Ex Parte Cline et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardSep 27, 201310993185 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 27, 2013) Copy Citation 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. 10/993,185 11/19/2004 William Russell Cline JR. IMGI.117648 3464 5251 7590 09/27/2013 SHOOK, HARDY & BACON LLP INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT 2555 GRAND BLVD KANSAS CITY, MO 64108-2613 EXAMINER BROWN, ALVIN L ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3682 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 09/27/2013 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte WILLIAM RUSSELL CLINE, JR., GERALD BRUCE WILLIAMS, DAVID THOMAS FEYERABEND, JASVINDARJIT SINGH, and NEAL ARJUNA SHARMA ____________ Appeal 2011-000987 Application 10/993,185 Technology Center 3600 ____________ Before MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, and MEREDITH C. PETRAVICK, Administrative Patent Judges. CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2011-000987 Application 10/993,185 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner’s final decision rejecting claims 1-13 and 15-24. We have jurisdiction over the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM-IN-PART. Claim 1 is illustrative: 1. A method for quantifying potential viewer awareness of advertising content that is within a source of media, the method comprising: storing, in a computer readable medium, the source of media, thereby providing a stored source of media; segmenting the stored source of media into a plurality of segments of interest; receiving an identification of one or more advertisement detections that appear in the plurality of segments, wherein the one or more advertisement detections were made without employing image-recognition software; associating one or more attributes with each of the segments, wherein the one or more attributes include a size indication, a duration indication, and an isolation indication associated with the one or more advertisement detections; based on the attributes, categorizing each of the segments into a defined category to derive a plurality of individual detection scores; and aggregating the individual detection scores to provide one or more valuation scores; and generating one or more reports related to the one or more advertisement detections. Appeal 2011-000987 Application 10/993,185 3 Appellants appeal the following rejections: Claims 1-7, 10-11, 13, 15-18, 22, and 23 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis (US 2007/0061203 Al; pub. Mar. 15, 2007) and Rosser (US 6,100,925; iss. Aug. 8, 2000). Claim 8 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis, Rosser, and Logan (US 2002/0120925 Al; pub. Aug. 29, 2002). Claims 9 and 19 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis, Rosser, and Shen (US 2004/0204983 Al; pub. Oct. 14, 2004). Claim 12 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis, Rosser, Ponte (US 7,047,242 B1; iss. May 16, 2006), Maggio (US 2002/0046098 Al; pub. Apr. 18,2002), and Landress (US 2003/0191816 Al; pub. Oct. 9, 2003). Claim 20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis, Rosser, and Eldering (US 2006/0230053 Al; pub. Oct. 12, 2006) (hereinafter “Eldering ‘053”). Claims 21 and 24 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis, Rosser, and Eldering (U.S. 6,820,277 B1; iss. Nov. 16, 2004) (hereinafter “Eldering ‘277”). Appeal 2011-000987 Application 10/993,185 4 ANALYSIS Claims 1-13 We are persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that the combination of Ellis and Rosser teaches or suggests the step of “segmenting the stored source of media into a plurality of segments of interest,” as recited by independent claim 1 (App. Br. 18-19; Reply Br. 4-6). Appellants assert that “Ellis’ organizing, targeting and inserting ads into computer games does not involve any segmenting of a stored source of media” (Reply Br. 6). The Examiner relies on the “advertisements [that] are organized and targeted to specific users” in paragraph [0091] of Ellis to disclose this limitation. (Ans. 3). The Examiner further determines that because Ellis sends packets from its ad server which are assembled at the game client into predetermined ad formats (Ans. 16), Ellis discloses the step of “segmenting the stored source of media into a plurality of segments of interest,” as presently claimed. We cannot agree. In making this determination, we find that targeting ads to various users and inserting them into gaming clients fails to disclose or suggest the step of “segmenting the stored source of media into a plurality of segments of interest,” as presently claimed. While the Examiner may be correct that Ellis transmits data from the server to the client as packets (Ans. 16), we cannot agree with the Examiner that these packets disclose “a plurality of segments of interest” because Ellis’ packets are merely data broken down into data units for transmission between the server and client (paras. [0045]; [0048]). Appeal 2011-000987 Application 10/993,185 5 To the extent the packets in Ellis are segmented, we do not find Ellis’ packets correspond to “segments of interest,” because packets are pieces of data making up a file or an advertisement, and as such, would not allow for advertisement detections to be made, as claim 1 further requires. Thus, the Examiner has failed to establish that the advertisements in Ellis which are organized and targeted to specific users via packets disclose or suggest “segmenting the stored source of media into a plurality of segments of interest,” as recited by independent claim 1. Accordingly, as the Examiner has not set forth a prima facie case of obviousness, we cannot sustain the rejection of independent claim 1, and claims 2-7, 10, 11, and 13 from which they depend. We will also not sustain the remaining rejections of claims 8, 9, and 12 over the cited prior art as these rejections are directed to