Ex Parte Svendsen

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Nov 18, 2013

11697360 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 18, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
11/697,360 04/06/2007 Hugh Svendsen CT-REC-007/US (P060) 6223
71739 7590 11/19/2013
Concert Technology Corporation
5400 Trinity Road, Suite 303
Raleigh, NC 27607
EXAMINER
RAAB, CHRISTOPHER J
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2156
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/19/2013 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 HUGH SVENDSEN
____________

Appeal 2011-002249
Application 11/697,360
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, JEFFREY S. SMITH, and
DANIEL N. FISHMAN, Administrative Patent Judges.

SMITH, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2011-002249
Application 11/697,360

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final
rejection of claims 30-60, which are the only claims remaining in the
application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

Illustrative Claim
30. A method of operating a user device comprising:

receiving user input defining a recommender playlist comprising a
plurality of recommenders and one or more filtering criteria separately
defined for each of the plurality of recommenders; and

in order to obtain media item recommendations for the recommender
playlist, for each recommender of the plurality of recommenders in the
recommender playlist:

sending information identifying the recommender and the one
or more filtering criteria defined for the recommender in the
recommender playlist to a server; and

in response to sending the information, receiving, from the
server, one or more media item recommendations from a media
collection of the recommender identified by application of the one or
more filtering criteria defined for the recommender to the media
collection of the recommender.

Prior Art
Heikes US 2006/0167991 A1 Jul. 27, 2006
Partovi US 2008/0052371 A1 Feb. 28, 2008
(filed Aug. 28, 2006)

Appeal 2011-002249
Application 11/697,360

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Examiner’s Rejection
Claims 30-60 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Partovi and Heikes.

ANALYSIS
Section 103 rejection of claim 30
Appellant contends that the combination of Partovi and Heikes does
not teach “one or more filtering criteria separately defined for each of the
plurality of recommenders” as recited in claim 30. App. Br. 8-9; Reply Br.
2-3. Appellant finds support for “one or more filtering criteria” in paragraph
50 of Appellant’s Specification, which lists filtering criteria such as an item
currently playing, a last item played, an item most often played, and an item
provided by a recommender.
We adopt the Examiner’s findings of fact in the rejection (Ans. 4-5)
and Examiner’s response (Ans. 16-17) as our own. We concur with the
conclusions reached by the Examiner and we therefore sustain the rejection
of claim 30 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Appellant does not present arguments
for separate patentability of claims 34-39, 42, and 44-46, which fall with
claim 30.
Further explaining the Examiner’s findings, we find that additional
teachings of Partovi reinforce the Examiner’s findings and conclusion.
Paragraph 80 of Partovi teaches filtering criteria such as items provided by
friends, or “recommenders.” Paragraph 81 teaches that recommendations
from certain recommenders can be given added weight or filtered
differently. Paragraphs 91-97 of Partovi teach data types, or “filtering
criteria,” such as a song or artist currently being played, the playcount for
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Application 11/697,360

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each song or artist, and play frequencies for each song or artist. Paragraph
98 of Partovi teaches that the same data types, or “filtering criteria,” need
not be collected for each member, thereby permitting a first set of data types
to be collected for a first network member, or “recommender,” and a
different set of data types to be collected for a second network member.
Appellant’s contention that the combination of Partovi and Heikes
does not teach “one or more filtering criteria separately defined for each of
the plurality of recommenders” as recited in claim 30 is also inconsistent
with paragraphs 80, 81, and 91-98 of Partovi. While we agree with the
Examiner that Heikes teaches the disputed limitation (Ans. 16-17), we
consider such evidence cumulative, since Partovi also teaches the limitation
as articulated supra. Thus, we further find that Partovi either alone or in
combination with Heikes teaches “one or more filtering criteria separately
defined for each of the plurality of recommenders” as recited in claim 30.

Section 103 rejection of claim 31
Appellant contends that the combination of Partovi and Heikes does
not teach “providing playback of the recommender playlist.” App. Br. 9-10;
Reply Br. 3-4. The Examiner finds that Partovi teaches recommending a
playlist (Ans. 4-5) and playback of a playlist (Ans. 17-18). We agree with
the Examiner that the combination of Partovi and Heikes teaches “providing
playback of the recommender playlist.”
We sustain the rejection of claim 31 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

Appeal 2011-002249
Application 11/697,360

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Section 103 rejection of claim 32
Appellant contends that the combination of Partovi and Heikes does
not teach “obtaining one or more media items identified by the media item
recommendations for the plurality of recommenders in the recommendation
playlist that are not included in a media collection stored locally at the user
device from a remote source” as recited in claim 32. According to
Appellant, Partovi does not teach that recommended songs are obtained from
a remote source. App. Br. 10-11. We adopt the Examiner’s findings of fact
in the rejection (Ans. 5) and Examiner’s response (Ans. 18) as our own. We
concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner and we therefore
sustain the rejection of claim 32 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. We further note that
Appellant’s contention is inconsistent with paragraph 81 of Partovi, which
teaches linking to a streaming clip of a song.

