Jacob Pechenik et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Feb 16, 2022

2021002995 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 16, 2022)

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. 12/942,073 11/09/2010 Jacob E. Pechenik YJI-08-1284DIV1 1993 35811 7590 02/16/2022 IP GROUP OF DLA PIPER LLP (US) ONE LIBERTY PLACE 1650 MARKET ST, SUITE 5000 PHILADELPHIA, PA 19103 EXAMINER HUANG, JAY ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3619 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 02/16/2022 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): pto.phil@us.dlapiper.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte JACOB E. PECHENIK, GREGORY S. CAMPBELL, DOUGLAS E. MILLER, and BLAKE A. BARNES ____________ Appeal 2021-002995 Application 12/942,073 Technology Center 3600 ____________ Before CYNTHIA L. MURPHY, AMEE A. SHAH, and ROBERT J. SILVERMAN, Administrative Patent Judges. SHAH, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL1 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), the Appellant2 appeals from the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 6, 8-15, 18, 20, 23, 25-36, 38-41, 43-49, and 51-53, which are all of the pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 We note the Decision mailed Oct. 4, 2018 (“Prior Decision”) in a prior appeal of this application. 2 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. The Appellant identifies the real party in interest as ICE Data, LP. Appeal Br. 1. Appeal 2021-002995 Application 12/942,073 2 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER The Appellant’s invention “generally relates to a system for trading and analyzing derivative products, and more particularly, software that aggregates, organizes, parses and extracts market data for trading information from Over-The-Counter (OTC) networks.” Spec. ¶ 2. Claims 1 and 20 are the independent claims on appeal. Claim 1 (Appeal Br. 15 (Claims App.)) is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal and is reproduced below (with added bracketing for reference): 1. A system for collecting, displaying, and using market data, the system comprising: [(a)] an electronic server comprising at least one receiver configured to receive one or more unstructured plain text messages from a counterparty computing device over the Internet, the one or more unstructured plain text messages comprising a derivative contract description; [(b)] the electronic server further comprising a central processing unit (CPU) and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program code stored therein, the computer-readable code, when executed, causing the CPU to parse the one or more unstructured plain text messages in real time by: [(b1)] passing one or more strings of the one or more unstructured plain text messages through one or more identifiers, each identifier configured to parse different parts of the one or more strings using a hierarchy of expressions, [(b2)] determining, by an identifier, that a string matches an expression, and [(b3)] extracting, by the identifier, one or more of a quote and structure data from the matched string; [(c)] the computer-readable code, when executed, further causing the CPU to: [(c1)] break down the structure into component parts, [(c2)] price each component part, and Appeal 2021-002995 Application 12/942,073 3 [(c3)] assign an aggregate premium to the aggregate structure calculated from premiums of each component part; [(d)] a graphical user interface (GUI) configured to display, in a first window, the one or more unstructured plain text messages in real time; [(e)] the GUI further configured to automatically highlight, in the first window, the matched string in the one or more unstructured plain text messages; [(f)] the GUI further configured to display, in a second window, the one or more of the quote and structure data in a standardized arrangement in real time; [(g)] the computer-readable code, when executed, further causing the CPU to automatically generate an alert in real-time when at least one predefined condition occurs; and [(h)] the GUI further configured to display the alert in the first window, such that clicking said alert automatically causes the GUI to display the standardized arrangement. REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is: Name Reference Date McFeely US 2002/0184237 A1 Dec. 5, 2002 Wong et al. (“Wong”) US 2003/0028468 A1 Feb. 6, 2003 Eppley et al. (“Eppley”) US 2005/0182756 A1 Aug. 18, 2005 Keen, Jr. et al. (“Keen”) US 2006/0026091 A1 Feb. 2, 2006 Chi et al. (“Chi”) US 2006/0156222 A1 July 13, 2006 THE REJECTION Claims 1, 6, 8-15, 18, 20, 23, 25-36, 38-41, 43-49, and 51-53 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Wong, Keen, McFeely, Chi, and Eppley. Appeal 2021-002995 Application 12/942,073 4 OPINION The Appellant contends, in relevant part, that the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1 and 20 is in error because the prior art does not render obvious “pars[ing] the one or more unstructured plain text messages in real time by: passing one or more strings of the one or more