Ex Parte Khesin et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Dec 22, 2015

12818975 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 22, 2015)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
12/818,975 06/18/2010 AlexKHESIN
26192 7590 12/24/2015
FISH & RICHARDSON P,C
PO BOX 1022
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55440-1022
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.
0026-0l 75CON1 8983
EXAMINER
MAHMOOD, REZWANUL
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2164
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/24/2015 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):
P ATDOCTC@fr.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ALEX KHESIN, ANDRIY BIHUN, EDUARDO MORALES,
JASON GOLDMAN, JEFF RYNAR, and VINOD MARUR
Appeal2014-001926
Application 12/818,975
Technology Center 2100
Before JEFFREYS. SMITH, DANIEL N. FISHMAN, and
KEVIN C. TROCK, Administrative Patent Judges.
SMITH, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal2014-001926
Application 12/818,975
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's non-
final rejection of claims 29-48, which are all the claims remaining in the
application. Claims 1-28 have been canceled. We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
Illustrative Claim
29. A method performed by one or more server devices, the method
compnsmg:
extracting, by one or more processors associated with the one or more
server devices, first information from a post to a blog that includes a
plurality of posts;
extracting, from the blog and by one or more processors associated
with the one or more server devices, second information, associated with the
blog, from a source different than the posts to the blog, where the second
information is not included in the posts to the blog; and
comparing, by one or more processors associated with the one or more
server devices, one or more terms of a search query to one or more terms
included in the first information and the second information to determine a
relevance of the post to the search query.
Sifry
Adar
Prior Art
US 2006/0004691 Al
US 2006/0069663 Al
Maymir-Ducharme US 2006/0112110 Al
Jan. 5,2006
Mar. 30, 2006
May 25, 2006
Mishne et al., Blocking Blog Spam with Language Model
Disagreement, Air Web '05, 2005, Chiba, Japan.
2
Appeal2014-001926
Application 12/818,975
Examiner ;s Rejections
Claims 36, 37, and 40-42 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as
anticipated by Sifry.
Claims 29--33, 39, and 48 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Sifry and Adar.
Claims 34, 35, and 44--47 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Sifry, Adar, and Mishne.
Claim 38 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Sifry and Maymir-Ducharme.
Claim 43 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Sifry and Mischne.
ANALYSIS
We adopt the findings of fact from the Examiner's Non-Final Action
and Examiner's Answer as our own. We concur with the decisions reached
by the Examiner for the reasons given in the Examiner's Answer. In
particular, we agree with and adopt the Examiner's responses to the
arguments raised in the Appeal Brief. To the extent Appellants' Reply Brief
raises additional issues or alters the emphasis of their arguments relative to
the Appeal Brief, we remain unpersuaded of Examiner error. We address
the following arguments from Appellants' Reply Brief for emphasis.
Section 102 rejection of claims 36, 37, and 4rJ--42
Appellants contend Sifry does not disclose "instructions to index
another post to the blog based on a content of the other post, the first
information, and the second information," as recited in claim 36. Reply Br.
3
Appeal2014-001926
Application 12/818,975
3-6. The Examiner finds Sifry discloses acquiring and indexing a post for a
blog when the post is added to the blog, based on content of the post, and
first and second information from the blog. See Ans. 3-6. Appellants have
not persuasively rebutted the Examiner's findings.
Appellants contend the URL or name of a blog site described in
paragraph 30 of Sifry does not describe "second information, associated with
the blog, from a source different than the posts to the blog, where the second
information is not included in the posts to the blog" as recited in claim 36.
Reply Br. 7. Appellants have not provided persuasive evidence or argument
to distinguish the "second information" as claimed from the URL or name of
the blog site described by Sifry. See Ans. 6-8.
We sustain the rejection of claim 36 under 35 U.S.C. § 102.
Appellants do not present arguments for the patentability of claims 37 and
40-42, which fall with claim 36. App. Br. 17.
Section 103 rejection of claims 29-33
Appellants contend the combination of Sifry and Adar does not teach
extracting "first information from a post to a blog that includes a plurality of
posts" and extracting "second information, associated with the blog" as
recited in claim 29. Reply Br. 9-10. Appellants' contentions are
inconsistent with paragraph 30 of Sifry. See Ans. 9-13.
We sustain the rejection of claim 29 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Appellants do not present arguments for separate patentability of claims 30-
33, which fall with claim 29. App. Br. 29.
4
Appeal2014-001926
Application 12/818,975
Section 103 rejection of claim 39
Appellants contend the combination of Sifry and Adar does not teach
using an index "to determine a relevance of the other post to a received
search query" as recited in claim 39. Reply Br. 10-11. Appellants'
contention is inconsistent with the title and abstract of both Sifry and Adar.
We sustain the rejection of claim 39 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Section 103 rejection of claim 48
Appellants present arguments for the patentability of claim 48 (Reply
Br. 11-12) similar to those presented for claim 39, which we find
unpersuasive. We sustain the rejection of claim 48 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Section 103 rejection of claims 34, 35, and 44-47
Appellants contend the combination of Sifry, Adar, and Mishne does
not teach "determining, based on the comparing, whether at least one of the
post or the blog are spam" as recited in claim 34. Reply Br. 12-13.
Appellants' contention is inconsistent with the title and abstract of Mishne.
To the extent Appellants' contention is based on the premise that Mishne
discusses determining spam in blog comments, and the claim recites
determining spam in "the post or the blog," Appellants have not provided
persuasive evidence or argument to show a person who can identify spam in
the comment section of a blog as taught by Mishne would be unable to
identify spam in any other sections of the blog using Mishne's teachings.
See Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed.
Cir. 2007) (citing KSR Int'! Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 419 (2007)).
5
Appeal2014-001926
Application 12/818,975
Appellants present arguments for the patentability of claims 3 5 and
44--47 similar to those presented for claim 34 (Reply Br. 12-16), which we
find unpersuasive. We sustain the rejection of claims 34, 35, and 44--47
under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Section 103 rejection of claim 38
Appellants contend the combination of Sifry and Maymir-Ducharme
does not teach information identifying a location, an age, or a gender of the
author of the blog as required by claim 38. Reply Br. 16-19. Appellants'
contention is inconsistent with paragraph 18 ofMaymir-Ducharme, which
teaches a relational database stores data values such as name and birth date,
for example, for an author in a database of journal entries.
We sustain the rejection of claim 38 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Section 103 rejection of claim 43
Appellants present arguments for the patentability of claim 43 (Reply
Br. 19-20) similar to those presented for claim 34, which we find
unpersuasive. We sustain the rejection of claim 43 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
DECISION
The rejections of claims 29-48 are 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.
§ 41.50(f).
AFFIRMED
rwk
6