Ex Parte Allen et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 21, 2018

14566741 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 21, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
14/566,741 12/11/2014 Carville 0. Allen
50170 7590 09/21/2018
IBM CORP. (WIP)
c/o WALDER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW, P.C.
17304 PRESTON ROAD
SUITE 200
DALLAS, TX 75252
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
ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
AUS920140442US1 4365
EXAMINER
LE, THUYKHANH
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2658
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/21/2018 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte CORVILLE 0. ALLEN and LAURA J. RODRIGUEZ
Appeal2018-002627
Application 14/566,741 1
Technology Center 2600
Before DEBRA K. STEPHENS, DANIEL J. GALLIGAN, and
DAVID J. CUTITTA II, Administrative Patent Judges.
STEPHENS, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1-23, which are all of the claims pending in the application. We
have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We REVERSE.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is International Business
Machines Corporation (App. Br. 2).
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Application 14/566,741
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
According to Appellants, the claims are directed to a natural language
processing system that analyzes audience communications during a
presentation in order to indicate the portions of the presentation the audience
currently finds interesting (Abstract). Claim 1, reproduced below, is
illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method, in a natural language processing (NLP) system
comprising a processor and a memory, the method comprising:
rece1vmg, by the NLP system, a plurality of
communications from a plurality of devices associated with
audience members of a real-time presentation by a human
presenter of the presentation while the presentation is being
presented;
analyzing, by the NLP system, the plurality of
communications using natural language processing techniques,
to extract natural language terms or natural language phrases
from the communications that identify attributes of the audience
members;
correlating, by the NLP system, the extracted natural
language terms or natural language phrases with attributes of
audience members;
generating, by the NLP system, an aggregate audience
model based on the identified attributes of the audience
members, wherein the aggregate audience model specifies an
aggregate of attributes of the audience; and
outputting, by the NLP system, to the presenter via a
device associated with the presenter, a suggestion output
identifying one or more portions of the presentation that are
currently of interest to the audience members based on the
aggregate audience model.
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Application 14/566,741
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Bansal US 2009/0052645 Al Feb.26,2009
Kouhi US 2009/0150927 Al June 11, 2009
Verma US 2012/0023046 Al Jan.26,2012
Brager US 2013/0144605 Al June 6, 2013
Maddali US 2014/0309987 Al Oct. 16, 2014
Liu US 2015/0006295 Al Jan. 1, 2015
Fraccaroli US 2015/0094097 Al Apr. 2, 2015
Lahav US 2015/0278837 Al Oct. 1, 2015
REJECTI0NS 2
Claims 1--4, 8, 9, 12-15, 19, 20, and 23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, and
Liu (Final Act. 7-22).
Claims 5, 6, 16, and 17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, Liu, and Verma (id.
at 22-26).
Claims 7 and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, Liu, and Kouhi (id. at
26-28).
Claims 10, 11, 21, and 22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, Liu, Verma,
and Brager (id. at 28-32).
2 The provisional non-statutory double patenting rejection of claims 1--4 and
12-15 (Final Act. 2-7) has been withdrawn by the Examiner (Ans. 27).
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Application 14/566,741
ISSUE
35 u.s.c. § 103
Appellants contend their invention, as recited in claims 1--4, 8, 9, 12-
15, 19, 20, and 23, is patentable over Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav,
and Liu (App. Br. 7-31 ). The issue presented by the arguments is whether
the Examiner improperly combined Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, and
Liu in rejecting independent claims 1, 12, and 23 (App. Br. 7-31; Reply
Br. 2-15). Specifically, Appellants argue "[ e Jach of the alleged motivations
offered" by the Examiner "is merely a reiteration of a teaching in the
reference[s]" (App. Br. 8, 13-14; Reply Br. 7, 9-10) that does not support
"why those [references'] teachings would be combined in the particular way
alleged" (App. Br. 30; see id. at 14, 21; see also Reply Br. 8-9, 12).
We are persuaded by Appellants' contentions. The Examiner states
the skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine Bansal and
Maddali "for the benefit of breaking one feedback comment into comment
segments to identify attributes of the audience members" (Ans. 28; Final
Act. 9). Further, the Examiner states the skilled artisan would have been
motivated to combine Bansal, Maddali and Fraccaroli "for the benefit of
correlating [an attribute] with a user profile" (Ans. 28; Final Act. 10);
Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, and Lahav "for the benefit of making
prediction[s] of actions of users" (Ans. 29; Final Act. 11); and Bansal,
Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, and Liu "for the benefit of outputting the
probabilities that the users are interested in a given type of recommendation
in the subset of the types of recommendations" (Ans. 29; Final Act. 11).
Those motivations, however, merely reiterate certain of the
operational features described by the references (see Maddali ,r 53 ("break
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Application 14/566,741
one feedback comment into comment segments ... to extract
positive/negative feelings of the buyer towards a specific aspect of the
transaction."); Fraccaroli ,r 104 ("generate an attribute value that can be used
to correlate a user profile with a session area model-profile"); Lahav ,r 60
("group-specific models ... can be applied in real-time to make predictions
of actions for users"); Liu ,r 88 ("calculating the scores that indicate the
probabilities that the users are interested in the given type of
recommendation")). The Examiner also relies on those same operational
features to teach the claimed limitations (Final Act. 8-11 ). More
specifically, the Examiner relies on the operational features described by the
references to both teach the claimed limitations and to supply the motivation
to combine the references. The operational features taught by the references
may indeed teach the claimed limitations. The Examiner's listing, however,
of those same operational features does not provide "articulated reasoning"
having "some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of
obviousness" (KSR Int'! Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 417--418 (2007)).
Indeed, the Examiner's mere listing of the references' operational features
provides no detail or explanation as to why those operational features in and
of themselves would have motivated the combination of the references. As
such, the Examiner has not provided sufficient reasoning to combine the
references.
Accordingly, we cannot sustain the Examiner's rejection based on the
record at hand. Whether Bansal, which describes the desirability of
providing real-time feedback from an audience to enhance the quality of a
presentation (Bansal ,r,r 5---6, 14), and the Specification's Background, which
similarly describes the desirability of enhancing audience feedback in real-
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Application 14/566,741
time (Spec. ,r,r 2--4), provide sufficient reasoning that would have motivated
the combination of Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, and Liu (or any
other references), is not a question before us because the Examiner has not
made those findings; we will not speculate in that regard.
We are, therefore, constrained by the record to determine the
Examiner improperly combined Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, and Liu
in rejecting independent claims 1, 12, and 23. Because we agree with at
least one of the arguments advanced by Appellants, we do not reach the
merits of Appellants' other arguments (see App. Br. 7--43). Dependent
claims 2-11 and 13-22 stand with their independent claims. Therefore, we
cannot sustain the rejection of claims 1-23 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
We emphasize that our reversal should not be taken as an indication of
allowability or non-obviousness.
DECISION
The Examiner's rejection of claims 1--4, 8, 9, 12-15, 19, 20, and 23
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli,
Lahav, and Liu is reversed.
The Examiner's rejection of claims 5, 6, 16, and 17 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being obvious over Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, Liu, and
Verma is reversed.
The Examiner's rejection of claims 7 and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being obvious over Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, Liu, and Kouhi is
reversed.
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Application 14/566,741
The Examiner's rejection of claims 10, 11, 21, and 22 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being obvious over Bansal, Maddali, Fraccaroli, Lahav, Liu,
Verma, and Brager is reversed.
REVERSED
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