Ex Parte ZUMSTEG

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 25, 2018

15160342 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 25, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
15/160,342 05/20/2016
113760 7590
HONEYWELL/OLIFF PLC
115 Tabor Road
P.O. Box 377
MORRIS PLAINS, NJ 07950
09/27/2018
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Philip ZUMSTEG
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.
H0033016 1235
EXAMINER
WILSON, BRIAN P
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2687
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/27/2018 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):
patentservices-us@honeywell.com
OfficeAction113760@oliff.com
SPSIP@honeywell.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte PHILIP ZUMSTEG
Appeal2018---002822
Application 15/160,342
Technology Center 2600
Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, NORMAN H. BEAMER, and
ADAM J. PYONIN, Administrative Patent Judges.
MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's
final rejection of claims 1-20, which constitute all the pending claims in this
application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
1 Appellant identifies Hand Held Products, Inc. as the real party in interest
(App. Br. 1).
Appeal2018---002822
Application 15/160,342
THE INVENTION
Appellant's claimed invention is directed to "correlating quantities of
RFID tags read within several time periods to spatial positions of the
coverage shapes of the RF signals transmitted by the RFID reading device
during [] several time periods" (Abstract).
Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the
subject matter on appeal:
1. A device comprising:
an RFID reader that reads RFID tags in an area
comprising a plurality of locations and determines a number of
the RFID tags that are within each of the plurality of locations;
and
a display that:
displays an image of the area; and
for each of the plurality of locations, overlays an
alphanumeric character over respective portions of the image
corresponding to respective locations where the RFID tags are
read, each alphanumeric character representing the number of
the RFID tags read within each respective location.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is the following:
Yan
Steinberg
Nogami
Cherry
Jesme
US 2003/0135433 Al
US 2005/0212676 Al
US 2006/0022814 Al
US 2007/0063817 Al
US 2009/0160638 Al
2
July 1 7, 2003
Sept. 29, 2005
Feb.2,2006
Mar. 22, 2007
June 25, 2009
Appeal2018---002822
Application 15/160,342
REJECTIONS
The Examiner made the following rejections2 :
Claims 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 13, 15, 18, 19, and 20 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Yan, in view of Cherry. Final
Act. 4.
Claims 3, 9, 10, and 11 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Yan, Cherry, and Jesme. Final Act. 10.
Claim 4 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Yan, Cherry, and Steinberg. Final Act. 12.
Claims 12 and 16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Yan, Cherry, and Nogami. Final Act. 13.
ISSUE
The pivotal issue is whether the Examiner erred in finding the
combination of Yan and Cherry teaches or suggests the limitations of:
"reads RFID tags in an area," "displays an image of the area," and "overlays
an alphanumeric character of over respective portions of the image," as
recited in claim 1, and similarly recited in independent claims 15 and 20.
2 The Final Office Action also provisionally rejected claims 1, 14, 15, 17,
and 20 on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as
being unpatentable over claims 10, 24, and 27 of Application 13/451,761.
See Final Act. 2-3. Appellant filed a Terminal Disclaimer on May 23, 2017.
See App. Br. 6. Accordingly, we summarily reverse the provisional
rejection.
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Appeal2018---002822
Application 15/160,342
ANALYSIS
We adopt the Examiner's findings in the Answer and Final Office
Action and we add the following primarily for emphasis. We note that if
Appellant failed to present arguments on a particular rejection, we will not
unilaterally review those uncontested aspects of the rejection. See Ex parte
Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential); Hyatt v. Dudas,
551 F.3d 1307, 1313-14 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (the Board may treat arguments
Appellants failed to make for a given ground of rejection as waived).
Appellant argues the Examiner's interpretation of "an RFID reader
that reads RFID tags in an area" and a display that "displays an image of the
area" is "nonsensical because the bar graphs of Yan are somehow being
interpreted as 'an image of the area' but this area is not an area where an
RFID reader read RFID tags. In other words, the image of 'the area' must
be where the RFID tags are physically located in" (App. Br. 10, emphasis in
original).
