Ex Parte Wang et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 20, 201411756600 (P.T.A.B. May. 20, 2014) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte YI-MIN WANG and MING MA ____________ Appeal 2011-013347 Application 11/756,600 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before ANTON W. FETTING, JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, and MICHAEL W. KIM, Administrative Patent Judges. FISCHETTI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2011-013347 Application 11/756,600 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1-4, 6-16, 18-24, and 26-28. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b)(2002). SUMMARY OF DECISION We REVERSE and enter a NEW GROUND OF REJECTION pursuant to our authority under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b). Claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the subject matter on appeal. 1. A computer-implemented architecture for monitoring search spam, the architecture comprising the following components stored on a computer readable storage media and executable by a processor: a first component configured to: collect and receive one or more spammer targeted keywords relating to keywords used in search queries submitted to a search engine by one or more users; perform one or more queries for the one or more spammer targeted keywords to retrieve a set of uniform resource locators (URLs) that provide search results; and scan and analyze the set of URLs based at least on the one or more spammer targeted keywords, the scan comprising launching a browser to open each URL in the set of URLs; a second component configured to receive one or more URLs from the first component and to verify at least one URL as a spam URL; and a third component configured to collect additional spammer targeted keywords associated with the spam URL and to provide the additional spammer targeted keywords to the first component. Appeal 2011-013347 Application 11/756,600 3 THE REJECTIONS The Examiner relies upon the following as evidence of unpatentability: Ramarathnam US 2006/0004748 A1 Jan. 5, 2006 Shraim US 2006/0069697 A1 Mar. 30, 2006 The following rejections are before us for review. Claims 1-4, 6-13, 15, 16, 19, 22-24, and 26-28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Shraim. Claims 14, 18, 20, and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Shraim in view of Ramarathnam. ANALYSIS The Examiner rejects independent claims 1, 11, and 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 102 (b) using Shraim. Each of these independent claims in one form or another requires: collect and receive one or more spammer targeted keywords relating to keywords used in search queries submitted to a search engine by one or more users; perform one or more queries for the one or more spammer targeted keywords to retrieve a set of uniform resource locators (URLs) that provide search results; as recited in claim 1. We find that Shraim does not anticipate this limitation because Shraim does not disclose keywords used in search queries submitted to a search engine by one or more users. In Shraim, searching is done via monitoring data sources 105 for chatter about “possible online fraud [which] may be obtained [by], including, without limitation, one or more chat rooms 105a, newsgroup feeds 105b, domain Appeal 2011-013347 Application 11/756,600 4 registration files 105c, and/or email feeds 105d.” Shraim, ¶ [0049]. We find that monitoring chat room talk for questionable URLs (id. ¶¶ [0049], [0050]) does not equate to keywords used in search queries submitted to a search engine. That is, the words used to track the suspected URLs in Shraim are not keywords used in search queries, but are words found in conversation and articles (such as “phish,” “spoof,” etc.) which describe behavior which is suspect. These are words which are used by victims, for example, to describe and expose the spammers themselves (id. ¶ [0050]). Thus, in Shraim, the investigations are targeted to anti-spam resources, such as, several newsgroups commonly used to discuss new spamming/spoofing schemes, as well as to trade lists of harvested email addresses. There are also anti-abuse newsgroups that track such schemes. Id. Shraim uses these newsgroups to obtain the listed new scams but, again, no keywords are used in search queries submitted to a search engine by one or more users to discover and/or provide URLs for such scams. Id. ¶ [0050]. Even in the case where emails are scanned to determine if a possible fraud URL is discussed within the context of the message, Shraim discloses that it is only when “the correlation engine 125 determines that a particular incoming email message is a likely candidate for fraudulent activity or that information obtained through crawling/monitoring operations may indicate fraudulent activity, that the correlation engine 125 signals to the event manager 135 that an event should be created for the email message.” Shraim, ¶ [0070]. We therefore cannot sustain the rejection of the independent claims 1, 11, and 22 under 35 U.S.C. § 102 (b). Since we do not sustain the rejection of independent claims 1, 11, and 22, we will not sustain that of claims 2-4, 6-10, 12,13,15,16,19,23,24 and 26-28 which depend therefrom. Appeal 2011-013347 Application 11/756,600 5 New Ground of rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) We reject claims 1-4, 6-16, 18-24, and 26-28 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Shraim in view of Ramarathnam. Shraim discloses the claim limitations except for using spammer targeted keywords, relating to keywords used in search queries submitted to a search engine by one or more users, to uncover fraudulent URLs. Ramarathnam discloses the use of search terms to uncover ranked URLs: Search engines have been developed to address the problem of finding desired information on a network. Typically, a user who has an idea of the type of information desired enters one or more search terms to a search engine. The search engine then returns a list of network locations (e.g., uniform resource locators (URLs)) that the search engine has determined to include an electronic document relating to the user-specified search terms. Ramarathnam,¶[0003]. Thus, a person with ordinary skill in the art would understand to use keywords used in search queries submitted to a search engine, as taught by Ramarathnam, to investigate fraudulent URLs as taught by Shraim in order to rank a URL as fraudulent and thus eliminate the less direct step of Shraim of searching and/or monitoring chat rooms and emails to uncover hearsay about possible suspect URLs. As to the rejection of the dependent claims 2-4, 6-10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 19, 23, 24, and 26-28, to the extent that we find that a person with ordinary skill in the art would understand to use the search terms of Ramarathnam used in search queries submitted to a search engine to uncover fraudulent URLs in place of the chat room talk targeted keywords disclosed by Shriam to uncover fraudulent URLs, we adopt Appeal 2011-013347 Application 11/756,600 6 the Examiner’s findings as to how Shriam discloses the other claim elements as set forth in the Answer at pages 5-8. DECISION We REVERSE the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1-4, 6-13, 15, 16, 19, 22-24, and 26-28 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). We REVERSE the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 14, 18, 20, and 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). We enter a NEW GROUND OF REJECTION of claims 1-4, 6-16, 18-24, and 26-28 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Shraim in view of Ramarathnam. This decision includes a new ground of rejection pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) (2008). 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) provides “[a] new ground of rejection pursuant to this paragraph shall not be considered final for judicial review.” 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) also provides that the Appellants, WITHIN TWO MONTHS FROM THE DATE OF THE DECISION: must exercise one of the following two options with respect to the new ground of rejection to avoid termination of the appeal as to the rejected claims: (1) Reopen prosecution. Submit an appropriate amendment of the claims so rejected or new evidence relating to the claims so rejected, or both, and have the matter reconsidered by the examiner, in which event the proceeding will be remanded to the examiner . . . . (2) Request rehearing. Request that the proceeding be reheard under § 41.52 by the Board upon the same record. . . . Appeal 2011-013347 Application 11/756,600 7 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). REVERSED (37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b)) llw Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation