Applicant loses at PTAB in Chavin case

In Ex parte CHAUVIN. PTAB affirmed rejections for indefiniteness and for obviousness.

As to indefiniteness:


The Examiner rejects claim 35 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph, as being indefinite, since “Claim 23 lacks proper antecedent basis
for ‘the relationship data’” (Ans. 4) and thus it is “not immediately clear that
‘relationship data’ is intended to refer to ‘relationship in a database’” (Ans.
12-13). Although Appellants contend that “a simple comparison of the
claim terms ‘relationships in a database’ and ‘relationship data in the
database’ makes it unambiguously clear that the second occurrence refers to
the first occurrence” (App. Br. 8), we find no error in the Examiner’s
conclusion.



As to obviousness:


That is, the combination
is no more than a simple arrangement of old elements, with each performing
the same function it had been known to perform, yielding no more than one
would expect from such an arrangement. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc.,
550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007).


As to unappealed claims


The Examiner has
the authority to cancel the non-appealed claims 34, 37-41, and 45. See Ex
parte Ghuman, 88 USPQ2d 1478, 1480 (BPAI 2008) (precedential).