Cognitive Scale, Inc.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Sep 14, 2021

2020002384 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 14, 2021)

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.
14/729,554 06/03/2015 Matthew Sanchez COGSC-15-001.1 2413
33438 7590 09/14/2021
TERRILE, CANNATTI & CHAMBERS, LLP
P.O. BOX 203518
AUSTIN, TX 78720
EXAMINER
ALABI, OLUWATOSIN O
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2126
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/14/2021 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):
USPTO@dockettrak.com
celeste@tcciplaw.com
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PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte MATTHEW SANCHEZ and DILUM RANATUNGA
___________

Appeal 2020-002384
Application 14/729,554
Technology Center 2100

____________

Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., MICHAEL J. STRAUSS and
IRVIN E. BRANCH, Administrative Patent Judges.

WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

STATEMENT OF THE CASE1
Appellant2 is appealing the final rejection of claims 1–20 under
35 U.S.C. § 134(a). See Appeal Brief 6. Claims 1, 7 and 15 are
independent. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).

1 Rather than reiterate Appellant’s arguments and the Examiner’s
determinations, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed September 30, 2019), the
Final Action (mailed June 6, 2019) and the Answer (mailed November 18,
2019), for the respective details. Appellant indicates that application
14/729,559 (Appeal Brief 2020-002387) is a related appeal. Appeal Brief 1.

2 Appellant refers to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. 1.42(a). (“The
word ‘applicant’ when used in this title refers to the inventor or all of the
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We affirm.
Introduction
According to Appellant, “[t]he present invention relates in general to
the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software
utilized in this field. Still more particularly, it relates to a method, system
and computer-usable medium for generating and using a universal
knowledge repository.” Specification ¶ 2.
Representative Claim3
1. A system comprising:
a processor;
a data bus coupled to the processor; and
a non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium
embodying computer program code, the non-transitory, computer-
readable storage medium being coupled to the data bus, the
computer program code interacting with a plurality of computer
operations and comprising instructions executable by the processor
and configured for:

joint inventors, or to the person applying for a patent as provided in
§§ 1.43, 1.45, or 1.46.”). Appellant identifies Cognitive Scale, Inc. as the
real party in interest. Appeal Brief 1.

3 Appellant does not argue independent claims 1, 7 and 15 individually. See
Appeal Brief 9 (“[T]he destination agent publishing the cognitively
processed insights to a consumer of cognitive insight data, as required by
claim 1 and as substantially required by claims 7 and 15.”). Accordingly,
we select independent claim 1 as representative. See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (“When multiple claims subject to the same ground of
rejection are argued as a group or subgroup by appellant, the Board may
select a single claim from the group or subgroup and may decide the appeal
as to the ground of rejection with respect to the group or subgroup on the
basis of the selected claim alone.”).

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receiving streams of data from a plurality of data
sources, the plurality of data sources comprising at least one
of a social data source stored in a social data repository,
public data source stored in a public data repository,
licensed data source stored in a licensed data repository and
proprietary data source stored in a proprietary data
repository;
processing the streams of data from the plurality of
data sources, the processing the streams of data from the
plurality of data sources performing data enriching to
provide data enriched data streams, the data enriching
performing sentiment analysis, geotagging and entity
detection operations on the streams of data from the
plurality of data sources; and,
storing the data streams and the data enriched data
streams within the universal knowledge repository as a
collection of knowledge elements, the storing being
performed by a cognitive inference and learning system, the
cognitive inference and learning system executing on a
hardware processor of an information processing system and
interacting with the plurality of data sources, the cognitive
inference and learning system and the information
processing system providing a cognitive computing
function, the cognitive computing function comprising at
least one of performing a spatial navigation operation, a
machine vision operation and a pattern recognition operation
on at least some of the streams of data from the plurality of
data sources, the cognitive inference and learning system
comprising a cognitive platform, the cognitive platform
comprising
a cognitive graph, the cognitive graph being derived
from the plurality of data sources, the cognitive graph
enabling the cognitive inference and learning system to
render the cognitively processed insights, the universal
knowledge repository comprising the cognitive graph;
a cognitive engine, the cognitive engine processing
the streams of data from the plurality of data sources, the
cognitive engine comprising a dataset engine, a graph query
engine and an insight/learning engine, the dataset engine
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being implemented to establish and maintain a dynamic data
ingestion and enrichment pipeline, the graph query engine
being implemented to receive and process queries such that
the queries are bridged into the cognitive graph, the
insight/learning engine being implemented to generate a
cognitive insight from the cognitive graph, the dataset
engine, the graph query engine and the insight/learning
engine operating collaboratively to generate the cognitive
insight;
a sourcing agent, the sourcing agent sourcing the data
streams and the enriched data streams; and,
a destination agent, the destination agent publishing
the cognitively processed insights to a consumer of
cognitive insight data.

