Ex Parte Musgrove et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jul 18, 2018

11343084 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 18, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
11/343,084 01/31/2006
106303 7590 07/20/2018
Nixon Peabody LLP
300 South Grand Avenue, Suite 4100
Los Angeles, CA 90071
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Timothy A. Musgrove
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.
037141-000005 3245
EXAMINER
STEVENS, ROBERT
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2164
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/20/2018 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):
lapatentmb@nixonpeabody.com
ipairlink@nixonpeabody.com
slevy@nixonpeabody.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte TIMOTHY A. MUSGROVE and ROBIN H. WALSH
Appeal2018-001410
Application 11/343,084
Technology Center 2100
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, JOHNNY A. KUMAR, and
BETH Z. SHAW, Administrative Patent Judges.
SHAW, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner's Final Rejection of claims 1-36 and 47---63, which constitute all
the claims pending in this application. App. Br. 3. Claims 37--46 and 64---68
are withdrawn. Claims App'x. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
RELATED APPEALS
We issued a prior decision for this application related to a prior appeal
on September 11, 2014 (Appeal No. 2012-005304), in which we affirmed-
in-part the Examiner's decision. Dec. 5. The issues from the prior appeal do
Appeal2018-001410
Application 11/343,084
not affect the current appeal.
INVENTION
The invention relates to a system and method for semantic search and
retrieval of electronic documents. See Spec. ,r 2.
Claim 1 is illustrative and reproduced below:
1. A computer system comprising:
a corpus including a plurality of electronic documents;
a word usage module that determines word usage
patterns in said plurality of electronic documents, wherein the
word usage patterns identifies contextual information present
when a word is used in an electronic document to determine at
least one probable word sense of the word used in the electronic
document, and wherein the contextual information is based on
the semantics of the words used in the electronic document;
a query pre-processing module that receives a query from
a user, and analyzes said query to determine probable word
usage patterns in said query, wherein the probable word usage
patterns are based on semantic concepts associated with said
query;
a processor that matches said probable word usage
patterns in said query to word usage patterns in the electronic
documents to identify at least one of said electronic documents
as a candidate electronic document, retrieves said candidate
electronic document from said corpus, and provides said
candidate electronic document as a search result, wherein said
candidate electronic document comprises a contextual semantic
match between words of the candidate electronic document and
words of the search query; and
a post-processing module that analyzes said retrieved
candidate electronic document to determine exactness of match
between said probable word usage patterns of said query and
the word usage patterns of said candidate electronic document.
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Application 11/343,084
REFERENCES AND REJECTIONS AT ISSUE
The Examiner rejected claims 1, 3-19, 21-24, 26-36, 47, 49---63, and
69 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Appelt et
al. (US Patent No. 6,601,026 B2, hereafter referred to as "Appelt") in view
of Aarskog (US Patent No. 8,265,925 B2, hereafter referred to as "Aarskog")
and Bharat et al. (US Patent No. 7,249,121 B2, hereafter referred to as
"Bharat"). Final Act. 9.
ARGUMENTS AND ANALYSIS
We have reviewed Appellants' arguments in the Briefs, the
Examiner's rejection, and the Examiner's response to Appellants'
arguments. Appellants do not proffer sufficient argument or evidence for us
to find error in the Examiner's findings. See Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d
1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential). For at least the reasons discussed
below, we agree with and adopt the Examiner's findings and conclusions in
the Final Action and Answer.
Our affirmance is based only on the arguments made in the briefs.
Any arguments or authorities omitted therefrom are neither before us nor at
issue but are considered waived. Cf In re Watts, 354 F.3d 1362, 1367 (Fed.
Cir. 2004) ("[I]t is important that the applicant challenging a decision not be
permitted to raise arguments on appeal that were not presented to the
Board.")
Appellants argue the Examiner erred in finding Aarskog teaches
determining the word sense of the candidate electronic document because
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Application 11/343,084
"Aarskog attempts to identify only a single possible meaning of a word."
App. Br. 13. Appellants also argue Aarskog is "non-enabling art because
Aarskog fails to explain with any detail how the word sense is determined
and fails to disclose how the word sense is determined." Id. We are not
persuaded by these arguments. As the Examiner finds, and we agree, claim
1 recites determining "at least one probable word sense," ( emphasis added)
which is taught by Aarskog's description of "Word Sense Disambiguation."
Ans. 3 (citing Aarskog, 124:54--125: 10). As the Examiner correctly finds,
Aarskog describes a process of using semantics in establishing the meaning,
i.e. word sense, of a word. Id. at 3--4. Contrary to Appellants'
characterization of Aarskog (Reply Br. 3), Aarskog explicitly describes the
use of semantics to determine word sense. Aarskog, 124:54--125: 10 ("Word
Sense Disambiguation ... Disambiguation means to establish a single
grammatical or semantic interpretation of a word") ( emphases added).
