Ex Parte Mattson et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 28, 2017

14229029 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 28, 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.
14/229,029 03/28/2014 Howard Charles Duncan Mattson 2014P01853US 3016
45113 7590 05/02/2017
Siemens Corporation
Intellectual Property Department
3501 Quadrangle Blvd Ste 230
Orlando, EL 32817
EXAMINER
GEBRESILASSIE, KIBROM K
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2128
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/02/2017 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):
IPDadmin.us@siemens.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte HOWARD CHARLES DUNCAN MATTSON,
DOUGLAS JOSEPH KING, and PAUL JONATHON SANDERS
Appeal 2017-0046891’2
Application 14/229,029
Technology Center 2100
Before: JAMES R. HUGHES, ERIC S. FRAHM, and
JOYCE CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judges.
HUGHES, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1, 3—8, 10—15, and 17—20 which
constitute all the claims pending in this application. Claims 2, 9, and 16
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Siemens Product
Lifecycle Management Software Inc. App. Br. 4.
2 The application on appeal has an effective filing date of Mar. 28, 2014,
and has no parent applications. Therefore, the Leahy-Smith America
Invents Act (AIA) amendments to the U.S. Code (§§ 102, 103) are
applicable. See MPEP § 2159.02: “AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 took effect
on March 16, 2013. AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 apply to any patent
application that contains or contained at any time a claim to a claimed
invention that has an effective filing date that is on or after March 16, 2013.”
Appeal 2017-004689
Application 14/229,029
have been canceled. Final Act. 1—2; see also App. Br. I.3 We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
Appellants ’ Invention
The invention at issue on appeal concerns computer-aided design
(CAD) systems and Product Data Management (PDM) systems, including
computer-readable media, systems, and methods for product data
management. The method receives a CAD model containing a number of
“elements” (individual components) having a number of distinct “features,”
receives a CAD operation to be performed on the elements, edits the one of
the elements by performing a variational solve on the element according to
the CAD operation, and calculates non-variational CAD operations to be
performed on the remaining elements without performing a variational solve
on the remaining elements. Spec. H 1, 3, 34—37; Abstract.
Illustrative Claim
Independent claim 1, reproduced below, with the key disputed
limitations emphasized, further illustrates the invention:
1. A method for product data management, the method
performed by a data processing system and comprising:
receiving a CAD model with a plurality of elements, each
element having a plurality of features;
3 We refer to Appellants’ Specification (“Spec.”) filed Mar. 28, 2014;
Appeal Brief (“App. Br.”) filed July 1, 2016; and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.”)
filed Jan. 24, 2017. We also refer to the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.”)
mailed Dec. 14, 2016, and Final Office Action (Final Rejection) (“Final
Act.”) mailed Dec. 15, 2015.
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Appeal 2017-004689
Application 14/229,029
receiving a CAD operation to be performed on the
plurality of elements;
performing a variational solve on a first one of the
plurality of elements according to the CAD operation to
produce an edited first element;
calculating corresponding non-variational CAD
operations for the remaining plurality of elements according to
the edited first element and a relationship between the edited
first element and the remaining elements to produce an edited
plurality of elements, without performing a variational solve on
the remaining elements', and
storing the edited first element and the edited plurality of
elements in the CAD model.
Rejections on Appeal
1. The Examiner rejects claims 1,5, 8, 12, 15, and 19 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Duncan Mattson et al.
(US 2012/0078582 Al, published Mar. 29, 2012)(“Duncan Mattson”) and
M. Hoffman, et al., Decomposition Plans for Geometric Constraint Systems,
Part I: Performance Measures for CAD, 367-408, Academic Press (2001)
(“Hoffman”).
2. The Examiner rejects claims 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18,
and 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Duncan
Mattson, Hoffman and Jayaram et al. (US 2002/0123812 Al, published
Sept. 5, 2002)(“Jayaram”).4
4 In the Final Office Action, the Examiner did not list Hoffman in the
statement of the rejection. Final Act. 5. The Examiner noted this error and
corrected it in the Examiner’s Answer. Ans. 10; see Advisory Action
(mailed Apr. 12, 2016), p. 2. Appellants contend Hoffman is not part of the
rejection due to the Examiner’s typographical error. App. Br. 43; see also
Reply Br. 34. We find the Examiner’s typographical error to be harmless.