claims dependent on independent claim 1. Cf. In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (“[D]ependent claims are nonobvious if the independent claims from which they depend are nonobvious.”). Claims 15-21 We are not persuaded of error on the part of the Examiner in rejecting claim 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), by Appellants’ argument that Ellis and Rosser fail to disclose “a set of sponsorship detections that were derived from advertising content within a video presentation” because Ellis and Rosser are both directed to the insertion of advertisements, and not the detection of sponsorships (App. Br. 21-22; Reply Br. 9-12). Initially, we note that while independent claim 15 recites “sponsorship detections within Appeal 2011-000987 Application 10/993,185 6 the video presentation,” the claim does not specify the manner of detection or how the sponsorship detections were derived. Nor does claim 15 recite a stored source of media like that recited by independent claims 1 and 22. While claim 15 does specify that “individual detection scores” are provided without the use of image-recognition software, this limitation does not apply to the initial association of sponsorship detections with one or more attributes of interest. Additionally, while we acknowledge that both Ellis and Rosser are generally directed to advertisement insertion, such a distinction is not sufficient to prevent the “sponsorship detections” recited by claim 15 from reading on the sponsorship insertions disclosed in Ellis and Rosser. Following, we find that Rosser discloses that its system uses camera location and orientation information for detecting where to insert an advertisement or sponsorship (col. 5:31-55; see Figs. 3 and 10). One of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that inserting a sponsorship at a documented frame indexed by the location and orientation information gathered by Rosser’s system provides a marker for detecting that insertion later. Therefore, in the absence of any specificity as to the manner of detection, we find the claimed “sponsorship detections,” as reasonably broadly construed, reads on the index information gathered by Rosser for an advertisement insertion. We are also not persuaded of error on the part of the Examiner in rejecting claim 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), by Appellants’ argument that Ellis and Rosser fail to disclose “associating each of a plurality of the sponsorship detections within the video presentation with one or more Appeal 2011-000987 Application 10/993,185 7 attributes of interest, the attributes of interest including a size indication, a duration indication, and an isolation indication” (App. Br. 22-23). Specifically, Appellants argue that because “Rosser does not teach ‘sponsorship detections,’ it follows that Rosser does not teach ‘associating each of a plurality of the sponsorship detections within the video presentation with one or more attributes of interest,’” as recited by independent claim 15 (App. Br. 24). However, as discussed above, we find Rosser discloses “sponsorship detections,” as presently claimed. In view of the foregoing, we will sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 15, and claims 16-18 and 21 dependent thereon, under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis and Rosser. We will also sustain the Examiner’s additional rejections of claim 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis, Rosser, and Shen and claim 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis, Rosser, and Eldering ‘053 because the Appellants have not specifically addressed these rejections (App. Br. 30-31). Claims 22-24 We are persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that the combination of Ellis and Rosser teaches or suggests the step of “storing, in a computer readable medium, a video source that contains a plurality of sponsorship images,” as recited by independent claim 22 (App. Br. 25; Reply Br. 4-9). Specifically, the Appellants argue that the “occurrences” recited by claim 22 are not the ad insertions disclosed in Ellis and Rosser, but rather they are “‘occurrence[s] of sponsorship images’” that are contained in a stored video source (App. Br. 25). Appeal 2011-000987 Application 10/993,185 8 The Examiner relies on the source of video disclosed at column 14, lines 60-67 of Rosser to address this limitation (Ans. 8), however we cannot agree with the Examiner that Rosser discloses “a video source that contains a plurality of sponsorship images,” as presently recited by claim 22. In making this determination, we find that the Examiner has failed to demonstrate that the video source in Rosser includes a plurality of sponsorship images or that such a limitation would be obvious. However, to the contrary, given that Rosser and Ellis are both directed to inserting advertisements, as opposed to determining occurrences of already stored advertisements, we do not find such a limitation would be obvious in the absence of any evidence or reasoning to the contrary on the record by the Examiner. Thus, we find that the combination of Ellis and Rosser fails to disclose or suggest “storing, in a computer readable medium, a video source that contains a plurality of sponsorship images,” as recited by independent claim 22. Accordingly, as the Examiner has not set forth a prima facie case of obviousness, we cannot sustain the rejection of independent claim 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), and claims 23 and 24 dependent thereon. Appeal 2011-000987 Application 10/993,185 9 DECISION We affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 15-21 and reverse the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1-13 and 22-24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). 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) (2011). AFFIRMED-IN-PART hh Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation