Ex Parte FrancisDownload PDFBoard of Patent Appeals and InterferencesApr 28, 200910449878 (B.P.A.I. Apr. 28, 2009) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS AND INTERFERENCES ____________ Ex parte ANDREW FRANCIS ____________ Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Decided:1 April 28, 2009 ____________ Before JOHN C. MARTIN, STEPHEN C. SIU, and ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, Administrative Patent Judges. COURTENAY, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL 1 The two-month time period for filing an appeal or commencing a civil action, as recited in 37 C.F.R. § 1.304, begins to run from the decided date shown on this page of the decision. The time period does not run from the Mail Date (paper delivery) or Notification Data (electronic delivery). Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 STATEMENT OF THE CASE This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-4, 6-8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19-25, 27, 29, 31-34, 38-46, and 49-61. Claims 5, 9, 11, 13, 16-18, 26, 28, 30, 35-37, 47, and 48 have been cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM IN PART. INVENTION The invention on appeal describes systems and techniques relating to reuse meta information in electronic documents. More particularly, Appellant’s invention is directed to meta information embedded in a Web page to indicate reusable components of the page. (Spec. 1). ILLUSTRATIVE CLAIMS Claims 1 and 43, which further illustrate the invention, follow: 1. A computer implemented method comprising: generating multiple components of a markup language document to be rendered, the multiple components being derived from one or more information sources; designating the multiple components in the markup language document using a recognized identifier of document sections; and adding reuse information to the designated components in the markup language document so that the reuse information is readable with the components but not revealed when the markup language document is rendered, the reuse information specifying how the components may be repurposed. 2 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 43. A system comprising: a processor; a machine-readable medium coupled with the processor; and a Web publishing software product tangibly stored on the machine-readable medium, the Web publishing software product comprising instructions operable to cause the processor to perform operations comprising: receiving a Web page; identifying a reusable component of the Web page, the reusable component being designated within the Web page, the reusable component containing reuse information, where the reuse information is not rendered when the Web page is rendered; and in response to a selection of the reusable component, using the reuse information contained in the reusable component to facilitate repurposing of the reusable component. PRIOR ART The Examiner relies upon the following references as evidence in support of the rejections: Fletcher US 6,985,939 B2 Jan. 10, 2006 Interwoven, Inc., “XML in a Content Infrastructure: Conducting Business on the Web”, 2001, pp. 1-21. (Hereinafter “Interwoven”). 3 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 THE REJECTIONS Claims 43-46 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by Fletcher. Claims 1-4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 22-25, 41, 42, 49, and 51-53 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Interwoven. Claims 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19-21, 27, 29, 31-34, 38-40, 50, and 54-61 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Interwoven in view of Fletcher.2 APPELLANT’S CONTENTIONS Regarding the Examiner’s anticipation rejection of claims 43-46 over Fletcher, Appellant makes the following principal contention: Assuming for argument's sake that a portlet is a reusable component, rendering a web page that invokes the portlet's service method will cause the portlet to return content to be incorporated into the rendering of the web page. As addressed above, the web page and the content generated by the portlet do not contain the portlet's reuse information - this information is housed in a separate registry. The examiner argued that since XSLT transformations can be used to selectively render information in an XML document, it follows that portlet reuse information does not have to be rendered. But since portlet reuse information is not part of the web page in the first place, the [E]xaminer's assertion is of no consequence. (App. Br. 5). 2 We note that the Examiner has rejected dependent claims 12 and 14 under two separate rejections. 4 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 Regarding the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 22-25, 41, 42, 49, and 51-53 as being unpatentable over Interwoven, Appellant makes the following principal contention: In contrast to claim 1 which requires reuse information to be a designated component of a markup language document that is rendered, the reuse information in Interwoven (i.e., syndication rules, etc.) is used to manage the distribution of content but is not itself a designated component of a markup language document presentation of the content. Rather, the reuse information in Interwoven is merely “defined on the server.” The examiner argued that XLST could be used to remove the reuse information from markup language documents to prevent the information from being rendered. But this is irrelevant since the reuse information is not distributed with the content it governs. (See p. 13, §4 of Interwoven for a brief discussion of the metadata that is included with content.) (App. Br. 6, emphasis added). Appellant further applies the same arguments regarding Interwoven and Fletcher to traverse the Examiner’s rejection of claims 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19-21, 27, 29, 31-34, 38-40, 50, and 54-61 as being unpatentable over Interwoven in view of Fletcher (App. Br. 7). EXAMINER’S RESPONSE In the “Response to Arguments” section of the Answer, the Examiner maintains that the limitations argued by Appellant are taught and/or suggested by the cited respective references. (Ans. 16-23). 