References
Name4 Reference Date
Blaschak US 2013/0204882 A1 August 8, 2013
Chandrasekaran US 2013/0297618 A1 November 7, 2013
Porpora US 2015/0095333 A1 April 2, 2015
Baughman US 2015/0294216 A1 October 15, 2015
Bauer US 2015/0317376 A1 November 5, 2015

Rejections on Appeal
Claims 1–20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112(b) or 35 U.S.C.
§ 112 (pre-AIA), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to
particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the
inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the
invention. Final Action 4–6.

4 All reference citations are to the first named inventor only.

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Claims 1–4, 7–10, 13 and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Bauer, Chandrasekaran and Porpora. Final Action
7–29.
Claims 5, 6, 11 and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Bauer, Chandrasekaran, Porpora and Blaschak. Final
Action 30–36.
Claims 15–18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Bauer, Baughman, Chandrasekaran and Porpora. Final
Action 36–60.
Claims 19 and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Bauer, Baughman, Chandrasekaran, Porpora and
Blaschak. Final Action 60–64.

ANALYSIS
35 U.S.C. § 112 Rejection
Appellant contends, “[i]t is believed that the 35 U.S.C. § 112 rejection
can be resolved should agreement be reached regarding the rejections over
the art.” Appeal Brief 7; see Answer 63–64. Appellant does not argue the
merits of the rejection and therefore we summarily sustain the Examiner’s
indefiniteness rejection of claims 1–20. See Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d
1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential) (“If an appellant fails to present
arguments on a particular issue — or, more broadly, on a particular rejection
— the Board will not, as a general matter, unilaterally review those
uncontested aspects of the rejection. See, e.g., Hyatt v. Dudas, 551 F.3d
1307, 1313–14 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (the Board may treat arguments appellant
failed to make for a given ground of rejection as waived)”).
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35 U.S.C. § 103 Rejections
Appellant contends:
It is respectfully submitted that nowhere within the cited
portions of Bauer (nor anywhere else in Bauer) is there any
disclosure or suggestion of a cognitive inference and learning system
as disclosed and claimed, much less a cognitive inference and
learning system comprising a cognitive platform, the cognitive
platform comprising a cognitive graph, the cognitive graph being
derived from the plurality of data sources, the cognitive graph
enabling the cognitive inference and learning system to render the
cognitively processed insights, the universal knowledge repository
comprising the cognitive graph; a cognitive engine, the cognitive
engine processing the streams of data from the plurality of data
sources, the cognitive engine comprising a dataset engine, a graph
query engine and an insight/learning engine, the dataset engine being
implemented to establish and maintain a dynamic data ingestion and
enrichment pipeline, the graph query engine being implemented to
receive and process queries such that the queries are bridged into the
cognitive graph, the insight/learning engine being implemented to
generate a cognitive insight from the cognitive graph, the dataset
engine, the graph query engine and the insight/learning engine
operating collaboratively to generate the cognitive insight; a
sourcing agent, the sourcing agent sourcing the data streams and the
enriched data streams; and, a destination agent, the destination agent
publishing the cognitively processed insights to a consumer of
cognitive insight data, as required by claim 1 and as substantially
required by claims 7 and 15. These deficiencies of Bauer are not
cured by Chandrasekaran, Baughman or Porpora, alone or in
