Stryker Corporation

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.

17/064,864 10/07/2020 Krishna Sandeep Bhimavarapu 143667.193281 (P-492B) 2527 155565 7590 05/07/2025

Warner Norcross + Judd LLP

In re: Stryker

150 Ottawa Ave NW, Suite 1500 Grand Rapids, MI 49503

EXAMINER

HRANEK, KAREN AMANDA

ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER

3684

NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE

05/07/2025 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):

patents@wnj.com

PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

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UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE

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BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD

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Ex parte KRISHNA SANDEEP BHIMAVARAPU, WILLIAM DWIGHT CHILDS, CHRISTOPHER RYAN SWEENEY, and ANNIE DÉSAULNIERS

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Appeal 2024-002623

Application 17/064,864

Technology Center 3600

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Before ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, ADAM J. PYONIN, and MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges. PYONIN, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant¹appeals from the Examiner's rejection. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm.

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE

The Application is directed to "providing health information regarding a patient's visit to a healthcare facility, such as a hospital." Spec. ¶ 2. Claims 1-21 are pending. Final Act. 2. Claim 1, the sole independent claim, is reproduced below for reference (emphasis added):

1. A non-transitory computer readable medium with computer executable instructions stored thereon adapted to be executed by a processor of a mobile electronic device having a display, the computer executable instructions, when executed, causing the processor to perform a method comprising:

wirelessly retrieve bed data regarding a plurality of beds from a server hosted on a computer network of a healthcare facility, the server being in communication with the plurality of beds positioned within a healthcare facility, the bed data including at least one of the following: a position of a siderail of a particular bed of the plurality of beds, a status of a brake of the particular bed, a height of a litter frame of the particular bed, or a status of an exit detection system of the particular bed;

display on the display of the mobile electronic device a plurality of patients;

in response to a caregiver selecting a particular one of the patients, perform the following:

display on the display of the mobile electronic

device the bed data corresponding to the bed associated with the selected patient;

display on the display of the mobile electronic

device rounding data relating to the caregiver's performance of his or her rounding duties for the selected patient;

receive rounding information from the caregiver

regarding a performance of his or her rounding duties for the selected patient;

transmit the rounding information to the computer network of the healthcare facility; and

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receive service data for the bed associated with the selected patient from a vendor server and, in response to a caregiver selecting a service screen, display on the display of the mobile electronic device the service data on the service screen, wherein the service data indicates at least one of the following: (a) an estimate of a time at which service will be performed, or (b) an estimate of the length of time the service will take to be performed.

Appeal Br. 11-12.

Claims 1-21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 for being patent ineligible. Final Act. 3.

ANALYSIS

We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellant's arguments. Arguments Appellant could have made but chose not to make are forfeited or deemed to be waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv). We disagree with Appellant that the Examiner erred and adopt as our own the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner, to the extent consistent with our analysis below. We add the following analysis below primarily for emphasis.

A. Examiner's Rejection

The Examiner concludes the claims are patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101, because "the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more." Final Act. 3; see also Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208, 217 (2014) (describing the two-step framework "for distinguishing patents that claim laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas from those that claim patent-eligible applications of those concepts"); USPTO patent eligibility guidance (the "Guidance") found

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within Section 2106 of the MPEP (describing the three-step (Step 2A Prong One, Step 2A Prong Two, Step 2B) framework for determining whether a claim satisfies the judicial criteria for subject matter eligibility). Specifically, the Examiner determines claim 1 recites steps that "cover certain methods of organizing human activity, e.g.[,] managing relationships or interactions between people" and "each of these steps, when considered as a whole, describe the collection and sharing of information relating to a clinical or healthcare work environment, which falls into the category of certain methods of organizing human activity because these types of data could be manually collected and communicated among clinical staff in a healthcare workplace." Final Act. 4.

B. Appellant's Contentions

Appellant argues the Examiner errs, because "claim 1 is not directed to a method of organizing human activity." Appeal Br. 3. Appellant further argues the recited "mobile electronic device . . . is not a generic computer"

and argues the "server," recited in claim 1, "is not a general server." Appeal Br. 4. Appellant also argues "claim 1 recites significantly more than the judicial exception" and that "[t]he information transmitted to the server is not generic information, but instead is rounding information 'regarding a performance of his or her duties for the selected patient.'" Appeal Br. 5. C. Discussion

Claim 1 recites a method for retrieving and displaying, for a health caregiver, various data regarding a patient's bed in a healthcare facility. See Appeal Br. 11-12 (Claims Appendix); Spec. ¶¶ 12, 16-18, 100, and 104. We agree with the Examiner that claim 1 is patent ineligible, as discussed with respect to the steps of the Guidance below. See Final Act. 3-9.

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Step 2A, Prong One First, we agree with the Examiner that the claim recites a judicial exception including certain methods of organizing human activity. See Final Act. 3-4 (Determining the claims set forth "data that could be observed and shared by human actors in the course of patient charting and facilities management."), MPEP § 2106.04(a)(2)(II); cf. Content Extraction & Transmission LLC v. Wells Fargo Bank, Nat'l Ass'n, 776 F.3d 1343, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (Determining that claims drawn to collecting data, recognizing certain data within the collected set, and storing the recognized data were patent ineligible, noting that "humans have always performed these functions."); Univ. of Fla. Rsch. Found., Inc. v. Gen. Elec. Co., 916 F.3d 1363, 1367 (Fed. Cir. 2019) (On its face, the . . . patent seeks to automate 'pen and paper methodologies' to conserve human resources and minimize errors. This is a quintessential 'do it on a computer" patent: it acknowledges that data from bedside machines was previously collected, analyzed, manipulated, and displayed manually, and it simply proposes doing so with a computer. We have held such claims are directed to abstract ideas").

