Court Opinion

ID: 9910374
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-12-15 16:01:25.29343+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:52:29.613998
License: Public Domain

Case: 23-1425    Document: 28    Page: 1   Filed: 12/15/2023

        NOTE: This disposition is nonprecedential.

   United States Court of Appeals
       for the Federal Circuit
                  ______________________

      IN RE: WILLIAM HENRY STARRETT, JR.,
                      Appellant
               ______________________

                        2023-1425
                  ______________________

     Appeal from the United States Patent and Trademark
 Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board in No. 14/921,682.
                   ______________________

                Decided: December 15, 2023
                  ______________________

    WILLIAM STARRETT, JR., Richardson, TX, pro se.

    KAKOLI CAPRIHAN, Office of the Solicitor, United States
 Patent and Trademark Office, Alexandria, VA, for appellee
 Katherine K. Vidal. Also represented by ROBERT MCBRIDE,
 AMY J. NELSON, FARHEENA YASMEEN RASHEED.
              ______________________

    Before LOURIE, STOLL, and CUNNINGHAM, Circuit
 Judges.
 PER CURIAM.
     William Henry Starrett, Jr. appeals from a decision of
 the United States Patent and Trademark Office Patent
 Trial and Appeal Board (“the Board”) affirming an exam-
 iner’s rejections of the pending claims of U.S. Patent
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 2                                           IN RE: STARRETT

 Application 14/921,682 (“the ’682 application”) as directed
 to patent ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101
 and as anticipated under § 102, as well as the rejection of
 certain pending claims as indefinite under § 112(b). Ex
 parte William Henry Starrett Jr., No. 2021-000504, 2022
 WL 1799367 (P.T.A.B. May 31, 2022) (“Decision”). For the
 following reasons, we affirm.
                        BACKGROUND
     The twenty-six claims of the ’682 application generally
 relate to “editing, storing, converting, encoding, generat-
 ing, or maintaining representations of subjective experi-
 ences, physiological responses, or expressive responses as
 a representation of emotion in a computing environment.”
 ’682 application, ¶ 6. For example, in one described embod-
 iment, the invention gathers data from devices measuring
 physiological conditions such as brain activity, heart rate,
 or body temperature and uses that data to define, recreate,
 or maintain a subject’s emotional state. Id. ¶ 44.
     Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative for pur-
 poses of this appeal:
     1. A machine having a memory containing data
     representing either of or both data structures and
     program instructions for editing, storing, convert-
     ing, encoding, generating, or maintaining said data
     structures representing
        one or more immersive first-person experiences
        of emotion with zero, one, or more representa-
        tions of immersive first-person physical sensa-
        tions of self-awareness and zero, one, or more
        representations of a vantage
            using a hierarchy of coordinate systems be-
            ing generated by a method comprising the
            steps of:
                analyzing one or more bodies;
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 IN RE: STARRETT                                              3

                   obtaining information about a body;
                   generating one or more hierarchical
                   representation.
 Id. at claim 1 (emphases added).
      The examiner rejected all twenty-six claims (1) under
 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to patent-ineligible sub-
 ject matter, (2) under § 102 as being anticipated by Froloff, 1
 and (3) under § 112(b) as being indefinite. Decision at
 *1–2. Additionally, the examiner rejected claims 9, 10, 16,
 17, 25, and 26 under § 112(a) for failing to comply with the
 written description requirement. Id. at *1. Starrett ap-
 pealed to the Board, asserting that each of the examiner’s
 rejections was improper and should be overturned.
      The Board sustained the examiner’s rejections under
 §§ 101 and 102 in full, and the rejections under § 112(b) in
 part. Id. at *13. Accordingly, the Board affirmed the Ex-
 aminer’s final decision as it sustained at least one ground
 of rejection with respect to each claim on appeal, although
 it did reverse the examiner’s rejections under § 112(a) and
 a handful of the rejections under § 112(b). Id. at *13–14;
 see also 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(a)(1). Starrett subsequently filed
 a request for rehearing, which the Board denied in a later
 decision. Ex parte William Henry Starrett Jr., No. 2021-
 000504, 2022 WL 17223428 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 23, 2022).
    Starrett timely appeals. We have jurisdiction under 28
 U.S.C. § 1295(a)(4)(A) and 35 U.S.C. § 141(a).
                          DISCUSSION
     We review the Board’s legal determinations de novo, In
 re Elsner, 381 F.3d 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 2004), and the
 Board’s factual findings for substantial evidence, In re
 Gartside, 203 F.3d 1305, 1316 (Fed. Cir. 2000). A finding