combination.
Appeal Brief 8–9; see Bauer ¶ 77.
Additionally, when discussing the elements of the universal
knowledge repository comprises a cognitive graph, the cognitive
graph comprising a representation of expert knowledge, associated
with individuals and groups over a period of time, to depict
relationships between people, places and things, the cognitive graph
comprising a machine-readable formalism for knowledge
representation, the cognitive graph providing a common framework
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allowing data and knowledge to be shared and reused across user,
application, organization and community boundaries, the examiner
cites to the expert skill matrix of Bauer. However, it is respectfully
submitted that the cognitive graph as disclosed and claimed is
patentably distinct from the expert skill matrix of Bauer.
Appeal Brief 9.
Appellant concludes:
Accordingly, claims 1, 7 and 15 are allowable over Bauer and
Chandrasekaran. Claims 2-6 depend from claim 1 and are allowable
for at least this reason. Claims 8-14 depend from claim 7 and are
allowable for at least this reason. Claims 16 - 20 depend from claim
15 and are allowable for at least this reason.
Appeal Brief 9.
Bauer, Chandrasekaran, and Porpora taken alone or in
combination, do not disclose or suggest a cognitive graph as
disclosed and claimed, much less the cognitive graph comprising
a representation of expert knowledge, associated with
individuals and groups over a period of time, to depict
relationships between people, places and things, much less the
cognitive graph comprising a machine-readable formalism for
knowledge representation, much less the cognitive graph
providing a common framework allowing data and knowledge to
be shared and reused across user, application, organization and
community boundaries, all as required by claim 6 and 12 and as
substantially required by claims 19 and 20. Accordingly, claims
6, 12, 19 and 20 are allowable over Bauer, Chandrasekaran and
Porpora for at least these additional reasons.
Appeal Brief 9–10.

We find Appellant’s arguments unpersuasive of Examiner error
because the arguments do not address the Examiner’s rejections with any
specificity. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (“The arguments shall explain
why the examiner erred as to each ground of rejection contested by
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appellant.”); see also Final Action 7–64. Appellant lists a myriad of claim
limitations and contends that none of “the cited portions of Bauer (nor
anywhere else in Bauer)” disclose the listed claim limitations without
proffering any explanation as to why Bauer and/or any of the other cited
references (Baughman, Chandrasekaran, Porpora and Blaschak) fail to
discloses the listed claim limitations. Appeal Brief 8–10; see In re Jung,
637 F.3d 1356, 1365 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (affirming because appellant “merely
argued that the claims differed from [the prior art], and chose not to proffer a
serious explanation of this difference”); see also In re Baxter Travenol
Labs., 952 F.2d 388, 391 (Fed. Cir. 1991) (“It is not the function of this
court to examine the claims in greater detail than argued by an appellant,
looking for [patentable] distinctions over the prior art.”). Accordingly, we
sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejections of claims 1–20.

CONCLUSION
Claims
Rejected
35
U.S.C. §
Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–20 112(b) Indefiniteness 1–20
1–4, 7–10,
13, 14
103 Bauer,
Chandrasekaran,
Porpora
1–4, 7–10,
13, 14

5, 6, 11, 12 103 Bauer,
Chandrasekaran,
Porpora, Blaschak
5, 6, 11, 12
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15–18 103 Bauer, Baughman,
Chandrasekaran,
Porpora
15–18
19, 20 103 Bauer, Baughman,
Chandrasekaran,
Porpora, Blaschak
19, 20
Overall
Outcome
1–20

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)(v).

AFFIRMED