5 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 Regarding the Fletcher reference, the Examiner finds that Fletcher’s portlets contain reuse information (Ans. 17). The Examiner further contends that “[i]n contrast to the prior art portlets which were visually rendered on the portal page, Fletcher teaches an improved portlet [as shown in Fig. 3] which was designed for program-to program interaction, and thus did not need to be visually rendered on the page.” (Ans. 18). The Examiner reasons that “[b]ecause Fletcher discloses that the portlets were not required to be rendered in the web page, the reuse information contained in the portlet interface was not rendered when the web page was rendered.” (Id.). The Examiner makes the following further findings regarding Fletcher: Even if Appellant's statement that the reuse information disclosed by Fletcher was not a part of the web page were correct, the disclosure of Fletcher would still meet the claim limitations of claim 43, because while the reusable component is claimed as "being designated within the Web page", the reusable component containing reuse information is not claimed as being contained in the Web page in its entirety. As claimed, if a web page had a single link to "designate" a reusable component, it would meet the claim. (Ans. 19). 6 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 Regarding the Interwoven reference, the Examiner finds that “Interwoven teaches designating components of the XML document and/or markup language document using metadata, at p. 13-14, Sect. 4, and adding reuse information specifying how the components may be repurposed, at p. 16-18, Sect. 5.” (Ans. 20). The Examiner proffers that “even if Appellant were correct in that the reuse information was ‘defined on the server’, the disclosure of Interwoven still meets the limitations of claim 1, ‘. . . adding reuse information to the designated components of the markup language document so that the reuse information is readable with the components but not revealed when the markup language document is rendered.’” (Ans. 21). The Examiner finds that “Interwoven teaches the above limitations of claim 1, because claim 1 does not specify where the markup language document is stored. Interwoven teaches that the reuse information is stored within the XML markup language document components as discussed above.” (Id.). In particular, the Examiner observes that “Interwoven at p. 18, Sect. 5.2 discloses ‘syndication’, which was the final step of content distribution after content had been tested and approved in the previous steps disclosed in the reference.” (Ans. 21). APPELLANT’S REPLY BRIEF Regarding the Examiner’s appraisal of the Fletcher reference, Appellant responds in the Reply Brief as follows: First, portlet reuse information is stored in a registry and not in a portlet as contended by the Examiner. See col. 8, lines 42-46. Second, it does not follow that rendering a portlet renders the portlet's reuse information. According to Fletcher, rendering a portlet is accomplished by invoking the portlet's service method 7 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 which causes the portlet to return markup language for incorporation into a portal page. See col. 6, lines 41 -51. Fletcher is not understood to disclose that the returned markup language includes the portlet's reuse information. (Reply Br. 1). Appellant also notes that claim 43 requires “using the reuse information contained in the reusable component to facilitate repurposing of the reusable component.” Appellant contends that the Examiner has read out and ignored this positively recited limitation. (Reply Br. 2). Regarding the Examiner’s appraisal of the Interwoven reference, Appellant responds as follows: As a preliminary matter, the Appellant notes that the Examiner has failed to identify what constitutes reuse information in the relied upon example. In fact, assuming for argument's sake that the XML tags in Example 1 (e.g., "", ", etc.) constitute document section identifiers for components, there is no reuse information added to the designated components, as required by the above claims. This may be because the reuse information in Interwoven is separate from the components. By way of illustration, Example 4 on p. 13 of Interwoven contains the reuse information for the press release in Example 1 on p. 5. (Reply Br. 2-3). ISSUES We consider the following issues that flow from the contentions of the Appellant and the Examiner: 1. Has Appellant shown the Examiner erred in finding that Fletcher teaches and/or suggests a “reusable component 8 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 being designated within the Web page, the reusable component containing reuse information, where the reuse information is not rendered when the Web page is rendered?” (See independent claim 43 and the commensurate limitations recited in each of independent claims 8 and 27). 2. Has Appellant shown the Examiner erred in finding that Interwoven teaches and/or suggests “adding reuse information to the designated components in the markup language document so that the reuse information is readable with the components but not revealed when the markup language document is rendered?” (See independent claim 1 and the commensurate limitations recited in each of independent claims 22 and 41). PRINCIPLES OF LAW Anticipation In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102, “[a] single prior art reference that discloses, either expressly or inherently, each limitation of a claim invalidates that claim by anticipation.” Perricone v. Medicis Pharm. Corp., 432 F.3d 1368, 1375-76 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (citation omitted). “Absence from the reference of any claimed element negates anticipation.” Kloster Speedsteel AB v. Crucible, Inc., 793 F.2d 1565, 1571 (Fed. Cir. 1986). 