Ex Parte MAJD et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Aug 25, 2016

13754106 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 25, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
131754,106 01/30/2013
96355 7590 08/29/2016
NIXON & VANDERHYE, P,C /Vonage
901 NORTH GLEBE ROAD, 11 TH FLOOR
ARLINGTON, VA 22203
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
CASEMMAJD
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.
5524-121 3300
EXAMINER
OHR!, ROMANI
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2479
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
08/29/2016 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):
PTOMAIL@nixonvan.com
pair_nixon@firsttofile.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte CASEM MAJD, KENNETH VIAUD,
MAREK RUSINSKI, and NIRA V KADAKIA
Appeal2015-003802
Application 13/754,106
Technology Center 2400
Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., JASON V. MORGAN, and
AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges.
MOORE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal2015-003802
Application 13/754,106
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1-18. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm-in-part.
THE INVENTION
The application is directed to "systems and methods for integrating
route and rank information into call detail records." (Abstract.)
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative:
1. A method implemented using an IP telephony system and for
generating a call detail record, comprising:
rece1vmg information relating to an established
communication between a first communication device and a
second communication device, the information including routing
information for the established communication that includes at
least a route identifier and a rank identifier; and
recording the received route identifier and the rank identifier
in a call detail record that is generated for the established
communication.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Oren et al. US 2012/0257547 Al
Bhattacharya et al. US 2012/0263172 Al
Tischer et al. US 2008/0194251 Al
Oct. 11, 2012
Oct.18,2012
Aug. 14, 2008
1 Appellants identify V onage Network, LLC as the real party in interest.
(See App. Br. 3.)
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Application 13/754,106
THE REJECTIONS 2
1. Claims 1, 4, 5, 7-9, 12, 13, and 15 stand rejected on the ground
of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as unpatentable over
claims 1-11 of Application No. 13/754,562. (See Final Act. 5-9; Ans. 3. 3)
2. Claims 1---6 and 8-14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Oren and Bhattacharya. (See Final Act. 10-17.)
3. Claim 7 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Oren, Bhattacharya, and Tischer. 4 (See Final Act. 17-19.)
APPELLANTS' CONTENTIONS
Appellants argue the rejections are improper because "Oren and
Bhattacharya taken alone, or in combination, fail to disclose or suggest" the
limitations "receiving information relating to an established communication
') .4. • , • I' 1 • I"\. Al 1 -1 A. -1 I"\. 1 ,.... ,- T T r1 l"i l\ -1 -1 I"\. 1
~A reJecnon or crn1ms L---4 ana lV-lL unaer j) u.~.L. s 11.L, secona
paragraph, has been withdrawn. (See Final Act. 3--4; Ans. 2.)
3 The Final Office Action appears to have erroneously identified both Serial
No. 13/754,106, which is this application, and Serial No. 13/257,162 as the
basis for the double patenting rejection. (See Final Act. 6.) We understand
from page 3 of the Answer that the correct Serial Number is 13/754,562.
We note that the claims in Application No. 13/754,562 were allowed without
substantive changes to the relevant claim language, resulting in the issuance
of US 8,913,622 B2 on Dec. 16, 2014, before the mailing date for the
Examiner's Answer re-affirming the obviousness-type double-patenting
rejection. Thus, the Examiner's rejection is now not provisional.
4 The Examiner's 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejections of claims 15-18 have been
withdrawn and those claims now stand objected to as dependent on a
rejected base claim. (See Ans. 2.) It appears, however, that the Examiner's
inclusion of claim 15 in this withdrawal may have been in error, as
corresponding claim 7 is still rejected, and Appellants did not argue claim 15
with claims 16-18.
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Application 13/754,106
... including routing information ... that includes at least a route identifier
and a rank identifier" and "recording the received route identifier and the
rank identifier in a call detail record that is generated for the established
communication" in claim 1, and analogous limitations in independent claims
8 and 9. (See App. Br. 13.)
ANALYSIS
Double Patenting
As Appellants present no separate argument regarding the double
patenting rejection (see App. Br. 11 ), we summarily sustain the rejection of
claims 1, 4, 5, 7-9, 12, 13, and 15 under the judicially created doctrine of
obviousness-type double patenting.