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Appeal 2017-004689
Application 14/229,029
ISSUE
Based upon our review of the administrative record, Appellants’
contentions, and the Examiner’s findings and conclusions, the determinative
issue before us follows:
Does the Examiner err in concluding that the combination of Duncan
Mattson and Hoffman collectively would have taught or suggested
performing a variational solve on a first one of the
plurality of elements according to the CAD operation to produce
an edited first element; [and]
calculating corresponding non-variational CAD
operations for the remaining plurality of elements according to
the edited first element and a relationship between the edited first
element and the remaining elements to produce an edited
plurality of elements, without performing a variational solve on
the remaining elements
within the meaning of Appellants’ claim 1 and the commensurate limitations
of claims 8 and 15?
ANALYSIS
The 35 U.S.C. § 103 Rejection of Claims 1, 5, 8, 12, 15, and 19
The Examiner rejects independent claim 1 as being obvious over
Duncan Mattson and Hoffman. See Final Act. 2—5; Ans. 2—9. Appellants
contend that Duncan Mattson and Hoffman do not teach the disputed
features of claim 1. App. Br. 16—24; Reply Br. 9-22. Specifically,
Appellants contend that “[t]here is no showing by the Office Action of any
We, therefore, use the statement of rejection from the Answer (Ans. 10) for
clarity and consistency of the record.
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Appeal 2017-004689
Application 14/229,029
CAD model in [Duncan] Mattson that has a plurality of elements, each
element having a plurality of features” (App. Br. 19) and Duncan Mattson
“does not teach or suggest any process that uses a variational solve to edit
one element then performs a corresponding nonvariational operation on
other elements according to a relationship between the elements.” (App. Br
18).
We agree with Appellants that Duncan Mattson does not disclose the
disputed features of claim 1. Our decision is predicated upon a proper
construction of the term “element” in Appellants’ claim 1. Here, Appellants
utilize an element to mean a component (see Spec. ^fl[ 30, 34; Figs. 2A, 3A
(elements 306)) and a plurality of elements to mean multiple identical or
nearly identical components. The Examiner, on the other hand, construes
element to mean a characteristic or detail of a component — “i.e.[,] vertices,
edges and faces” of component (Ans. 5). The Examiner’s interpretation of
element, however, is too broad and not consistent with the use of “element”
in Appellants’ Specification.
The Examiner cited portions of Duncan Mattson (see Final Act. 3—5;
Ans. 2—9 (citing Duncan Mattson || 4, 5, 72, 77; Figs. 4A-4H, 5A—C, and
6A—6B)) that only describe performing CAD operations on a portion of a
single component and do not describe performing CAD operations on
multiple identical or nearly identical components (elements) in a larger
model. See App. Br. 19—22. At most Duncan Mattson describes performing
a variational solve on a portion of (feature of) an element (component) and
performing non-variational operations on other features (removing and re­
inserting features) to produce a final edited version of a component (an
element). See Duncan Mattson || 4, 5, 51—64; Figs. 4A-4H, and 5A-C.
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Consequently, we are constrained by the record before us to find that
the Examiner erred in finding the combination of Duncan Mattson and
Hoffman teaches the disputed limitations of Appellants’ claim 1,
independent claims 8 and 15 that include features of commensurate scope,
and dependent claims 5, 12, and 19, which depend from claims 1, 8, and 15,
respectively. Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner’s obviousness rejection
of claims 1, 5, 8, 12, 15, and 19.
The 35 U.S.C. § 103 Rejection of Claims 3, 4, 6, 7, 10,
11, 13, 14, 17, 18, and 20
The Examiner rejects dependent claims 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17,
18, and 20 as being obvious over Mattson, Hoffman and Jayaram. See Final
Act. 5—7; Ans. 9-14. The Examiner did not assert, and we do not find, that
Jayaram cures the deficiencies of the Duncan Mattson and Hoffman
combination {supra). Appellants’ dependent claims 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14,
17, 18, and 20 depend from claims 1, 8, and 15, respectively.
Accordingly, we are also constrained by the record before us to find
that the Examiner erred in concluding Mattson, Hoffman and Jayaram teach
the disputed limitations of Appellants’ claims 3, 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17,
18, and 20 for essentially the same reasons as claim 1 (discussed supra).
Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner’s obviousness rejections of claims 3,
4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 18, and 20.
CONCLUSION
Appellants have shown that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1,
3-8, 10-15, and 17-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
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DECISION
We reverse the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1, 3—8, 10-15, and
17-20.
REVERSED
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