9 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 Obviousness “What matters is the objective reach of the claim. If the claim extends to what is obvious, it is invalid under § 103.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 419 (2007). To be nonobvious, an improvement must be “more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions.” Id. at 417. Appellant has the burden on appeal to the Board to demonstrate error in the Examiner’s position. See In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 985-86 (Fed. Cir. 2006). Therefore, we look to Appellant’s Briefs to show error in the Examiner’s proffered prima facie case. FINDINGS OF FACT In our analysis infra, we rely on the following findings of fact (FF) that are supported by a preponderance of the evidence: APPELLANT’S SPECIFICATION 1. Appellant’s Specification discloses that “[t]he reuse information can include terms of use information. The reuse information can be an identifier indicating a source of reuse information describing how the components are reusable via access to the one or more information sources. The reuse information can be syndication information.” (Spec. 4, para. [0012]). 10 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 APPELLANT’S ADMISSIONS 2. Appellant acknowledges that Interwoven teaches reuse information: “By way of illustration, Example 4 on p. 13 of Interwoven contains the reuse information for the press release in Example 1 on p. 5.” (Reply Br. 3). See also Appeal Brief page 6, para. 1: “the reuse information in Interwoven (i.e., syndication rules, etc.) is used to manage distribution of content . . . .” THE FLETCHER REFERENCE 3. Fletcher discloses that “[a] portlet according to the present invention thus defines a service provider type that includes the port types necessary for portal integration of software resources and service interaction and management. (‘Port types’ is a term used in the art to signify the specification of a portlet's operations, and ‘service provider type’ is a term used to signify a collection of port types.)” (Col. 8, ll. 13-19). 4. Fletcher discloses that “[a]ccording to preferred embodiments, the deployment and system port types are represented as WSDL documents for registration in a registry.” (Col. 8, ll. 42-46). 5. Fletcher discloses that “[p]ortlets functioning according to the present invention are also referred to herein as ‘web service intermediaries’ or ‘web service proxies’, or simply as ‘intermediaries’ or ‘proxies’. That is, a portlet may now act as an intermediary between an application or software resource requesting a particular service and a software resource providing that service.” (Col. 8, ll. 20-25). 11 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 6. Fletcher discloses that “the portlet proxy receives request messages and forwards them to the software resource to which it is bound; once the software resource has completed the requested function, it returns its response to the portlet proxy which then forwards the response to the requester.” (Col. 7, ll. 32-36). THE INTERWOVEN REFERENCE 7. Interwoven teaches that “[s]yndication permits rules, schedules, profiles, and transformations to be defined on the server so that subscriptions can be effectively managed for content delivery to users, partners, and suppliers.” (Page 18, section 5.2). 8. Interwoven teaches that “[t]he metadata is captured in XML, which facilitates subsequent processing.” (Page 13, see last sentence of the paragraph that describes PRISM (Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata)). 9. Interwoven teaches that metadata may be manually assigned to content by content creators for use in later integration efforts or the metadata may be automatically extracted from content based upon pre-defined taxonomies and vocabularies using a process called “metatagging” that uses a parser to create a metadata description of the content (page 14, § 4.1, both paragraphs). ANALYSIS Dependent claims 12, 31, 32, and 33 At the outset, we note that each of claims 12, 31, 32, and 33 improperly depend upon a cancelled claim. Appellant contends that claim 12 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 12 is allowable for the same reasons discussed in the Brief for independent claim 8, from which claim 12 purportedly depends (App. Br. 6). However, we note that claim 12 actually depends upon cancelled claim 11. Appellant further contends that claims 31-33 are allowable for the same reasons discussed in the Brief for independent claim 27, from which claims 31-33 purportedly depend (App. Br. 7). However, we note that claim 31 actually depends upon cancelled claim 30, and claims 32 and 33 actually depend upon cancelled claim 28. Because Appellants have not sustained the requisite burden on appeal of providing arguments or evidence persuasive of error in the Examiner’s rejections of dependent claims 12, 31, 32, and 33, we summarily sustain the Examiner’s rejection of these claims as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of Interwoven and Fletcher. Likewise, we summarily sustain the Examiner’s second rejection of claim 12 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of Interwoven alone. ISSUE 1 We decide the question of whether Appellant has shown the Examiner erred in finding that Fletcher teaches and/or suggests a “reusable component being designated within the Web page, the reusable component containing reuse information, where the reuse information is not rendered when the Web page is rendered. (See independent claim 43 and the commensurate limitations recited in each of independent claims 8 and 27). 