Ex Parte Krajcev et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 26, 2017

11502358 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 26, 2017)

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.
11/502,358 08/11/2006 Dimitar Krajcev 041905-0356517 7667
909 7590
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP
PO Box 10500
McLean, VA 22102
EXAMINER
EVANS, KIMBERLY L
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3629
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/28/2017 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):
docket_ip@pillsburylaw.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte DIMITAR KRAJCEV, SEAD DIZDAREVIC,
SANJIN KARABEGOVIC, LISA DOOLEY, MIRJANA
GARCIA, STEPHEN WELCH, ADAM WIXTED,
ELIZABETHE MIELLO, and BRIAN MOSTELLER1
Appeal 2015-000499
Application 11/502,358
Technology Center 3600
Before HUBERT C. LORIN, CYNTHIA L. MURPHY, and
BRADLEY B. BAYAT, Administrative Patent Judges.
BAYAT, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35U.S.C. § 134 from the Examiner’s final
rejection of claims 1—8, 10-42, and 44—50, which are all of the pending
claims.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.
1 According to Appellants, “Global Sports Consultants, LLC d/b/a Jet Set
Sports” is the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 2 (filed Feb. 10, 2014).
2 “Claims 9 and 43 are cancelled.” Id.
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Application 11/502,358
CLAIMED INVENTION
Appellants’ “invention relates to an integrated system for the creation
and management of hospitality programs for Olympic (and other) events.”
Spec. 1. Claim 1, the sole independent claim on appeal, is representative of
the claimed subject matter.
1. A computer implemented system configured to create
and manage hospitality programs for coordinated events, the
system comprising one or more physical processors executing
one or more instructions that cause the system to:
[(a)] store, at a memory device, data related to event
inventory items available to a hospitality program provider for a
first coordinated event, wherein the event inventory items
comprise hospitality or entertainment resources associated with
the first coordinated event;
[(b)] receive information to form client groups
comprising a first client group and a second client group;
[(c)] receive client group hospitality program
parameters comprising a first set of parameters for the first
client group and a second set of parameters for the second client
group;
[(d)] allocate a first set of event inventory items for the
first coordinated event to the first client group as a whole based
on the first set of parameters;
[(e)] allocate a second set of event inventory items for
the first coordinated event to the second client group as a whole
based on the second set of parameters;
[(f)] provide a first user interface to enable a first
external participant that is authorized by the system to act
behalf of the first client group to manage allocation of
individual event inventory items in the first set of event
inventory items to individual guests in the first client group;
and
[(g)] provide a second user interface to enable a second
external participant that is authorized by the system to act on
behalf of the second client group to manage allocation of
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individual event inventory items in the second set of event
inventory items to individual guests in the second client group.
EVIDENCE & REJECTIONS3
The Examiner relied on the following evidence in rejecting the claims
on appeal:
Breitenbach et al.
Darling
Barrera et al.
Mark
Ling et al.
Sussman et al.
US 2002/0016729 Al
US 2004/0073615 Al
US 2004/0267567 Al
US 2005/0181765 Al
US 2006/0206610 Al
US 2007/0055554 Al
Feb. 7, 2002
Apr. 15,2004
Dec. 30, 2004
Aug. 18 2005
Sept. 14, 2006
Mar. 8, 2007
Claims 1—8, 10-42, and 44—50 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101
as directed to non-statutory subject matter. Answer 36 (“Ans.,” mailed
Aug. 1,2014).
Claims 1^1, 7, 8, 11-13, 24, 25, 28-35, 38, 40-42, 44, 45, 47, 49,
and 50 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Barrera
and Sussman. Id. at 3.
Claims 5, 6, 10, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, and 48 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Barrera, Sussman, and Breitenbach.
Id. at 25.
Claims 20, 26, and 27 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Barrera, Sussman, and Ling. Id. at 31.
Claims 36 and 39 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Barrera, Sussman, and Darling. Id. at 34.