     1   U.S. Patent 7,720,784 (filed Aug. 30, 2005).
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 4                                            IN RE: STARRETT

 is supported by substantial evidence if a reasonable mind
 might accept the evidence as adequate to support the find-
 ing. Consol. Edison Co. v. NLRB, 305 U.S. 197, 229 (1938).
      Starrett appeals each ground of rejection that was sus-
 tained by the Board. We first review the Board’s § 102 an-
 ticipation determination, which applies to all of the ’682
 application’s twenty-six claims. A claim “is anticipated
 only if each and every element as set forth in the claim is
 found, either expressly or inherently described, in a single
 prior art reference,” Verdegaal Bros. v. Union Oil Co. of
 California, 814 F.2d 628, 631 (Fed. Cir. 1987), and “antici-
 pation is a question of fact subject to substantial evidence
 review.” Microsoft Corp. v. Biscotti, Inc., 878 F.3d 1052,
 1068 (Fed. Cir. 2017).
      On appeal to this court, Starrett repeats many of the
 same contentions regarding this issue that he argued to the
 Board, going insofar as to quote large sections of his appeal
 brief to the Board and request for rehearing to the Board
 verbatim. Starrett asserts that the ’682 application’s
 claims are not anticipated because (1) Froloff’s depictions
 of emotive states are not representations of “immersive
 first-person experiences of emotion,” (2) Froloff’s data
 structures do not use “a hierarchy of coordinate systems,”
 and (3) Froloff does not disclose “representations of immer-
 sive first-person physical sensations of self-awareness” or
 “representations of a vantage” as recited in the claim 1 of
 the ’682 application.
     Regarding claim 1’s recitation of “data structures rep-
 resenting one or more immersive first-person experiences,”
 the Board agreed with the examiner that “Froloff discloses
 emotive vectors, or emovectors, that represent emotive con-
 tent.” Decision at *12. On appeal, Starrett argues that
 such disclosure does not anticipate claim 1’s representa-
 tions of “immersive first-person experiences of emotion,”
 but he fails to adequately explain how that limitation re-
 quires more than Froloff’s disclosed emovectors. Starrett
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 IN RE: STARRETT                                               5

 seems to argue that Froloff’s disclosure is insufficient be-
 cause its emovectors are represented by sets of predefined
 labels, representations, and designations. Appellant’s Br.
 at 47, 55. Starrett cites a single passage from the ’682 ap-
 plication specification in support, which describes the
 preexisting technology’s limited ability to recreate human
 state experiences and freely model complex sensational
 events inside of emotional events. Id. at 55 (citing ’682 ap-
 plication, ¶ 4). But this is not what is required by the
 claims, which recite, “data structures representing one or
 more immersive first-person experiences of emotion.” ’682
 application, claim 1 (emphasis added). The application’s
 claims do not require data structures with undefined la-
 bels, as Starrett seemingly argues here. Nor does the spec-
 ification show otherwise. The specification language relied
 on by Starrett merely describes the state of the background
 art and does not support reading an unwritten requirement
 into the claim. During examination, although claims are
 to be given their broadest reasonable interpretation con-
 sistent with the specification and should be read in light of
 the specification as it would be interpreted by one of ordi-
 nary skill in the art, In re Am. Acad. Of Sci. Tech Ctr., 367
 F.3d 1359, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2004), “[w]e have cautioned
 against reading limitations into a claim from the preferred
 embodiment described in the specification, even if it is the
 only embodiment described, absent clear disclaimer in the
 specification.” Id. at 1369.
      As for the claim limitation requiring the use of “a hi-
 erarchy of coordinate systems,” the Board agreed with the
 examiner that Froloff’s emovectors correspond to coordi-
 nate systems and that Froloff discloses an associated hier-
 archal model. Decision at *12–13. The Board specifically
 relied on Figure 3 of Froloff, which the reference describes
 as “an illustration of the emotive hierarchy.” Id. at *12 (cit-
 ing Froloff, Fig. 3, col. 17 ll. 25–58). Figure 3 depicts a pyr-
 amid chart that presents physical, emotional, and cognitive
 signals in ascending order and directional markers
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 6                                             IN RE: STARRETT