We agree with the Examiner that the retrieved "bed data" could be alternatively manually collected by hospital staff, and thus is an example of the determined abstract concept. See Final Act. 4.

Although Appellant argues "[t]his [claimed device and method] does not involve a method of organizing human activity by following rules or instructions," Appellant does not present substantive, persuasive arguments that explain why the claim fails to set forth the abstract idea as determined by the Examiner. Appeal Br. 4; see Reply Br. 1. Accordingly, we are not

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persuaded the Examiner errs in determining the claim recites an abstract idea pursuant to Step 2A, Prong One of the Guidance.

Step 2A, Prong Two

Although Appellant argues that claim 1 is integrated into a practical application because the recited elements such as the "mobile electronic device" and the "server" are not generic, Appellant's Specification describes otherwise. Appeal Br. 4-5; see Reply Br. 2. For example, paragraph 65 of the Specification describes that the electronic device could be, generically, a smart phone, laptop or tablet. See Spec. ¶ 65, Ans. 4. Furthermore, paragraph 74 of the Specification describes that the servers are

"conventional servers." See Spec. ¶ 74, Ans. 4. Therefore, we are not persuaded by Appellant's arguments and agree with the Examiner that the additional elements of claim 1 do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. See Ans. 5; Univ. of Fla. Rsch. Found., Inc. v. Gen. Elec. Co., 916 F.3d 1363, 1368 (Fed. Cir. 2019) ("We hold at Alice step one that representative claim 1 is directed to the abstract idea of 'collecting, analyzing, manipulating, and displaying data.'"). Appellant further argues the limitations of claim 1 "reflect an improvement in the ability of caregivers to carry out certain of their tasks."

Appeal Br. 4. However, any benefit claimed is the improvement in the abstract idea of coordinating medical data for caregivers. See Spec. 3 ("to easily review and/or input information regarding patients, medical equipment, treatment, and other information"); Final Act. 4; Ans. 4-5. Such an improvement to the abstract idea does not integrate the recited judicial exception into a practical application. See MPEP § 2106.04(d); Alice, 573

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U.S. at 222 (Describing the holding in Flook², in which "the formula itself was an abstract idea . . ., and the computer implementation was purely conventional" and "[i]n holding that the process was patent ineligible, we rejected the argument that 'implement[ing] a principle in some specific fashion' will 'automatically fal[l] within the patentable subject matter of § 101.'").

Step 2B

We also agree with the Examiner that—contrary to Appellant's assertions (see, e.g., Appeal Br. 5-6, Reply Br. 2)—the claimed system to perform the method comprises well-understood, routine, and conventional computing activities and elements. See Final Act. 7-8; Ans. 5-6; Spec. ¶¶ 65, 74, and 153. That is, claim 1 merely invokes these generic elements as a tool to execute the abstract idea, and therefore is not a patentable application of the judicial exception. See Ans. 4-7. The claim does not recite significantly more than the recited judicial exception. Other Patent

Lastly with respect to claim 1, Appellant argues a comparison of the instant application with a claim of U.S. Patent 11,763,659. See Appeal Br. 6-8. This argument is unpersuasive of Examiner error. Rather than a review of other patents, the correct inquiry and analysis in any appeal must be directed to the pending claims. See Accenture Glob. Servs., GmbH v. Guidewire Software, Inc., 728 F.3d 1336, 1345 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (admonishing that "the important inquiry for a § 101 analysis is to look to the claim"). "Each case is determined on its own merits," and "[i]n

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reviewing specific rejections of specific claims, [the Board] does not consider allowed claims in other applications or patents." In re Gyurik, 596 F.2d 1012, 1018 n.15 (CCPA 1979) (citations omitted). Thus, we are not persuaded by Appellant's arguments. Based on the foregoing, we agree with the Examiner that claim 1 is ineligible for patenting. Credit Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Servs., 859 F.3d 1044, 1056 (Fed. Cir. 2017) ("merely configuring generic computers in order to supplant and enhance an otherwise abstract manual process is precisely the sort of invention that the Alice Court deemed ineligible for patenting") (some internal formatting and quotations omitted). We sustain the Examiner's rejection of claim 1, and the claims 2-15 which are not substantively and separately argued.

Dependent Claims

Appellant contends the Examiner's rejection of claims 16-21 is in error. Appeal Br. 8-10. Appellant's arguments, however, consist of restating the respective claim limitations and asserting these limitations meet the requirements of eligibility pursuant to the Guidance. See id.; Reply Br. 3-4. Such arguments are unpersuasive. We agree with the Examiner's analysis, and as stated above, incorporate it as our own. See Final Act. 5-9; Ans. 6-9.

CONCLUSION

We affirm the Examiner's eligibility rejection of claims 1-21.

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DECISION SUMMARY

The following table summarizes our decision:

Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/ Basis Affirmed Reversed

1-21 101 Eligibility 1-21

TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE

No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED

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