Ex Parte Baldwin et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Dec 21, 2018

13781408 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 21, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
13/781,408 02/28/2013 Tyler Baldwin
45839 7590 12/26/2018
Schwegman Lundberg & Woessner/ Linkedln/Microsoft
POBOX2938
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55402
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.
3080.124US1 6181
EXAMINER
SINGH, GURKANW ALJIT
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3683
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/26/2018 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@slwip.com
slw@blackhillsip.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte TYLER BALDWIN,
CHEN CHANG,
JOSHUA RICHARD V ANGEEST,
and MIKE DEREZIN
Appeal2017-005838
Application 13/781,408
Technology Center 3600
Before HUBERT C. LORIN, ANTON W. PETTING, and AMEE A. SHAH,
Administrative Patent Judges.
PETTING, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE 1
Tyler Baldwin, Chen Chang, Joshua Richard VanGeest, and Mike
Derezin (Appellants)2 seek review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of a final rejection
1 Our decision will make reference to the Appellants' Appeal Brief ("App.
Br.," filed August 8, 2016) and Reply Brief ("Reply Br.," filed February 20,
2017), and the Examiner's Answer ("Ans.," mailed December 20, 2016),
and Final Action ("Final Act.," mailed March 10, 2016).
2 Appellants identify Linkedin Corporation as the real party in interest. App.
Br. 2.
Appeal2017-005838
Application 13/781,408
of claims 1-24, the only claims pending in the application on appeal. We
have jurisdiction over the appeal pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
The Appellants invented a way of analyzing a social graph of a social
networking service for the purpose of deriving, for each member in a group
of members, a social proximity score representing a measure of how socially
connected an individual member is to a particular entity or organization.
Specification para. 1.
An understanding of the invention can be derived from a reading of
exemplary claim 1, which is reproduced below (bracketed matter and some
paragraphing added).
1. A method comprising:
[ 1] receiving, with at least one computer processor, a request to
generate social proximity scores
for each member and target entity pairing for a set of
members of a social networking service and a set of
target entities;
[2] with the at least one computer processor, for each member
and target entity pairing, deriving a social proximity score
as a weighted combination of the number of first-degree
and the number of second-degree connections that the
member has with other members of the social networking
service who have member profile information indicating
current employment with the target entity and satisfying
at least one of:
[a] having a job title matching any one of a
plurality of predefined job titles;
[b] having a job function matching any one of a
plurality of predefined job functions;
[ c] having a seniority level that meets or exceeds
some predefined seniority level;
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[ d] being previously employed at a company with
which the member and target entity pairing was
also employed;
[ e] being previously matriculated at, or graduated
from, a school at which the member of the member
and target entity pairing matriculated, or from
which the member of the member and target entity
pairing graduated;
[ fJ sharing in common a predefined number of
skills with the member of the member and target
entity pairing;
[g] sharing in common with the member of the
member and target entity pairing membership in a
group or professional organization;
[h] and sharing in common with the member of the
member and target entity pairing a predefined
number and selection of member profile attributes;
and
[3] storing, on a storage device, the social proximity scores for
each member and target entity pairing.
Claims 1-24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to a
judicial exception without significantly more.
ISSUES
The issues of eligible subject matter tum primarily on whether the
claims recite more than abstract conceptual advice of what a computer is to
provide without implementation details.
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ANALYSIS
The Examiner determines that the claims are directed "to the abstract
idea of calculating a proximity score in the social network field, the claims
of which are directed towards collecting and comparing information,
comparing new and stored information and using rules to identify options,
and organizing information through mathematical relationships." Final Act.
