13046161 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 30, 2016)

Ex Parte Ikeda et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 30, 2016

13046161 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 30, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 13/046, 161 03/11/2011 22879 7590 07/05/2016 HP Inc, 3390 E. Harmony Road Mail Stop 35 FORT COLLINS, CO 80528-9544 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Akihiko Ikeda 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 ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 82577134 4340 EXAMINER ULRICH, NICHOLAS S ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2173 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 07/05/2016 ELECTRONIC 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. Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the following e-mail address( es): ipa.mail@hp.com barbl@hp.com yvonne.bailey@hp.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte AKIHIKO IKEDA and JAMES M. MANN Appeal2014-008560 Application 13/046,161 Technology Center 2100 Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JAMES R. HUGHES, and SCOTT B. HOWARD, Administrative Patent Judges. DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal2014-008560 Application 13/046,161 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134 from a rejection of claims 1- 15. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b). We affirm. The invention relates to detecting a held touch on a touch-sensitive display and performing an action upon release of the touch (Spec. i-f 17). Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A computing device for detection of touches, the computing device comprising: a touch-sensitive display; and a processor to: detect a touch held at a given position of the touch- sensitive display for a duration of time, track movement of the touch while the touch remains held on the touch-sensitive display, and activate a user interface object located at a position of a release of the held touch. REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on appeal is: Zakharia et al. I vashin et al. Kim et al. Duarte et al. Pechanec et al. US 2004/0204128 Al US 7,274,377 B2 US 2007 /0273664 Al US 2010/0156813 Al US 2012/0218190 Al Oct. 14, 2004 Sept. 25, 2007 Nov. 29, 2007 June 24, 2010 Aug. 30, 2012 MICROSOFTÂ® COMPUTER DICTIONARY (5th ed. 2002) 2 Appeal2014-008560 Application 13/046,161 REJECTIONS The Examiner made the following rejections: Claims 1, 6, 7, and 11 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Duarte and Kim. Final Act. 2-7. Claims 2 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Duarte, Kim, Pechanec, and Microsoft Computer Dictionary. Final Act. 7-11. Claims 3, 4, 9, and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Duarte, Kim, and Zakharia. Final Act. 12-13. Claims 5, 10, and 15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Duarte, Kim, and Ivashin. Final Act. 13-15. Claims 8 and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C Â§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Duarte, Kim, and Pechanec. Final Act. 15-1 7. ANALYSIS Appellants contend the combination of Duarte and Kim fails to disclose the claim 1 limitation "activate a user interface object located at a position of a release of the held touch" (see App. Br. 10-13). We disagree with Appellants. Duarte discloses a touch-hold-drag technique for a touch screen that detects "whether cursor 502 or some other object is located at the initial touch point," and if so, "that object or cursor 502 is moved 408 according to the drag input, and released at the appropriate location when the user releases his or her finger from screen 101" (Duarte i-f 106). Kim discloses a touch screen operation where a user touches the screen to form a cursor, then moves the cursor until it is located at a target object, and finally removes his 3 Appeal2014-008560 Application 13/046,161 or her finger from the touch screen to select the object (Kim iii! 35-37). Accordingly, the Examiner relies on Duarte for teaching manipulation of a cursor at the position of a touch, and relies on Kim for teaching activation of an object upon release of a touch (see Ans. 4). We agree with the Examiner and find the combination of Duarte and Kim discloses the claim 1 limitation "activate a user interface object located at a position of a release of the held touch." We are not persuaded by Appellants' argument that Kim "states that 'a cursor 129 is displayed at a first point spaced apart from the point touched by the user and at a predetermined distance and position"' and thus "Kim teaches away from the claimed subject matter" (App. Br. 11 ). The fact that Kim discloses the cursor being spaced from the point of touch does not teach away from the claimed limitation of activating an object "at a position of a release of the held touch." Rather, Kim's cursor spacing is an additional feature that improves upon prior techniques by allowing the cursor to be more easily seen (see Kim if 8), but which the Examiner does not rely upon in the rejection. As mentioned above, the Examiner only relies on Kim for the feature of activating an object upon release of a touch, not the cursor spacing feature (see Ans. 4). Duarte teaches manipulating a cursor that is located at the point of touch (Duarte if 106). It would have been obvious to combine only Kim's activation upon release feature and not Kim's cursor spacing feature with Duarte because "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill." KSR Int'! Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007). In other words, we 4 Appeal2014-008560 Application 13/046,161 find it would have been obvious to include less than all of Kim's teachings with Duarte if such combination represented an improvement to Duarte. Here, the Examiner identifies how Kim's teaching could be used to improve Duarte, thus providing a rationale for the combination: "selecting an object pointed to by a cursor after releasing contact accelerates the process of selecting objects by not having to input a subsequent command to select the object, thus advantageously speeding up the process of selecting an object on the display" (Final Act. 4). In the Reply Brief, Appellants note "no activation of a user interface object is achieved in Duarte upon release of a held touch" and thus "the present rejection of claim 1 must rely on Kim" (Reply Br. 6-7). This is indeed the basis of the Examiner's rejection-that it is the collective teaching of the references that discloses the limitations of claim 1 (see Final Act. 2--4; Ans. 4). However, we disagree that the combination of Duarte and Kim presents "a modification of Duarte that teaches away from the claimed subject matter" (Reply Br. 7), for the reasons discussed above. We are, therefore, not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1, and claims 2-15 not specifically argued separately. CONCLUSION The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 1-15 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 103(a). DECISION For the above reasons, the Examiner's rejections of claims 1-15 are affirmed. 5 Appeal2014-008560 Application 13/046,161 No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. Â§ 1.136(a)(l )(iv). AFFIRMED 6