3 The rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, as failing to comply
with the written description requirement have been withdrawn. See Ans. 38.
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Claim 37 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Barrera, Sussman, and Mark. Id. at 35.
ANALYSIS
Non-statutory Subject Matter
Claims 1—8, 10—42, 44—47, 49, and 50
Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Inti, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014)
identifies a two-step framework for determining whether claimed subject
matter is judicially-excepted from patent eligibility under § 101. According
to Alice step one, it must first be determined whether the claims at issue are
directed to a patent-ineligible concept, such as an abstract idea. Alice, 134 S.
Ct. at 2355. Step two is “a search for an ‘inventive concept’—i.e., an
element or combination of elements that is ‘sufficient to ensure that the
patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the
[ineligible concept] itself.”’ Id.
According to Alice step one, the Examiner finds that the claims are
“directed to the abstract idea of managing and planning hospitality
accommodations for an event (organizing human activities).” Ans. 37.
Proceeding to Alice step two, the Examiner determines that the additional
elements in the claims alone or in combination amount to no more than mere
instructions to implement the abstract idea on a generic computer that serves
to perform generic computer functions that are well-understood, routine, and
conventional. Id.
Responding to the rejection, Appellants contend that even assuming
arguendo that independent claim 1 includes the alleged abstract idea, “claim
1 is patent eligible because the claim as a whole offers significantly more
than the alleged abstract idea itself.” Reply Br. 2 (“independent claim 1 is a
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system comprising one or more physical processors executing instructions
that cause the system to perform concrete operations”). According to
Appellants, “for example, the system facilitates at least two ‘level’
allocations of event inventory items via user interfaces that enable system-
authorized external participants to allocate individual event inventory items
to individual guests of a client group even though the event inventory items
has already been allocated as a set to the client group as a whole.” Id. at 3.
We are unpersuaded by Appellants’ arguments because recitation of a
“computer implemented system” and “one or more physical processors” in
the preamble and introduction of generic elements such as a “memory
device” have been deemed insufficient by the Supreme Court to transform a
patent-ineligible claim into one that is patent-eligible, and they fails to do so
in claim 1 as well. See Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2358; see also, e.g., Mortg.
Grader, Inc. v. First Choice Loan Servs. Inc., 811 F.3d 1314, 1324—25 (Fed.
Cir. 2016)(explaining that “generic computer components such as an
‘interface,’ ‘network,’ and ‘database’ ... do not satisfy the inventive
concept requirement” (citations omitted)). Moreover, the functions
performed by the system in claim 1, i.e., storing data, receiving information,
receiving program parameters, allocating inventory items based on the
received parameters, and providing a user interface to management
inventory items are routine, conventional, and well-known functions, and
require nothing more than a generic computer performing generic computer
functions. Cf. Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2360 (“Nearly every computer will
include a ‘communications controller’ and ‘data storage unit’ capable of
performing the basic calculation, storage, and transmission functions
required by the method claims.”).
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Indeed, we find that the Specification describes the claimed system as
being implemented on a “computer-based mobile device” (Spec. 25) or “any
computer” (Spec. 40), which supports the view that the computer
implementation is entirely conventional. According to the Specification, the
objective of the invention is to overcome performing “tedious, time
consuming and inefficient” manual activities by automating via computer
technology. Spec. 1—2 (“The amount of planning and logistics involved in
handling some of these hospitality programs can be very significant. In the
past, many of these activities were performed manually. This is tedious,
time consuming and inefficient. More recently, some aspects of these
logistics and management have been automated through the use of computer
technology.”). But “relying on a computer to perform routine tasks more
quickly or more accurately is insufficient to render a claim patent eligible.”