Section 103 rejection of claim 33
Appellant contends that Partovi does not teach a recommender playlist
that defines a playback order. Appellant’s contention is based on the
premise that the combination of Partovi and Heikes does not teach filtering
criteria separately defined for each of the plurality of recommenders. App.
Br. 11. We find Appellant’s contention unpersuasive for the reasons given
in our analysis of claim 30.
We sustain the rejection of claim 33 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

Section 103 rejection of claim 40
Appellant contends that the combination of Partovi and Heikes does
not teach “a filtering criterion indicating that a currently playing media item
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of the recommender is to be identified as a media item recommendation for a
user of the user device” as recited in claim 40. According to Appellant,
collecting data including a song currently being played by another user’s
media player is somehow different than recommending a song currently
being played by another user’s media player. App. Br. 11-12; Reply Br. 4-5.
We agree with the Examiner (Ans. 19) that the collected data about
the song currently being played is used by the process of Partovi to generate
a recommendation. We find that the combination of Partovi and Heikes
teaches “a filtering criterion indicating that a currently playing media item of
the recommender is to be identified as a media item recommendation for a
user of the user device.”
We sustain the rejection of claim 40 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

Section 103 rejection of claim 41
Appellant contends that the combination of Partovi and Heikes does
not teach “a filtering criterion indicating that a currently playing media item
of the recommender, subject to a delay, is to be identified as a media item
recommendation for a user of the user device” as recited in claim 41. App.
Br. 12-13.
We adopt the Examiner’s findings of fact in the rejection (Ans. 7) and
Examiner’s response (Ans. 20) as our own. We concur with the conclusions
reached by the Examiner and we therefore sustain the rejection of claim 41
under 35 U.S.C. § 103. We further note that the scope of “currently playing
media item of the recommender, subject to a delay” encompasses music files
stored in a library, which will be played some time in the future, after “a
delay.” Partovi teaches filtering songs from another user’s library (¶¶ 91,
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157), which are songs “currently playing … subject to a delay” within the
meaning of claim 41. The songs in the library can be on a playlist, such as
the playlist created by a radio station disc jockey as discussed in paragraph
64. Songs scheduled on the radio station’s playlist are “currently playing …
subject to a delay.” Therefore, we find that the combination of Partovi and
Heikes teaches the disputed limitation.
We sustain the rejection of claim 41 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

Section 103 rejection of claim 43
Appellant contends that the combination of Partovi and Heikes does
not teach “a filtering criterion indicating that a most played media item in a
selected group of media items in a media collection of the recommender is to
be identified as a media item recommendation for a user of the user device”
as recited in claim 43. Appellant’s contention is based on the premise that
Partovi teaches recommending the most played song in another user’s entire
library, rather than a subset of the entire library. App. Br. 13. We adopt the
Examiner’s findings of fact in the rejection (Ans. 8) and Examiner’s
response (Ans. 20) as our own. We concur with the conclusions reached by
the Examiner and we therefore sustain the rejection of claim 43 under 35
U.S.C. § 103. We further note that paragraph 101 of Partovi teaches
filtering techniques to select a media item from a subset of an entire library.

Section 103 rejection of claim 47
Appellant presents arguments for the patentability of claim 47 (App.
Br. 13) similar to those presented for claim 30 which we find unpersuasive.
We sustain the rejection of claim 47 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
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Section 103 rejection of claim 48
Appellant presents arguments for the patentability of claim 48 (App.
Br. 14-15) similar to those presented for claim 30 which we find
unpersuasive.
We sustain the rejection of claim 48 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Appellant does not present arguments for separate patentability of claims 49-
52, 55, and 57-59 which fall with claim 48.

Section 103 rejection of claim 53
Appellant presents arguments for the patentability of claim 53 (App.
Br. 15) similar to those presented for claim 40 which we find unpersuasive.
We sustain the rejection of claim 53 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

Section 103 rejection of claim 54
Appellant presents arguments for the patentability of claim 54 (App.
Br. 15-16) similar to those presented for claim 41 which we find
unpersuasive.
We sustain the rejection of claim 54 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Section 103 rejection of claim 56
Appellant presents arguments for the patentability of claim 56 (App.
Br. 16) similar to those presented for claim 43 which we find unpersuasive.
We sustain the rejection of claim 56 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

Appeal 2011-002249
Application 11/697,360

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Section 103 rejection of claim 60
Appellant presents arguments for the patentability of claim 60 (App.
Br. 16) similar to those presented for claims 30 and 48 which we find
unpersuasive.
We sustain the rejection of claim 60 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

DECISION
The rejection of claims 30-60 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Partovi and Heikes 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.
§ 41.50(f).

AFFIRMED

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