Ex Parte Teinila et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Mar 22, 2017

12164617 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 22, 2017)

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.
12/164,617 06/30/2008 Jaakko Juhani Teinila P5004US00 1622
11764 7590
Ditthavong & Steiner, P.C.
44 Canal Center Plaza
Suite 322
Alexandria, VA 22314
EXAMINER
OBERLY, VAN HONG
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2166
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/24/2017 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):
docket@dcpatent.com
Nokia. IPR @ nokia. com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JAAKKO JUHANI TEINILA,
JYRKI TAUNO JOHANNES PORIO, and
YE-KUI WANG
Appeal 2017-000190
Application 12/164,617
Technology Center 2100
Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JAMES R. HUGHES, and
ERIC S. FRAHM, Administrative Patent Judges.
DIXON, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2017-000190
Application 12/164,617
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1—10 and 25—38. This appeal is related to prior appeal 2012-006985,
decided October 29, 2014. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
The claims are directed to a specifying media content placement
criteria. Abstract. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed
subject matter:
1. A method comprising:
determining, at a user device, media content placement
metadata associated with a content item, wherein the media
content placement metadata includes metadata contextual to the
content item;
retrieving, by the user device, media content matching one
or more media content placement criteria in the media content
placement metadata, wherein the one or more media content
placement criteria includes information identifying a media
content slot in the content item and at least one media content
selection criterion; and
rendering the matching media content in the media content
slot during rendering of the content item at the user device.
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
REFERENCES
appeal is:
Castle
Ymski
Georgis
US 2002/0156679 A1
US 2007 /0094083 A1
US 2008/0134043 A1
Oct. 24, 2002
Apr. 26, 2007
June 5, 2008
REJECTIONS
The Examiner made the following rejections:
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Application 12/164,617
Claims 1—5, 8—10, 25—30, 32—36, and 38 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Yruski.
Claims 6, 31, and 37 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Yruski and Castle.
Claim 7 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Yruski and Georgis.
ANALYSIS
Anticipation
With respect to independent claims 1, 26, and 32, Appellants argue
the claims together. As a result, we select independent claim 1 as the
representative claim for the group and will address Appellants’ arguments
thereto. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv).
With respect to representative independent claim 1, Appellants
contend:
Further, the Examiner asserts that Appellant’s recited
“determining” feature is disclosed by way of “the ad insertion
module associating the ads with the content as the content is
received and passes the ad-infused content for display.” The
Examiner fails to properly interpret the claims and/or Yruski. In
particular, Yruski discloses at paragraph [0102] “the plug-in
downloads content from a content server. . . . The plug-in
connects the ad source server to obtain a list of ad filed and the
insertion positions/slots content files, and additional placement
rules.” As such Yruski cannot reasonably interpreted to disclose
both “determining, at a user device, media content placement
metadata associated with a content item” and “retrieving, by the
user device, media content matching one or more media content
placement criteria in the media content placement metadata.” In
contrast to Appellant’s claimed combination of features, Yruski
discloses the ad insertion module retrieving both alleged media
and alleged placement criteria from an ad source server, not at a
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Application 12/164,617
user device based on a content item. The content item itself does
not appear to inform placement criteria.
Accordingly, Yruski cannot reasonably be interpreted as
disclosing “determining, at a user device, media content
placement data associated with a content item,” as recited in
claim 1. For at least this reason, the rejection of claim 1 and
claims depending therefrom should be reversed. Claims 26 and
32 recite similar features. Accordingly, claims 26 and 32 and
claims depending respectively therefrom are patentable over
Yruski.
(App. Br. 3—4). We disagree with Appellants.
We find the Examiner responds to Appellants’ argument with further
explanation and additional support from Yruski reference. The Examiner
further identifies paragraph 182 of the Yruski reference to support the
Examiner’s position. The Examiner maintains:
paragraph 0047 of Yruski teaches ad campaign metadata and
rules that serve as control information for use in determining
which user and/or which content to match to ads in an ad
campaign. Examiner further relies on paragraph 0102 of Yruski
to teach that the association between the ads with the content as
the content is received and infusing the content with the selected
ad. Examiner relies on paragraph 0049 of Yruski to teach match
processing to determining which ads to associate with the content
and paragraph 0091 discloses an ad insertion slot. Examiner
further respectfully submits paragraph 0182 of Yruski teaches
that a client-side agent retrieves the ad insertion metadata that is
associate with a content item. As such, Examiner respectfully
maintains that Yruski teaches every aspect of the above argued
limitation.
(Ans. 3). We find no response to the Examiner’s further clarifications and
additional prior art citation because Appellants did not file a Reply Brief.
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Application 12/164,617
Consequently, Appellants have not shown error in the Examiner’s findings
of fact or finding of anticipation of representative independent claim 1.
Because Appellants have not set forth separate arguments for
patentability of independent claims 26 and 32 and dependent claims 2—5, 8—
10, 25, 27—30, 33—36, and 38, we group these claims as falling with
representative independent claim 1.
Obviousness
With respect to the dependent claims 6, 7, 31, and 37, Appellants
merely present case law discussion and maintain that the additional prior art
references do not remedy the deficiency in the anticipation rejection. (App.
Br. 5-6).
Because we found no deficiency in the anticipation rejection, we find
Appellants’ argument does not show error in the Examiner’s conclusion of
obviousness. Consequently, we sustain the rejection of dependent claims 6,
7, 31, and 37 for the same reasons addressed above with respect to
independent claim 1.
CONCLUSIONS
The Examiner did not err in rejecting representative independent
claim 1 based upon anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102, and the Examiner
did not err in rejecting dependent claims 6, 7, 31, and 37 based upon
obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
DECISION
For the above reasons, we sustain the Examiner’s anticipation and
obviousness rejections rejection of claims 1—10 and 25—38.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv).
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AFFIRMED
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