Obviousness
The Specification explains that the claimed system stores routing and
rank information in the call detail record ("CDR") "for purposes of
troubleshooting and quality improvement":
For example, the monitoring unit 110 may review the route and
rank information in the CDRs created by the CDR unit 106 on a
periodic basis to check on how individual gateways are perform-
ing. This is done by checking all CDRs that have a particular
route. Specifically, the monitoring unit 110 is looking to deter-
mine what ranks are appearing in the CDRs that all have a par-
ticular route ....
With the information developed as explained above, the
monitoring unit 110 may decide to modify this row of the routing
table. For example, the monitoring unit 110 may decide to
remove the IP address that was previously in the B rank position
of the routing table 300, because the gateway with that IP address
is not completing any calls.
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Application 13/754,106
Oren teaches a method for providing telephony services that includes
a routing list, which provides destination gateways that can be used to
complete a call, as well as the generation of call detail records where "each
time a user makes a telephone call, at the completion of the telephone call,
various items of information about the call are stored by the system." (Oren
i-fi-138-39.) Oren does not specify the "items of information" that are stored.
Bhattacharya teaches a method and system for routing telephone calls
over a packet-switched network that uses a local routing table to try to
determine the IP address of a remote gateway corresponding to a dialed
telephone number. (Bhattacharya i-f 16.) If the address cannot be found
locally, the gateway sends a message to a router that maintains a list of all
gateways that can efficiently connect with the number. (Id. i-f 17.)
"Predetermined criteria are established for identifying [] the list of suitable
gateways," "[ f]or example, a predetermined list of gateways may be
established for each area code or each exchange." (Id.) "[E]ach gateway
may periodically send a message over the Internet to the router indicating,
for example, the number of calls it is handling, or the number of additional
calls it can handle," "[g]ateways may also send messages to the router each
time predetermined events take place, such as being turned on or turned off,"
and "[t]he router can add and delete gateways from the table of available
gateways based on this information." (Id.) "The router stores this
information in a table" and "then selects the preferred gateway." (Id.)
The Examiner finds that "it would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art to provide the technique of Oren to the system of
Bhattacharya to provide an invention [that] relates to providing [] telephone
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Application 13/754,106
calls over packet-switched networks, such as the Internet, and routing for a
server receiving requests over a packet-switched network to complete
telephone calls." (Final Act. 12.)
Appellants argue that "Oren does not receive both a route identifier
and a rank identifier, nor does Oren write the route identifier and the rank
identifier into a CDR." (App. Br. 15, emphasis omitted.) Appellants further
argue that "Bhattacharya fails to cure these deficiencies" because "[ w ]hile
Bhattacharya arguably performs some type of ranking for selecting a
gateway, this specific rank information is not sent/received, let alone
recorded into a CDR." (Id. at 15-16, emphasis omitted.)
The Examiner responds that "Oren discloses the mechanism of CDR
(call detail record) for storing route information (route identifier, see Fig. 3
of Oren)," and that "Bhattacharya discloses storage devices such as database
(element 170, Fig. 2) for storing the route related information." (Ans. 5.)
We find the Examiner fails to establish that the claimed subject matter
would have been obvious in view of the cited art. The claims require
"recording the received route identifier and the rank identifier in a call detail
record that is generated for the established communication" (claims 1 and 8)
or that "the CDR unit records the received route identifier and the rank
identifier in a call detail record that is generated for the established
communication" (claim 9). While Oren teaches creation of a CDR, and
Bhattacharya teaches a routing table not unlike that described in the
Specification (see, e.g., Fig. 3), the record before us (a) fails to show how or
why Bhattacharya's table could fairly be considered to be, or to be part of,
Oren's CDR, and (b) lacks articulated reasoning with a rational
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Application 13/754,106
underpinning5 for modifying Oren's CDR to include route and rank
identifiers from Bhattacharya's table.
For these reasons, we decline to sustain the Section 103 rejections of
claims 1-14.
DECISION
The rejections of claims 1, 4, 5, 7-9, 12, 13, and 15 for obviousness-
type double patenting are affirmed.
The rejections of claims 1-14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) are reversed.
AFFIRMED-IN-PART
5 See KSR Int'!. Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007) (quoting In re
Kahn, 441F.3d977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006)).
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