 associated with pain and pleasure. Froloff, Fig. 3, col. 17 l.
 25–col. 18 l. 62. The Board also relied on Froloff’s Figure
 6, which illustrates an “emotive displacement calculation”
 using “a two[-]dimensional space wherein pleasure and
 pain are opposing directions on an orthogonal time axis.”
 Decision at *12 (citing Froloff, Fig. 6, col. 21 ll. 34–38).
 However, Starrett seems to argue on appeal that the two-
 dimensional nature of Froloff’s disclosures is insufficient to
 anticipate the claims of the ’682 application. Appellant’s
 Br. at 45–47, 54–56. But, again, this is not what is required
 by the claims. Claim 1 does not require a minimum num-
 ber of dimensions to be represented in its coordinate sys-
 tems or hierarchy, and Starrett does not direct us to any
 portion of the ’682 application’s specification that supports
 the importation of such an unwritten requirement into the
 claim.
      Concerning the claim limitations requiring “represen-
 tations of immersive first-person physical sensations of
 self-awareness” and “representations of a vantage,” the
 Board found that Starrett’s arguments were “unpersuasive
 of examiner error because these optional limitations are
 non-limiting and need not be disclosed by Froloff for claim
 1 to be anticipated.” Decision at *12. The Board found the
 limitations optional because, in context, they require “zero,
 one, or more representations of immersive first-person
 physical sensations of self-awareness” and “zero, one, or
 more representations of a vantage.” Id. at *3 (citing ’682
 application, claim 1) (emphases in Decision). The Board
 then relied on this court’s decision in In re Johnston, 435
 F.3d 1381 (Fed. Cir. 2006) to find that “optional elements
 do not narrow the claim because they can always be omit-
 ted.” Decision at *3. Although Starrett includes several
 general assertions regarding the “sensations of self-aware-
 ness” and “vantage” limitations in this appeal, see, e.g., Ap-
 pellant’s Br. at 48–49, he fails to explain how the recitation
 of “zero” preceding those limitations does not render them
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 IN RE: STARRETT                                            7

 optional. As such, Starrett has not provided us any basis
 to upset the Board’s decision as to those limitations.
     Accordingly, the Board’s finding that claim 1 of the ’682
 application was anticipated by Froloff is supported by sub-
 stantial evidence. Concerning the application’s remaining
 claims, the Board analyzed claims 11 and 18 separately be-
 cause of their additional limitation regarding “zero, one, or
 more values for subjectively held ideas.” Decision at *13.
 The Board then found that Starrett relied on the same ar-
 guments for the application’s remaining twenty-three
 claims and sustained the examiner’s anticipation rejec-
 tions as to those as well. Although Starrett’s appeal in-
 cludes arguments specifically directed to claims 1, 11, and
 18, Appellant’s Br. at 49–51, he asserts no contentions re-
 garding the “subjectively held ideas” limitation and pre-
 sents no argument that the Board erred in treating claim 1
 as representative. Accordingly, Starrett has waived any
 separate arguments as to claims 2–26 of the ’682 applica-
 tion. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (“Notwithstanding any
 other provision of this paragraph, the failure of appellant
 to separately argue claims which appellant has grouped to-
 gether shall constitute a waiver of any argument that the
 Board must consider the patentability of any grouped claim
 separately.”); Pentax Corp. v. Robison, 135 F.3d 760, 762
 (Fed. Cir. 1998) (stating that “this court will not address
 issues raised for the first time on appeal or issues not pre-
 sented on appeal”).
                        CONCLUSION
     We have considered Starrett’s remaining arguments
 regarding anticipation but find them unpersuasive. As we
 have affirmed a ground of rejection applicable to all of the
 claims in this appeal, we need not address Starrett’s re-
 maining arguments regarding the other grounds of rejec-
 tion. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the Board’s
 rejection of claims 1–26 of the ’682 application.
                        AFFIRMED