13 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 We begin our analysis by broadly but reasonably construing the meaning of the claimed “reuse information.” During prosecution, “the PTO gives claims their ‘broadest reasonable interpretation.’” In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320, 1324 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (quoting In re Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2000)). Here, when we look to Appellant’s Specification for context, we find examples of reuse information that “can include terms of use information,” or “an identifier indicating a source of reuse information describing how the components are reusable via access to the one or more information sources,” or “[t]he reuse information can be syndication information.” (FF 1). Therefore, consistent with Appellant’s Specification, we broadly but reasonably construe the claimed “reuse information,” as any information that indicates how the content associated with a component (e.g., a web page or document component) may be reused. Based upon our review of the Fletcher reference, we find the weight of the evidence supports Appellant’s arguments as presented in the Briefs. In particular, Appellant avers that even assuming arguendo that a portlet is a reusable component (as proffered by the Examiner), the web page and the content generated by the portlet do not contain the portlet’s reuse information (App. Br. 5). Instead Appellant contends that this reuse information is housed in a separate registry. (Id.). The Examiner responds as follows: Even if Appellant's statement that the reuse information disclosed by Fletcher was not a part of the web page were correct, the disclosure of Fletcher would still meet the claim limitations of claim 43, because while the reusable component is claimed as "being designated within the Web page", the 14 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 reusable component containing reuse information is not claimed as being contained in the Web page in its entirety. As claimed, if a web page had a single link to "designate" a reusable component, it would meet the claim. (Ans. 19). In the Reply Brief, Appellant points to column 8, lines 42-46 of Fletcher as support for the contention that Fletcher’s reuse information is housed in a separate registry. This portion of Fletcher discloses that “according to preferred embodiments, the deployment and system port types are represented as WSDL documents for registration in a registry.” (FF 4, emphasis in original). We note that Fletcher expressly discloses that “[a] portlet according to the present invention thus defines a service provider type that includes the port types necessary for portal integration of software resources and service interaction and management.” (FF 3). Because Fletcher discloses that a “portlet” defines port types (FF 3) and also that “system port types” are represented in a registry (FF 4), we find the weight of the evidence supports Appellant’s contention that Fletcher’s reuse information is housed in a separate registry, instead of being designated or otherwise contained within a component of the web page or document to be rendered, as required by the commensurate language of independent claims 8, 27, and 43. 15 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 While the Examiner argues that “[a]s claimed, if a web page had a single link to ‘designate’ a reusable component, it would meet the claim,” we find the Examiner has merely presented a theory (Ans. 19). Moreover, we find the Examiner has not clearly mapped the disputed claim limitations to the corresponding portions of the Fletcher reference. For us to affirm the Examiner on this record would require speculation on our part. We decline to engage in speculation in deciding this appeal. Based on the evidence before us, we find Appellant has shown that the Examiner erred in finding that Fletcher teaches and/or suggests a reusable component being designated within the web page, the reusable component containing reuse information. (See independent claim 43). Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 43 (and associated dependent claims 44-46) as being anticipated by Fletcher. ISSUE 2 We decide the question of whether Appellant has shown the Examiner erred in finding that Interwoven teaches and/or suggests “adding reuse information to the designated components in the markup language document so that the reuse information is readable with the components but not revealed when the markup language document is rendered.” (See independent claim 1 and the commensurate limitations recited in each of independent claims 22 and 41). We begin our analysis by noting that Appellant has acknowledged that Interwoven teaches reuse information (FF 2). We further find Appellant’s Specification discloses that “[t]he reuse information can be syndication information.” (FF 1). Thus, we find that Interwoven teaches and/or 16 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 suggests syndication information (i.e., reuse information), as follows: “[s]yndication permits rules, schedules, profiles, and transformations to be defined on the server so that subscriptions can be effectively managed for content delivery to users, partners, and suppliers.” (FF 7). Therefore, since Interwoven teaches reuse information, we see the question before us to be whether Interwoven teaches and/or suggests adding reuse information to the designated components in the markup language document (or including reuse information in the designated components) (See independent claim 1 and the commensurate limitations recited in each of independent claims 22 and 41). Based upon our review of Interwoven, we agree