Ex Parte Luomala et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 26, 2018

13250286 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 26, 2018)

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.
13/250,286 09/30/2011 Petri Luomala 042933/410244 7906
10949 7590
Nokia Corporation and Alston & Bird LLP
c/o Alston & Bird LLP
Bank of America Plaza, 101 South Tryon Street
Suite 4000
Charlotte, NC 28280-4000
EXAMINER
TSENG, CHARLES
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2613
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/28/2018 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):
u sptomail @ alston .com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte PETRI LUOMALA, JANNE V. KYLLONEN,
JARI LAHDENPERA, and MARKKU RYTIVAARA
Appeal 2017-003079
Application 13/250,286
Technology Center 2600
Before MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, and
AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges.
STRAUSS, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2017-003079
Application 13/250,286
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims
1, 2, 4, 6—9, 11, 13—16, and 18—24. Claims 3, 5, 10, 12, and 17 are canceled.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
THE INVENTION
The claims are directed to providing an overview of a plurality of
home screens. Spec., Title. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the
claimed subject matter:
1. A method comprising:
causing a display of a first home screen;
causing, with a processor, the display to zoom out from the
first home screen to a canvas overview representing a plurality
of home screens including the first home screen, wherein the
canvas overview is configured to present the plurality of home
screens in a continuous arrangement and to group items
accessible via a respective home screen in proximity to one
another;
causing an item to be moved from one home screen to
another portion of the canvas overview designated for creating a
new home screen and not associated with an existing one of the
plurality of home screens; and
in response to the movement of the item from one home
screen to the another portion of the canvas overview designated
for creating the new home screen and determining the item is a
first item to be moved to the another portion of the canvas
overview, causing creation of the new home screen.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Moosavi US 2009/0187840 A1 July 23, 2009
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Shin US 2010/0295789 A1 Nov. 25,2010
Filippov US 2012/0081356 A1 Apr. 5, 2012
REJECTIONS
The Examiner made the following rejections:
Claims 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, 16, and 24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shin. Final Act. 5—9.
Claims 6, 7, 13, 14, and 19-23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over Shin and Filippov. Final Act. 9-13.
Claims 4, 11, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Shin and Moosavi. Final Act. 13—14.
APPELLANTS’ CONTENTION
Appellants contend Shin discloses creation of a new home screen and
subsequent movement of a widget (i.e., item) onto the newly created home
screen, not the creation of a new home screen in response to the movement
of the item as recited by claim 1. App. Br. 7—13; Reply Br. \—A.
ANALYSIS
Appellants’ arguments are unpersuasive of reversible Examiner error.
We adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner
in the action from which this appeal is taken (Final Act. 2—14) and (2) the
reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer in response to
Appellants’ Appeal Brief (Ans. 2—6) and concur with the conclusions
reached by the Examiner. We highlight the following for emphasis.
The Examiner finds Shin’s disclosure of a page edit screen providing
for creation of a new page and the movement of widgets into the new page
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teaches or suggests designation of a blank space (e.g., WP11 prior to being
populated) for creating a new home screen (e.g., WP11 when populated) that
is not associated with the existing home screens (WP1 and WP3). Final Act
2 (citing Shin Fig. 2, H 31—34). The Examiner further finds Shin’s
disclosure of moving of a widget (i.e., item) from an existing page to the
blank page (i.e., the initially empty WP11 prior to being populated) teaches
or suggests movement of items causing the creation of a new home screen
(e.g., the populated WP11) as recited by claim 1. Id. (citing Shin Fig. 2,
140). The Examiner relies on Shin’s disclosure of “mov[ing] a widget W7
from home screen WP3 ... to create a new home screen WP1 with widgets
W1, W2 and W7” for teaching or suggesting “the movement of an item from
one home screen to another portion of the canvas overview as a determined
first item to cause the creation of a new home screen.” Final Act. 3 (citing
Shin Fig. 5, | 58). The Examiner concludes the embodiment depicted in
Shin’s
Fig. 2 may be predictably modified with the page editing as
disclosed in the embodiment of Fig. 5 to facilitate the movement
of a widget, as a determined first item, from an existing home
screen within its page edit screen to the blank space, as . . .
another portion of the canvas overview, to cause creation of the
new home screen for the blank space.
Id.
Appellants argue Shin discloses creating a new page WP 11 by the
manual action of touching a page addition button or a boundary between
pages, not by moving an item from a home screen to another portion
designated for creating a new home screen as required by claim 1. App. Br.
10. Appellants argue Shin’s new page WP11 does not teach the claimed
“another portion of the canvas overview designated for creating a new home
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screen” because it is already a home screen when initially created and,
therefore, fails to satisfy the requirement that it “not [be] associated with an
existing one of the plurality of home screens” as required by claim 1. Id.
Appellants further argue “[t]he Office has not demonstrated how the ‘home
screen edit’ functionality depicted in Figure 5 [of Shin] could be combined
with the ‘add new home screen’ functionality depicted in Figure 2 to deem
the pending claims obvious.” App. Br. 13.
