SUITE 302
BOULDER, CO 80302
EXAMINER
WILLS, LAWRENCE E
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2675
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/17/2013 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 REINHARD H. HOHENSEE, TERRY S. LUEBBE,
ERIC R. MADER, DAVID E. STONE,
VETTAKKORUMAKANKAVU S. UMAMAHESWARAN,
and JOHN T. VARGA
____________

Appeal 2010-008954
Application 10/798,045
Technology Center 2600
____________

Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, KRISTEN L. DROESCH,
and LARRY J. HUME, Administrative Patent Judges.

SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2010-008954
Application 10/798,045

2
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a non-final rejection
of claims 1, 3, 5-9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18-22, 24, and 26, which constitute all the
claims pending in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b).
We affirm.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellants’ invention relates to a method and computer program
product for identifying and processing Unicode complex text. (See Spec.
4:2-20).
Exemplary Claim
Claim 1 is illustrative of the invention and reads as follows.
1. A method of controlling downstream processing of
Unicode complex text in a print stream, the method comprising:
receiving the print stream including a section of Unicode
complex text; identifying the section of the Unicode complex
text in the print stream;
inserting a control parameter in the print stream before
the section of the Unicode complex text to modify the print
stream, wherein the control parameter comprises:
a first parameter indicating a type of downstream
processing for the section of the Unicode complex text
identified in the print stream; and
a second parameter for enabling and disabling the type of
downstream processing of the section of the Unicode complex
text identified in the print stream; and
transmitting the modified print stream for downstream
processing.
Appeal 2010-008954
Application 10/798,045

3
Rejection
Claims 1, 3, 5-9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18-22, 24, and 26 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Patel (US RE37,258 E) and
Atkin (US 2003/0023590 A1). (See Ans. 3-6).

ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellants’
arguments that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellants’
conclusions.
Appellants contend that “there is no teaching or suggestion in Atkin
that the cancel tag is operable to disable language metadata assigned to the
section of characters” (Br. 8). Appellants argue that the disclosure in
paragraph 40 and Table 4 of Atkin explains that “the language tag remains in
scope (i.e., applied to subsequently received characters in the datastream)
until a cancel tag is received” (id.). The Examiner responds that undoing the
last tag in Atkin is considered as disabling the downstream processing of the
section of Unicode because Atkin leaves the semantic of the cancel tag to the
protocol designer (Ans. 6 (citing Atkin, ¶ [0081])). We agree with the
Examiner’s findings and conclusion that the cancel tag of Atkin may be
designed by the protocol designer to “undo” the last tag or act as an “end
marker” for terminating scope (see also Atkin, ¶ [0081]).
Additionally, Appellants argue that the cancel tag of Atkin does not
teach the recited control parameter functionality of skipping a specific
section of the complex text to increase the speed of rendering the print
stream (Br. 8). We disagree. As stated by the Examiner (Ans. 7), Atkin
discloses introducing a new bidirectional property, “ignore,” used “to disable
Appeal 2010-008954
Application 10/798,045

4
the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm for characters in the Unicode character
stream” (see Atkin, ¶¶ [0085] – [0086]). In other words, to the extent recited
in claim 1, the ignore parameter has a similar control parameter functionality
related to processing a section of the complex text.

CONCLUSION
On the record before us, we conclude that, because Atkin teaches or
suggests all the disputed claim limitations, the Examiner did not err in
rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Patel
and Atkin. Therefore, we sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claim 1,
and of claims 3, 5-9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18-22, 24, and 26 not argued separately.

DECISION
The decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 1, 3, 5-9, 11, 13, 14, 16,
18-22, 24, and 26 is affirmed.
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

ELD