OIP Techs., Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1363 (Fed. Cir. 2015),
cert, denied, 136 S. Ct. 701 (2015) (citing Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2359 (“use of
a computer to create electronic records, track multiple transactions, and issue
simultaneous instructions” is not an inventive concept)). The claim when
viewed as whole is nothing more than performing conventional processing
functions that courts have routinely found insignificant to transform an
abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention. As such, claim 1 amounts to
nothing significantly more than an instruction to implement the abstract idea
on a generic computer — which is not enough to transform an abstract idea
into a patent-eligible invention. See Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2360.
Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of independent claim 1, and
dependent claims 2—8, 10-42, 44-47, 49, and 50, which are not argued
separately. See Reply Br. 3.
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Claim 48
Appellants separately argue that dependent claim 48 “offers
significantly more than the alleged abstract idea” because it “further
includes the feature of the system reallocating individual event inventory
items (that have been allocated to a client group as a whole) to
individual guests of the client group.” Id. But Appellants offer no
evidence or reasoning that reallocating inventory items is novel or improves
the functioning of the computer itself. And the Specification merely
indicates that “the system may automatically (or manually) enable a
determination of which hospitality inventory items can/should be allocated
to the guest”, utilizing guest registration information and the inventory
database. See Spec. 19. As with data matching, the function performed here
is nothing beyond well understood, routine, and conventional activity
performed by a generic computer.
Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of claim 48.
Obviousness
In rejecting independent claim 1 as obvious over Barrera and
Sussman, the Examiner acknowledges that Barrera does not disclose
limitations (f) and (g), and instead relies on paragraphs 7, 9, 11, and 85 in
Sussman to cure these deficiencies. See Final Action 8 (mailed Aug. 7,
2013).
Appellants contest the Examiner’s finding and argue:
Sussman appears to teach the use of a user interface to enable a
user to purchase tickets for the user's group. [Sussman, H 11
and 85]. However, among other deficiencies, Sussman does not
teach that its user interface enables the user to manage
allocation of individual event inventory items in a first set of
event inventory items (that has already been allocated to the
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user's group) to individual guests in the user's group. Sussman
therefore fails to cure the admitted deficiencies of Barrera. The
Examiner has failed to establish otherwise.
Appeal Br. 10.
In response to Appellants’ argument, the Examiner asserts:
Appellant fails to point out how the claims are patentably
distinct over the prior art; appellant merely repeats the claim
language of claim 1, summarizes appellant’s disclosure and the
prior art as it relates to the claim features, and subsequently
states that the applied references either alone or in combination,
fail to teach or suggest the features of appellant’s invention
without any rationale as to how the limitations are different or
distinguished from the prior art.
Ans. 43.
We disagree with the Examiner’s characterization of Appellants’
argument because Appellants specify why the Examiner’s findings in
paragraphs 11 and 85 of Sussman fail to meet the disputed limitations, as
recited in claim 1. See supra. Thus, we review the Examiner’s findings in
Sussman as to contested limitations (f) and (g). For instance, paragraph 7
merely indicates that the embodiments described in Sussman are related to
resource allocation. Paragraph 9 describes automatically identifying a
potential alternate resource in response to determining that a user requested
resource is unavailable. Paragraph 11 describes a method of setting a ticket
price. And finally, paragraph 85 describes providing a web page or user
interface to a user listing event tickets offered (including available units,
seats, and price), “wherein the user can enter the quantity of Units (e.g.,
tickets) that the user is bidding on, is interested in purchasing, offering to
purchase, etc.” Sussman | 85. As such, we are persuaded that the Examiner
erred in finding that Sussman discloses limitations (f) and (g) of claim 1
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because the relied upon paragraphs do not disclose any functionality for an
authorized user or external participant to act on behalf of a group to manage
allocations of individual event inventory items, as required by claim 1.
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the rejection of independent
claim 1 as obvious over Barrera and Sussman. For the same reasons, we
reverse the rejections of the dependent claims because the Examiner use of
the additional cited references fail to cure the deficiencies discussed above.
DECISION
The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1—8, 10-42, and 44—50 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).
AFFIRMED
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