Ex Parte Konopnicki et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 18, 2013

11770410 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 18, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
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Ex parte DAVID KONOPNICKI and LAURENT D. HASSON
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Appeal 2011-005546
Application 11/770,410
Technology Center 2100
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Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, JUSTIN BUSCH, and
JENNIFER M. MEYER, Administrative Patent Judges.

SAADAT, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON REQUEST FOR REHEARING
Appellants request rehearing of the November 19, 2013, Decision on
Appeal (“Decision”), wherein we affirmed the rejections of claims 7-10
under 35 U.S.C. § 101 and claims 1-10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Tuttle and Joshi, alone or in various combinations with
other applied prior art. We have reconsidered the Decision in light of
Appellants’ arguments but, for the reasons given below, we are not
persuaded of any error therein.
Appeal 2011-005546
Application 11/770,410

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Appellants argue that our Decision ignored Appellants’ arguments
presented on pages 7-9 of the Appeal Brief and improperly equated the
claim term “mimicking” to “the tree structure of Tuttle of ‘clickable items’”
(Req. Reh’g 3). Appellants acknowledge paragraph 28 of Tuttle discloses “a
hierarchy of ‘pages or applications selected from . . . URLs, a list of
application pointers, or an RSS feed’ is generated into a seed list” (Req.
Reh’g 4). However, Appellants state:
Yet, the underlying [“]pages or applications selected
from . . . URLs, a list of application pointers, or an RSS feed”
lack a hierarchy as described in paragraph [0028]. More to the
point, while the seed list enjoys a hierarchy, that hierarchy of
the seed list does not mimick [sic] another hierarchy.
(Req. Reh’g 4-5).
These arguments are unpersuasive because the Examiner additionally
relied on paragraphs 23 and 101 of Tuttle for teaching the disputed claim
feature (see Ans. 10-11). In fact, the Board explicitly adopted as its own the
Examiner’s findings and conclusions stated on pages 10-11 of the Answer,
which addressed the teachings of Tuttle (Decision 5). The Examiner
properly reasoned the combination of a tree of clickable items and a seed list
of URLs that are traversed in an object tree model is a hierarchical structure
that mimics (or imitates) the underlying content that is being crawled (Ans.
10-11).
Lastly, Appellants’ argument (Req. Reh’g 5) that our Decision did not
point to factual findings in Tuttle related to “content . . . that provides for the
hierarchy of the seed list mimicking another hierarchy,” ignores the
Examiner’s findings with respect to paragraphs 23, 28, and 101. The
Examiner further explained (Ans. 11) that “[t]he ability to return to the
structure for further examination demonstrates a data structure that
Appeal 2011-005546
Application 11/770,410

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‘mimicks’ [sic] the underlying data from which it was created,” which refers
to content hierarchy the seed lists mimic.

CONCLUSION
Based on the foregoing, we have granted Appellants’ request to the
extent that we have reconsidered our Decision, but we deny Appellants’
request to make any changes therein.

DECISION
The request for rehearing is denied.
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). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

REHEARING DENIED

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