unstructured plain text messages through one or more identifiers, each identifier configured to parse different parts of the one or more strings using a hierarchy of expressions,” as recited in limitations (b) and (b1). See Appeal Br. 8-12; Reply Br. 7-8. The Examiner finds, in relevant part, that Wong teaches “pars[ing] the one or more messages in real time by identifying one or more parts of the one or more messages” (Final Act. 6), Keen teaches receiving unstructured plain text messages including at least one structure and “parsing the one or more unstructured plain text messages by identifying one or more parts of the one or more unstructured plain text messages” (id. at 7), and Eppley teaches “passing one or more strings of the one or more unstructured plain text messages through one or more identifiers, each identifier configured to parse different parts of the one or more strings using a hierarchy of expressions” (id. at 10). The Examiner determines “[o]ne of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that applying the known technique of Keen to the known invention of Wong would have yielded predictable results and resulted in an improved invention,” and that modifying the invention to receive, identify, and parse an unstructured message into identified component parts results in an improved invention because applying said technique allows a customer unfamiliar with the syntax of the pricing engine to request a price quote using unstructured plain text Appeal 2021-002995 Application 12/942,073 5 messages, thus improving the invention’s overall user experience. Id. at 8. The Examiner further determines that “[o]ne of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that applying the known technique of Eppley to the known invention of Wong as modified would have yielded predictable results and resulted in an improved invention,” that that “modifying the string filtering process of Wong as modified to parse a string using a hierarchy of expressions results in an improved invention because applying said technique achieves greater efficiency by testing the input against significantly fewer filters.” Id. at 10 (citing Eppley ¶¶ 11-12). Wong discloses, in relevant part, a method and system to highly customize a derivative security “in a way which does not present a risk to the issuer of the derivative security.” Wong ¶ 14. In this system and method, customers communicate to the bank or broker the particulars of their desired investment. Id. ¶ 15. This data is provided to a structuring engine and on the basis of the criteria defined by the customer, the structuring engine defines a customized security product. Id. Keen discloses, in relevant part, a system for allowing traders to use instant messaging (“IM”) type communications to input trading instructions directly into a broker’s order management system. Keen Abstr. The IM communications are textual in nature, formatted according to the IM network provider’s protocol, and incompatible with the sell-side brokerages’ order management system. Id. ¶¶ 29-31. The Trader Server receives the IM communications and converts them into communications that are compliant with the brokerage’s system. Id. ¶ 31. This conversion is performed by scanning the IM communication to identify and determine whether it includes a predetermined set of keywords such as buy, sell, limit, credit, etc. Appeal 2021-002995 Application 12/942,073 6 Id. ¶ 34. If the keywords are not there, the IM communication is parsed to identify trade parameters of the trading instructions using any suitable parsing technique, converted into a new format, and displayed to the brokerage’s system to display. Id. ¶¶ 34-36, 51, 61. Eppley discloses, in relevant part, that computer systems communicate with each other by exchanging data messages according to a communications protocol recognizable by the systems and that filters used to process documents and messages are “frequently arranged in a hierarchical manner, generally as a result of an addressing or naming system that is used to uniquely identify or locate the data.” Eppley ¶¶ 2-3. “In addition to Internet resources, a distributed system frequently utilizes hierarchical namespaces as a natural way to organize and express the topology of system resources such as servers, printers, etc.” Id. ¶ 4. “Whenever data is organized hierarchically, decision logic used to process the data also develops a hierarchical flavor,” such as by developing and applying a set of data processing rules. Id. ¶ 7. “A common application that uses processing rules based on name prefixes is message routing” that stores a table comprising filter and destinations associated with each filter. Id. ¶ 8. “To route a message, a router matches the message against its internal filter table to produce a set of matching filters. The router then forwards the message to the destinations associated with each matching filter.” Id. Eppley’s invention “relates to filter processing according to hierarchical data associated with the filters,” the invention testing input against significantly fewer filters and achieving greater efficiency over