4. The Examiner goes on to determine:
The claims simply gather data and describe the data by reciting,
very generally, steps or organizing information through
mathematical relationships. The steps merely employ
mathematical relationships to manipulate existing information
to generate additional information. Abstract ideas are excluded
from patent eligibility based on a concern that monopolization
of the basic tools of scientific and technological work might
impede innovation more than it would promote it. The claim( s)
does/ do not include additional elements that are sufficient to
amount to significantly more than the judicial exception
because the claims require no more than a generic computer to
perform generic computer functions. The additional element(s)
or combination of elements in the claim( s) other than the
abstract idea per se amount(s) to no more than: mere
instructions to implement the idea on a computer, and/or (ii)
recitation of generic computer structure that serves to perform
generic computer functions that are well-understood, routine,
and conventional activities previously known to the pertinent
industry. Viewed as a whole, these additional claim element(s)
do not provide meaningful limitation( s) to transform the
abstract idea into a patent eligible application of the abstract
idea such that the claim(s) amounts to significantly more than
the abstract idea itself. Having considered the claims as a
whole, no element or combination of elements in the claims are
sufficient to ensure that the claims amount to significantly more
than the abstract idea itself. Indeed, the claims fail to recite any
improvements to another technology or technical field,
improvements to the functioning of the computer itself, and/or
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meaningful limitations beyond generally linking the use of an
abstract idea to a particular environment. Therefore, because
there are no meaningful limitations in the claim that transform
the exception into a patent eligible application such that the
claim amounts to significantly more than the exception itself,
the claim is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to
non-statutory subject matter.
Id. at 4--5.
We adopt the Examiner's determinations and analysis from Final
Action 4---6 and Answer 2-8 and reach similar legal conclusions.
In particular, we are not persuaded by Appellants' argument that "the
Examiner's analysis of the claimed subject matter describes the claims at a
high level of abstraction untethered from the language of the claims, and is
therefore inappropriate." App. Br. 13; see also Reply Br. 2-3 Method
claim 1 recites receiving request data, deriving scores based on various
criteria, and storing the scores. Thus, claim 1 recites receiving, analyzing,
and storing data. None of the limitations recite implementation details for
any of these steps, but instead recite functional results to be achieved by any
and all possible means.
Data reception, analysis, and storage are all generic, conventional data
processing operations to the point they are themselves concepts awaiting
implementation details. See Elec. Power Grp., LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d
1350, 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (holding that "collecting information, analyzing
it, and displaying certain results of the collection and analysis" are "a
familiar class of claims 'directed to' a patent-ineligible concept"); see also
In re Katz Interactive Call Processing Patent Litig., 639 F.3d 1303, 1316
(Fed. Cir. 2011) ("Absent a possible narrower construction of the terms
'processing,' 'receiving,' and 'storing,' ... those functions can be achieved
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by any general purpose computer without special programming."). The
sequence of data reception-analysis-storage is equally generic and
conventional or otherwise held to be abstract. See Ultramercial, Inc. v.
Hulu, LLC, 772 F.3d 709, 715 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (sequence of receiving,
selecting, offering for exchange, display, allowing access, and receiving
payment recited an abstraction); Inventor Holdings, LLC v. Bed Bath &
Beyond, Inc., 876 F.3d 1372, 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (sequence of data
retrieval, analysis, modification, generation, display, and transmission was
directed to an abstract idea); Two-Way Media Ltd. v. Comcast Cable
Commc 'ns, LLC, 874 F.3d 1329, 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (sequence of
processing, routing, controlling, and monitoring was directed to an abstract
idea).
As to the criteria data operated upon, "even if a process of collecting
and analyzing information is 'limited to particular content' or a particular
'source,' that limitation does not make the collection and analysis other than
abstract." SAP America Inc. v. InvestPic LLC, 898 F.3d 1161, 1168 (Fed.
Cir. 2018).
Appellants' argument that "[ s ]imply labeling the components of the
claims as 'generic' is insufficient to support a rejection" is similarly
answered. App. Br. 15.
More to the point, claim 1 does no more than derive a score, and is
therefore no more than a mathematical algorithm. Without more, this is a
claim directed to an abstract idea. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v CLS Bank Int 'l,
573 U.S. 208,219 (2014).
We are not persuaded by Appellants' argument that "[t]he Examiner
must explain why the claimed invention as a whole is not directed to
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significantly more." App. Br. 15 ( emphasis omitted). The claims do not
recite any technological implementation, but instead only recite functions to
be performed by any and all means.
At that level of generality, the claims do no more than
describe a desired function or outcome, without providing any
limiting detail that confines the claim to a particular solution
to an identified problem. The purely functional nature of the
claim confirms that it is directed to an abstract idea, not to a
concrete embodiment of that idea.
Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC v. Amazon.com Inc., 838 F.3d 1266, 1269 (Fed.
Cir. 2016).
CONCLUSIONS OF LAW
The rejection of claims 1-24 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to a
judicial exception without significantly more is proper.
DECISION
The rejection of claims 1-24 is affirmed.
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)(l)(iv) (2011).
AFFIRMED
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