Appellants additionally argue none of the cited references performs an
analysis of both documents and search queries based on semantics to
identify semantic matches. App. Br. 14. We disagree because Appelt
teaches the use of semantics to process documents and queries (see, e.g.,
Appelt, 3: 13-15 "the natural language querying can be based on a query
grammar"), and Bharat also teaches a "semantic unit locator," which is used
to process a query and documents. Ans. 4--5 ( citing Appelt, 8 :2-6; 3: 1-25;
Bharat, 5:10-15, 5:66-6:2, 6:39--46). For example, Bharat describes how a
semantic unit locator 121 may generate a substring of a user's query, such as
"leaving the," and then identify compounds and use the compounds to refine
a ranking of documents. Bharat, 5:10-15, 6:42---6:46.
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Application 11/343,084
Appellants argue Bharat "teaches away" from performing an analysis
of the candidate electronic documents. App. Br. 15, 17. First, we note that
"the prior art's mere disclosure of more than one alternative does not
constitute a teaching away from any of these alternative because such
disclosure does not criticize, discredit, or otherwise discourage the solution
claimed .... " In re Fulton, 391 F.3d 1195, 1201 (Fed. Cir. 2004).
Moreover, as the Examiner finds, Bharat's passage cited by Appellants in is
fact discussing problems in the prior art. Ans. 5. As the Examiner points
out, Bharat even ends the "Background of the Invention" section with the
statement that 'there is a need in the art to be able to more accurately
identify compounds [ compound words] that correspond to a semantically
meaningful unit,' before disclosing Bharat' s solution[ s] to the prior art
problems." Ans. 5. Thus, we agree with the Examiner that Bharat does not
"teach away" from the combination of references. Id.
Appellants argue that one skilled in the art would not have been
motivated to combine the references. App. Br. 17; Reply Br. 1, 2. The
Examiner finds:
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at
the time of Applicant's subject matter to apply the teachings of
Bharat for the benefit of Appelt in view of Aarskog, because to
do so provided a designer with options for implementing a
search system for refining search results, as taught by Bharat in
the Abstract. These references were all applicable to the same
field of endeavor, i.e., search systems.
Final Act. 11, 12.
Upon reviewing the record before us, we find that the Examiner's
suggestion for the proposed modification in the prior art suffices as an
articulated reason with some rational underpinning to establish a prima facie
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Application 11/343,084
case of obviousness. See KSR Int'! Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398,418
(2007). In summary, we find that an ordinarily skilled artisan at the time of
the claimed invention would have combined Appelt's teachings of semantic
processing (see Appelt, 8:5-7), with Aarskog's teachings of Word Sense
Disambiguation (see Aarskog, 124:54--125:9) and Bharat's teachings of
semantic query processing and ranking of search results (Bharat, 5: 10-15,
5:66-6:2, 6:39--46, Abstract).
The Examiner's proposed combination of the cited teachings of
Appelt, Aarskog, and Bharat is no more than a simple arrangement of old
elements with each performing the same function it had been known to
perform, yielding no more than one would expect from such an arrangement.
KSR, 550 U.S. at 416. The ordinarily skilled artisan, being "a person of
ordinary creativity, not an automaton," would be able to fit the teachings of
the cited references together like pieces of a puzzle to predictably result in a
financial transaction system wherein a user device is first authenticated
before the user can be allowed to open a web session with the financial
institution to perform a desired transaction. Id. at 420-21. Because
Appellants have not demonstrated that the Examiner's proffered
combination would have been "uniquely challenging or difficult for one of
ordinary skill in the art," we agree with the Examiner that the proposed
modification would have been within the purview of the ordinarily skilled
artisan. Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162
(Fed. Cir. 2007) (citing KSR, 550 U.S. at 418). Therefore, we sustain the
Examiner's rejection of independent claim 1.
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With respect to independent claim 19, Appellants make similar
argument as for claim 1, and additionally argue Appelt does not teach
disambiguating the word sense of the search query. App. Br. 19. However,
as discussed above with respect to claim 1, the Examiner relies on Aarskog
to teach word sense disambiguation, and we agree with the Examiner that
Appelt and Bharat teach using grammar or a semantic unit to process
queries. See Ans. 4, 5, and 10. In the absence of sufficient evidence or line
of technical reasoning to the contrary, the Examiner's findings are
reasonable and we find no reversible error.
Because Appellants have not presented separate patentability
arguments or have reiterated substantially the same arguments as those
previously discussed for patentability of claims 1 and 19 above, claims 3-18,
21-24, 26-36, 47, and 49---63 fall therewith. See 37 C.F.R. § 4I.37(c)(l)(iv).
DECISION
We affirm the rejection of claims 1, 3-19, 21-24, 26-36, 47, 49-63,
and 69.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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