Appellants’ arguments are not persuasive of reversible Examiner error.
Although Shin discloses eleventh page WP11 as a “new page,” it
nonetheless satisfies the requirements for the claimed “another portion of the
canvas overview.” We are not persuaded WP11 fails to teach the recited
another portion of the canvas overview simply because Shin refers to the
region as a new page rather than as a region for creating a new page. That
is, whether Shin’s region WP11 is called “another portion” or a “a new home
screen” does not defeat a finding that the region is designated for creating a
new home screen and thereby teaches or suggests the disputed limitation.
Appellants’ Specification discloses a two-step process in which “a
new home screen may be created by [(1)] presenting a user with a blank
screen and then [(2)] permitting the user to populate the screen with various
items.” Spec. |3. Appellants do not direct attention to and we are unable
to identify any additional or alternative disclosure of what is meant by
“causing creation of the new home screen” that would further limit an
interpretation of the disputed limitation. Similar to the method of claim 1,
Shin discloses a portion of a screen between WP3 and WP1 (i.e., WP11,
Shin || 33—34) into which widgets can be dragged (Shin 140) thereby
populating WP11 with, for example, widgets from other home screens (Shin
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158). Although Shin discloses an initial step of creating a blank or empty
screen region (e.g., WP11) using page addition button 213 (Shin 133), claim
1 does not exclude such a manual step. Furthermore, consistent with
Appellants’ Specification, determining an item is a first item to be moved
into region Wll, i.e., populating the screen as per step 2 above, effectively
creates a new home screen by completing the disclosed two-step new home
screen creation process.
We further note Appellants fail to identify and we are unable to
ascertain any disclosure or definition in the Specification describing what is
meant by the argued “not associated” language used in connection with the
limitation requiring the “another portion of the canvas overview . . . not [be]
associated with an existing one of the plurality of home screens.” See App.
Br. 13. Accordingly, because WP11 is separate from WP1 and WP3, under a
broad but reasonable interpretation we find Shin teaches or suggests the “not
associated” limitation.
We are also not persuaded that the combination of features depicted
by Shin’s Figs. 2 and 5 is improperly based on hindsight reconstruction of
the pending claims. App. Br. 13.
Any judgment on obviousness is . . . necessarily a reconstruction
based upon hindsight reasoning, but so long as it takes into
account only knowledge which was within the level of ordinary
skill at the time the claimed invention was made and does not
include knowledge gleaned only from applicant’s disclosure,
such a reconstruction is proper.
In re McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 1395 (CCPA 1971); see also Radix Corp.
v. Samuels, 13 USPQ2d 1689, 1693 (D.D.C. 1989) (“[A]ny obviousness
inquiry necessarily involves some hindsight.”); In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977,
988 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (“[R]ejections on obviousness grounds . . . must
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[include] some articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to
support the legal conclusion of obviousness”), cited with approval in KSR
Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007). Herein the Examiner
relies on various features described in a single reference, i.e., Shin. It is not
clear why one skilled in the art at the time of the invention would have
segregated Shin’s teaching of various aspects of the disclosed method for
editing pages used for a home screen to exclude a combination of (i) adding
a new home screen and (ii) screen editing functionalities used in connection
with the new screen. Instead, we find the Examiner has articulated
reasoning with rational underpinnings sufficient to justify the legal
conclusion of obviousness. Final Act. 3; Ans. 3.
We also are not persuaded the combination is improper for lack of a
showing the functionalities of Figs. 2 and 5 could be combined. App. Br.
13. Mere attorney arguments and conclusory statements, which are
unsupported by factual evidence, are entitled to little probative value. In re
Geisler, 116 F.3d 1465, 1470 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re De Blauwe, 736 F.2d
699, 705 (Fed. Cir. 1984). Attorney argument is not evidence. In re
Pearson, 494 F.2d 1399, 1405 (CCPA 1974). Nor can such argument take
the place of evidence lacking in the record. Furthermore, contrary to
Appellants’ contention, we note the skilled artisan would “be able to fit the
teachings of multiple patents together like pieces of a puzzle” because the
skilled artisan is “a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton.” KSR,
550 U.S. at 420—21; see also Boston Scientific Scimed, Inc. v. Cordis Corp.,
554 F.3d 982, 991 (Fed. Cir. 2009) (“Combining two embodiments disclosed
adjacent to each other in a prior art patent does not require a leap of
inventiveness.”). Here, Appellants have not demonstrated the Examiner’s
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proffered combination in support of the conclusion of obviousness would
have been “uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the
art.” Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed.
Cir. 2007) (citing KSR, 550 U.S. at 418).
For the reasons discussed above, we are unpersuaded of Examiner
error. Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of independent claim 1 and, for
the same reasons, the rejection of independent claims 8 and 15 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a), together with the rejections of dependent claims 2, 4, 6, 7,
9, 11, 13, 14, 16, and 18—24 which are not argued separately with
particularity.
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 2, 4, 6—9, 11,
13-16, and 18-24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv). See 37
C.F.R. § 41.50(f).
AFFIRMED
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