Appellant contends that as illustrated in the disclosure, "the area is
shelving (in the illustrated embodiment) and 'an RFID reader that reads
RFID tags in an area (i.e., shelving)' and 'a display that displays an image
of the area (i.e., an image of the shelving)"' (Reply Br. 3, emphasis in
original, citing Fig. 1 ).
Appellant further contends the Examiner's interpretation of the
limitation of the "system overlays an alphanumeric character over respective
portions of the image" is incorrect because "[t]here is no overlaying over
any image in Yan" and "even the numbers in Yan are not even over the bar
graphs - they are over blank areas of the bar graphs" (App. Br. 11, emphasis
in original).
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Appeal2018---002822
Application 15/160,342
We are not persuaded by Appellant's arguments. The Examiner finds,
and we agree, that with respect to Yan,
[f]or each of the plurality of locations (see Figure 5, items 1011 .
. . 1301), the display overlays an alphanumeric character (see
Figure 5 items "2168" "1786" "986" and "2718") over
' ' ' ' above, or on top of, respective portions of the image
corresponding to the respective locations where the RFID tags
are read (see Figure 5, items 1011 ... 1301)
(Ans. 5) and "Yan clearly discloses displaying 'an image of the area' since
the warehouse contains the RFID tags in each of its plurality of locations"
(Ans. 5---6).
Further, the Examiner finds, and we agree, that "[ w ]ith respect to the
claim language 'displays an image of the area', it is noted that the broadest
reasonable interpretation of 'an image' is any type of representation of a
thing/object" (Ans. 6). Here, the image corresponding to Yan's Figure 5 is
created when Yan' s "inventory searching system retrieves a three-
dimensional diagram of quantity of the storage area 60. Each column 2020
shown on the diagram represents one storage area 60" (Yan ,r 27; see Final
Act. 5). We note the image of Figure 5 retains the contiguous ordering of
the each of the actual storage areas; for example, storage 1021 is located to
the right of storage 1011, and conveys the spatial nature of the storage area.
See Figs. 3, 5.
Appellant's argument that "a display that displays an image of the
area (i.e., an image of the shelving)" (Reply Br. 3) connects a "display" to an
"area" that is "an image of the shelving" has no corroboration in the
disclosure, as the disclosure repeatedly refers to an "image of the physical
structure" (see Spec. ,r,r 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 24, 29, 44, 47, 52, and 75) whereas the
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Appeal2018---002822
Application 15/160,342
claim only requires the display of "an image of the area" and makes no
reference to a "physical structure." The Examiner correctly notes that
claims 12 and 16 support the Examiner's broad but reasonable interpretation
of the limitations of claim 1, as claims 12 and 16 narrow parent independent
claims 1 and 15 through the limitation "the image comprises an actual image
taken of the area." See Ans. 8-9.
The Examiner further broadly and reasonably interprets "overlays,"
finding that
the broadest reasonable interpretation of this word is to lay or
place something over or upon something else. As shown in
Figure 5 of Yan, each alphanumeric character is clearly placed
over something else (i.e., each alphanumeric character is clearly
over each respective portion of the image corresponding to the
respective locations where the RFID tags are read)
(Ans. 11-12). Appellant points to no portion of the disclosure to suggest a
special definition of "overlays." Even if Appellant's argument were
persuasive, an obviousness analysis "need not seek out precise teachings
directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for a court
can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of
ordinary skill in the art would employ." KSR Int'! Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550
U.S. 398,418 (2007).
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner's rejection of independent
claim 1 and independent claims 15 and 20 commensurate in scope, as well
as all dependent claims not separately argued. See App. Br. 9-10.
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Application 15/160,342
CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in finding the combination of Yan and
Cherry teaches or suggests the limitations of: "reads RFID tags in an area,"
"displays an image of the area," and "overlays an alphanumeric character of
over respective portions of the image," as recited in claim 1, and similarly
recited in independent claims 15 and 20.
DECISION
The Examiner's decision provisionally rejecting claims 1, 14, 15, 17,
and 20 on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting is
reversed.
The Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) 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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