with Appellant that Interwoven on page 18 clearly teaches that the syndication rules (i.e., reuse information) are “defined on the server so that subscriptions can be effectively managed for content delivery to users, partners, and suppliers.” (FF 7, emphasis added). However, the Examiner counters that Interwoven still teaches the limitations of claim 1 “because claim 1 does not specify where the markup language document is stored.” (Ans. 21). We note that the Examiner also found that Interwoven teaches that the reuse information is stored within the XML markup language document components. (Id.). Thus, the Examiner proffers that one of Interwoven’s XML markup language document components stored on a server would still meet the limitations of the claim. (Id.). We note that Interwoven teaches “[t]he metadata is captured in XML, which facilitates subsequent processing.” (FF 8). In particular, Interwoven teaches that metadata may be manually assigned to content by content 17 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 creators for use in later integration efforts, or the metadata may be automatically extracted from existing content based upon pre-defined taxonomies and vocabularies using a process called “metatagging” that uses a parser to create a metadata description of the content (FF 9). Therefore, we find Fletcher’s XML metadata (reuse information) is either manually assigned or automatically extracted and created to form a metatag association with a given content component. However, we do not find, and the Examiner has not established, that Interwoven’s metatag (reuse information) becomes part of the component itself by being added to the component (as required by the language of independent claims 1 and 22) or by being included in the component (as required by the language of independent claim 41). For us to affirm the Examiner on this point would require speculation on our part. We again decline to engage in speculation in deciding this appeal. Therefore, we find persuasive Appellant’s argument that Interwoven’s admitted reuse information (i.e., XML metadata and/or syndication rules) is used to manage the distribution of content but is not itself part of a designated component of a markup language document. (See App. Br. 6). Therefore, Appellant has established that the Examiner erred in finding that Interwoven teaches and/or suggests “adding reuse information to the designated components in the markup language document so that the reuse information is readable with the components but not revealed when the markup language document is rendered.” (See independent claim 1 and the commensurate limitations recited in each of independent claims 22 and 41). 18 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 Accordingly, we reverse the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-4, 6, 7, 14, 22-25, 41, 42, 49, and 51-53 as being unpatentable over Interwoven under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). For the same reasons discussed above regarding ISSUES 1 AND 2, we also reverse the Examiner obviousness rejection of claims 8, 10, 14, 15, 19- 21, 27, 29, 34, 38-40, 50, and 54-61 as being unpatentable over Interwoven in view of Fletcher under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). CONCLUSION Appellant has not established that the Examiner erred in rejecting dependent claims 12, 31, 32, and 33 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of Interwoven in view of Fletcher. Appellant has not established that the Examiner erred in rejecting dependent claim 12 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) in view of Interwoven alone. Appellant has established that the Examiner erred in finding that Fletcher teaches and/or suggests “reusable component being designated within the Web page, the reusable component containing reuse information, where the reuse information is not rendered when the Web page is rendered.” (See independent claim 43 and the commensurate limitations recited in each of independent claims 8 and 27; see discussion of ISSUE 1 supra ). Therefore, Appellant has established that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 43-46 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by Fletcher. 19 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 Appellant has established that the Examiner erred in finding that Interwoven teaches and/or suggests “adding reuse information to the designated components in the markup language document so that the reuse information is readable with the components but not revealed when the markup language document is rendered.” (See independent claim 1 and the commensurate limitations recited in each of independent claims 22 and 41; see discussion of ISSUE 2 supra). Therefore, Appellant has established that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1-4, 6, 7, 14, 22-25, 41, 42, 49, and 51-53 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Interwoven. Likewise, Appellant has established that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 8, 10, 14, 15, 19-21, 27, 29, 34, 38-40, 50, and 54-61 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Interwoven in view of Fletcher. DECISION We affirm the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 12, 31, 32, and 33 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). We reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 43-46 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e). We reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1-4, 6-8, 10, 14, 15, 19-25, 27, 29, 34, 38-42, and 49-61 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). 20 Appeal 2008-4039 Application 10/449,878 No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED-IN-PART pgc FISH & RICHARDSON P.C. P.O. Box 1022 MINNEAPOLIS MN 55440-1022 21 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation