Ex Parte Chang et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jul 29, 2014

12132783 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 29, 2014)

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.
12/132,783 06/04/2008 Yuan-Chi Chang YOR920050097US3(76DIVCON) 8416
49267 7590 07/29/2014
TUTUNJIAN & BITETTO, P.C.
425 Broadhollow Road, Suite 302
Melville, NY 11747
EXAMINER
VY, HUNG T
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2163
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/29/2014 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 YUAN-CHI CHANG, JUHNYOUNG LEE, and
IOANA ROXANA STANOI
____________

Appeal 2012-003751
Application 12/132,783
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before ST. JOHN COURTENAY III, THU A. DANG, and LARRY J. HUME
Administrative Patent Judges.

COURTENAY, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final
Rejection of claims 1–8. We have jurisdiction over the pending claims under 35
U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants’ claimed invention relates to: “storing, retrieving,
and querying data from ontology and relational databases, and more particularly,
to the application of semantic inferencing to enhance the flexibility of data models
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while continuing to leverage scalability and query efficiency of relational
databases.” (Spec. 1).

Independent claim 1, reproduced below, is representative of the subject
matter on appeal:
1. A method to query data from an inferencing-enabled metadata
system,
comprising the steps of:
responsive to a query including an inferencing portion and an
attribute predicate portion, issuing an inferencing query to an
ontology management system and retrieving inferencing results; and
issuing a relational query by combining inferencing results and
the attribute predicate portion.

REJECTIONS
A. Claims 1, 3–5, 7, and 8 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being
anticipated by Das (US 2006/0036592 A1; Feb. 16, 2006).
B. Claims 2 and 6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over the combined teachings and suggestions of Das and Martin (US
2006/0179074 A1; Aug. 10, 2006).
GROUPING OF CLAIMS
Based on Appellants’ arguments, we decide the appeal of rejection A of
claims 1, 3–5, 7, and 8 on the basis of representative claim 1. See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c) (1)(vii)(2004).
1

1 Appellants filed a Notice of Appeal on May 6, 2011. The date of filing the
Notice of Appeal determines which set of rules applies to an Ex Parte appeal. If a
Notice of Appeal is filed prior to January 23, 2012, then the 2004 version of the
Board Rules last published in the 2011 edition of Title 37 of the Code of Federal
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Based on Appellants’ arguments, we decide the appeal of rejection B of
claims 2 and 6 on the basis of representative claim 2.

ANALYSIS
Anticipation Rejection A - § 102(e)
Independent Claim 1
Issue: Under § 102, does Das disclose “issuing a relational query by
combining inferencing results and the attribute predicate portion,” within the
meaning of representative claim 1?
Appellants contend Das does not disclose “issuing a relational query by
combining inferencing results and the attribute predicate portion,” as recited in
claim 1. (App. Br. 15). The Examiner disagrees with Appellants’ contentions. In
the “Response to Argument” portion of the Answer (9), the Examiner additionally
points to Das, at paragraphs 99–100, as evidence in support of the rejection:
[0099] Also, the application can exploit the full SQL
expressive power when using ONT_RELATED operator.
For example, it can easily combine the above query results
with those restaurants that have lower price range.

[0100] SELECT r.name FROM served_food sf, restau-
rant r
[0101] WHERE r.id=sf.r_id AND ONT_ RELAT-
ED(sf.cuisine, 'IS_A OR EQV',
[0102] 'Latin American',
[0103] 'Cuisine_ontology')=l AND
r. price range=' $';

Regulations (37 C.F.R. § 41.1 et seq.) applies to the appeal. See also Manual of
Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) 8
th
ed., Rev. 8, July 2010.
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In the Reply Brief (6–7), Appellants address the Examiner’s explanations
(Ans. 5, 9) regarding paragraphs 99–103 of Das:
In stark contrast, Das suggests that separate queries are made, and the
results of those separate queries are combined. For instance, Das
explains that the query results to find Latin American restaurants are
combined "with those restaurants that have lower price range." (Das,
para. [0099]). It is noted that "restaurants that have lower price
range" are a result of the query r.price_range='$', reflected in
paragraph [0103] of Das. As such, the cited portions of Das will
combine the results of the query to find Latin American restaurants
with the results of the query to find "restaurants that have lower
price range." It is therefore clear that the cited portions of Das do
NOT "combin[e] inferencing results and the attribute predicate
portion" of the query, as in claims 1 and 5, but rather the cited
portions of Das suggest that the results of a first section of a query
(i.e., Latin American restaurants) are combined with the results of a
second section of a query (i.e., "restaurants that have lower price
range").

(Reply Br. 6–7).
We begin our analysis with claim construction of the contested data
components (“inferencing results” and “the attribute predicate portion”). As an
initial matter of claim construction, we note Appellants do not argue specific
definitions for the contested data components, nor do we find limiting definitions
in the Specification. Nevertheless, we look to Appellants’ Specification for
context regarding the broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the
Specification for the contested claim terms. We find both the “inferencing
results” and “attribute predicate” data limitations recited in claim 1 are described
in the Specification only in terms of non-limiting examples:
In block 600, a query is posed to an intelligent database, which
is associated with an ontology and a relational database. The
present query includes an inferencing section or portion and an
attribute predicate section or portion. The inferencing section is
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to find teachers employed by PS101. This inferencing query is
answered first by ontology in block 602. The answers are Mr.
Smith, Mr. Lee and Mr. Ford, which are returned in block 604.
Salary is an attribute of the teacher class so "salary greater than
47000" is a predicate on attributes. The inferencing result, in
conjunction with the attribute predicate, forms a relational
database query as set forth in block 606. The relational query
then returns Mr. Smith from the database in block 608, which
satisfies the query.

(Spec. 13, ll. 1–14,).
Regarding the claim 1 term “inferencing results,” we conclude the
“inferencing results” that are combined with the “attribute predicate portion” in
the second step of claim 1 do not have explicit antecedent basis in the first step of
claim 1. Appellants could have amended the claim to connect the “inferencing
results” of the second step with the retrieved “inferencing results” of the first step
(e.g., by claiming “the inferencing results” or “said inferencing results”), but did
not.
2
Therefore, we conclude nothing in the plain language of claim 1 requires
the “inferencing results” of the first and second steps to contain the same data.
We additionally conclude the second step of “issuing a relational query”
merely requires combining data in the manner claimed. The claim does not
positively recite any submission of the issued “relational query” to a particular
database, nor does the claim indicate what is done with any intended (but not
claimed) query results. Thus, we find nothing in claim 1 that indicates the step of

2
Our reviewing court guides: “In the patentability context, claims are to be given
their broadest reasonable interpretations . . . . [L]imitations are not to be read into
the claims from the specification.” In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 1184 (Fed.
Cir. 1993) (citations omitted). Moreover, because “applicants may amend claims
to narrow their scope, a broad construction during prosecution creates no
unfairness to the applicant or patentee.” In re ICON Health and Fitness, Inc., 496
F.3d 1374, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citation omitted).
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“issuing a relational query” (by merely combining data) is performed any
differently according to the type or informational content of the “inferencing
results” and “attribute predicate” data limitations. Accordingly, such data are
non-functional descriptive material because the claim does not specify who or
what the relational query is issued to. See Ex parte Nehls, 88 USPQ2d 1883,
1887–90 (BPAI 2008) (precedential). Therefore, we accord no patentable weight
to the informational content of the recited “inferencing results” and “attribute
predicate” data limitations.
We agree with the Examiner (Ans. 9) that the SQL “where” condition
clause that invokes the ONT_RELATED operator (Das ¶28) produces
“inferencing results” that are combined (using the Boolean AND operator) with
the attribute predicate “r. price range=' $.” (See Das ¶¶ 99-103).
Given the significant claim construction issues discussed above, on this
record, we are not persuaded the Examiner’s claim interpretation is overly broad,
unreasonable, or inconsistent with Appellants’ Specification. Therefore,
Appellants have not persuaded us the Examiner erred.
Accordingly, we sustain the §102 rejection of independent claim 1, and the
§102 rejection of grouped claims 3–5, 7, and 8, which fall therewith.

Rejection B under §103
Regarding the §103 rejection of dependent claims 2 and 6, Appellants
contend:
Martin fails to even suggest an inferencing-enabled metadata system
which manages data by linking relationships between the lexical
reference source 115 and concept dictionary 140 to provide the
results. Rather, Martin manages data by storing relationships in
concept dictionary 140. Paragraph [0029] of Martin explains,
"concept dictionary 140 comprising a record of each of the queries,
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input (110) and derived (lOS), and the respective measures
determined by the knowledge acquisition module 135 of semantic
relationships therebetween, or between terms comprised in those
queries." Thus, it is respectfully asserted that the results obtained in
Martin are obtained by querying the concept dictionary 140, which
stores related queries. As such, Martin fails to even contemplate
managing data by linking relationships. In fact, Martin would have
no need to link relationships between concept dictionary 140 and
lexical reference source 115 as relationships are recorded in the
concept dictionary.

(App. Br. 22).

We disagree. We find Appellants’ admission that “Martin manages data by
storing relationships in concept dictionary 140” (Id.) teaches or at least suggests
the claimed “linking relationships between ontology class information in the
ontology management system to associated attribute schema in the relational
database,” as recited in each of claims 2 and 6. Therefore, we sustain the
Examiner’s §103 rejection B of claims 2 and 6.

DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e).
We affirm the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 2 and 6 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a).

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Application 12/132,783

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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)(iv). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.50(f).

AFFIRMED

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