prior art systems. Id. ¶ 11. The filters are maintained in a tree structure, i.e., a filter hierarchy, used to match inputs with filters such that when an input is received, Appeal 2021-002995 Application 12/942,073 7 hierarchical data associated with the input is parsed into string segments and the tree is traversed to locate nodes matching the input. Id. The input is then compared to filters referenced by those nodes to locate filters matching the input. Id. The filter hierarchy may be traversed top to bottom or vice versa, and filters matching the inputs are returned in the order encountered in the hierarchy. Id. ¶ 12. An exemplary input is a string segment with a data item having multiple segments ordered according to a hierarchical scheme. Id. ¶ 41. The Examiner interprets “unstructured plain text message” as “text- heavy information that is not organized in a pre-defined manner but still contains some form of structure” (Ans. 5) and contends “[o]ne of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized the strings passed into the filter tree 100 of Eppley to be an unstructured plain text message: the filter tree 100 contains multiple node paths and is capable of parsing strings of many forms, e.g. ‘soap://xyz.com:35’ and ‘soap://mycorp.com/a/b/c’” (id. at 5-6 (citing Eppley ¶ 27)). We find that the ordinary and customary meaning of unstructured data, such as a message, is “[d]ata that are not in fixed locations,” i.e., “free- form text in business documents and reports, news articles and social media” and “found in word processing files, PDF files, email messages, Internet forums, blogs, Web pages, Twitter feeds and Facebook pages.” PCmag.com, https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/unstructured-data, last visited Feb. 9, 2022; see also Prior Decision 23-24 (“The ordinary and customary meaning of ‘unstructured’ is lacking structure or organization, such as not formally organized in a set or conventional pattern.”). Based on this definition, we agree with the Appellant that Eppley’s system involves Appeal 2021-002995 Application 12/942,073 8 structured data, i.e., a specifically formatted input, that “is broken down by segment in order to navigate to a specific destination and/or file.” Reply Br. 7; see also Eppley ¶¶ 2-8, 40-45. As best we understand the rejection, the Examiner finds Wong generally teaches parsing a message in real time (Final Act. 6), Keen teaches parsing an unstructured plain text message by identifying parts of the message (id. at 7; Ans. 4), and Eppley teaches passing strings of a message through identifiers configured to parse the different parts of the message using a hierarchy of expressions (Final Act. 10; Ans. 4-6). The Examiner appears to rely primarily on the combination of Keen and Eppley for teaching the whole of limitation (b1) in relying on Keen for teaching parsing unstructured plain text messages and on Eppley for teaching passing strings through identifiers configured to parse different parts of the strings using a hierarchy of expressions. However, the Examiner does not adequately explain how the combination would work - how Eppley’s filtering of a structured string would be applied to Keen’s parsing of an unstructured message - or why one of ordinary skill in the art would modify Keen’s method of parsing with Eppley’s method. At best, the Examiner provides that fewer filters would be applied, leading to greater efficiency. Final Act. 10. Yet, Keen’s parsing comprises scanning to identify keywords by comparison to a list and if that fails, then parsing by any suitable technique, while Eppley’s parsing relies on breaking an input into string segments and traversing a tree according to those segments to locate nodes matching the input and then comparing the input to filters referenced by those noted to locate filters matching the input. The Examiner does not adequately explain how the two methods would Appeal 2021-002995 Application 12/942,073 9 work together. Even were we to agree that Eppley’s technique can be one of Keen’s suitable techniques, the Examiner’s reasoning is based on achieving greater efficiency over prior art techniques that use message routing for hierarchically ordered, i.e., structured, data. See Eppley ¶¶ 7-10. The Examiner has not explained what benefit Eppley’s technique would have when applied to Keen’s technique for parsing unstructured data that does not necessarily use message routine and/or filters. Thus, based on the record before us, we are persuaded of Examiner error, and we do not sustain the obviousness rejection of independent claims 1 and 20 and dependent claims 6, 8-15, 18, 23, 25-36, 38-41, 43-49, and 51-53. CONCLUSION The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 6, 8-15, 18, 20, 23, 25-36, 38-41, 43-49, and 51-53 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is not sustained. DECISION SUMMARY In summary: Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § References/ Basis Affirmed Reversed 1, 6, 8-15, 18, 20, 23, 25-36, 38-41, 43-49, 51-53 103 Wong, Keen, McFeely, Chi, Eppley 1, 6, 8-15, 18, 20, 23, 25-36, 38-41, 43-49, 51-53 REVERSED