Ex Parte Tulumbas et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 22, 2017

13184245 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 22, 2017)

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.
13/184,245 07/15/2011 Gregory TULUMBAS SDEX.P0003US 9969
24972 7590 09/26/2017
NORTON ROSE FULBRIGHT US LLP
1301 Avenue of the Americas
NEW YORK, NY 10019-6022
EXAMINER
MOBIN, HASANUL
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2168
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/26/2017 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):
nyipdocket@nortonrosefulbright.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte GREGORY TULUMBAS and HAMLET BATISTA REYES
Appeal 2017-002310
Application 13/184,2451
Technology Center 2100
Before BRUCE R. WINSOR, IRVIN E. BRANCH, and
NABEEL U. KHAN, Administrative Patent Judges.
KHAN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 26—28, and 37-42. We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
1 Appellants identify SDX Acquisition, LLC as the real party in interest.
App. Br. 2.
Appeal 2017-002310
Application 13/184,245
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The Invention
Appellants’ invention relates generally to “a system and method for
automatically identifying duplicative webpage information, optimizing
webpages, and improving webpage indexing.” Spec. 12.
Independent claim 26 is reproduced below.
26. A computer-implemented page optimization method,
comprising:
determining, by a computer processor, that a page source
identifier includes one or more of a plurality of character strings,
in a non-file-extension portion thereof, that are each associated
with a respective transformation rule set; and
in accordance with the determination, modifying, by the
processor, content of a page identified by the page source
identifier by application of each of the respective one or more
transformation rule sets.
References and Rejection
Claims 26—28, and 37-42 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Agam (US 2010/0114864 Al, May 6, 2010) and Lopez
(US 2011/0178973 Al, July 21, 2011). Final Act. 3-7.
ANALYSIS
Claim 26—28
The Examiner finds Agam teaches or suggests “modifying, by the
processor, content of a page identified by the page source identifier by
application of each of the respective one or more transformation rule sets.”
Final Act. 4 (citing Agam || 36, 47). The Examiner finds Lopez teaches or
suggests “determining, by a computer processor, that a page source identifier
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includes one or more of a plurality of character strings, in a non-file-
extension portion thereof that are each associated with a respective
transformation rule set.” Final Act. 4—5 (citing Lopez 44-49).
Appellants argue:
claim 26 refers to checking whether a portion of a page source
identifier (e.g., a URL) matches a predefined text string, and if
so modifying content of the vase identified by the page source
identifier; and, in contrast, Lopez checks whether a portion of a
URL matches a predefined text string, and if so modifies the
URL itself - not content of the page identified by the URL.
App. Br. 2-3.
In response, the Examiner stresses the rejection was over both Agam
and Lopez, not Lopez alone. Ans. 3—5. The Examiner emphasizes that
Agam “discloses optimizing web pages by modifying the web pages based
on rules,” while Lopez “discloses checking whether a portion of a page
source identifier (URL) matches a predefined text string, and if so modifies
the URL based on the transformation rule.” Ans. 4—5. The Examiner thus
finds the combination teaches or suggests modifying the content of a page
(as taught by Agam) based on matching a non-file-extension portion of a
page source identifier with a predefined text string (as taught by Lopez).
Ans. 5.
Appellants reply that “one would not modify Agam to incorporate
[the] feature of Lopez, and Agam and Lopez therefore cannot be combined
as suggested by the Examiner.” Reply Br. 3. Specifically, Appellants argue
Agam uses the file extension portion of a URL to identify pages to modify
for Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”), but does not utilize the non-file
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Application 13/184,245
extension portion of the URL to identify pages to modify.2 App. Br. 2.
Lopez, on the other hand, utilizes non-file extension portions of the URL to
modify the URL itself, instead of modifying the content of a page identified
by that URL. App. Br. 2—3. According to Appellants, the “usefulness of the
non-extension portion of the URL in Lopez for matching the non-user
friendly URL to be modified in no way suggests that it would be useful for
the entire purpose in Agam of determining that a page pointed to by the
URL is useful. These are quite simply not comparable.” Reply Br. 3.
We are unpersuaded by Appellants’ arguments. Both Agam and
Lopez relate to modifying web content for purposes of SEO. See Agam
Abstract; Lopez 12. Appellants acknowledge Agam teaches modifying the
content of a page by applying transformation rule sets, where the page is
identified by matching a file extension portion of a URL. See Reply Br. 2.
What is missing from Agam, according to Appellants, is utilizing the non-
file extension portion of a URL. See Reply Br. 2. Lopez teaches utilizing
non-file extension portion of the URL to identify content to modify (in this
case the URL itself) based on transformation rule sets. Final Act. 4—5 (citing
2 In case of further prosecution, the Examiner might consider whether Agam
teaches not just identifying pages based on the file extension portion of a
URL, as Appellants assert, but also identifying pages based more broadly on
any portion of the URL. For example, Agam discloses “a specific SEO rule
may be defined so that the specific SEO rule is only to be applied to web
pages whose uniform resource locator (URL) includes a certain string,”
without limiting the URL to a specific portion of the URL. Agam 193; see
also Agam 1120 (“In yet another example, the user may select which pages
are to be targeted for SEO page modification—for example, via a
configuration interface 71 (e.g. GUI). Thus, in some embodiments, the user
may provide ‘SEO target page specification data’ which is received via the
configuration interface—for example, a URL prefix of pages to be SEO
modified.”) (emphasis added).
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Lopez || 44-49). We can discern no reason from the record before us, why
one of ordinary skill in the art would not be able to incorporate Lopez’s
teachings of using the whole URL, not just the file-extension portion of it,
to identify content of a webpage to modify, given Appellants’
acknowledgement that Agam already does exactly that, albeit using only the
file extension portion of the URL. And Appellants have not presented
evidence sufficient to show that combining Agam with Lopez would be
“uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art” or
“represented an unobvious step over the prior art.” Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v.
Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citing KSR, 550
U.S. at 418—19). This is true, even if Lopez teaches only modifying the
URL itself. “The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a
secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the
primary reference. . . . Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of
those references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art.”
In re Keller, 642 F.2d413, 425 (CCPA 1981).
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent
claim 26 and of dependent claims 27 and 28, for which Appellants do not
present arguments for separate patentability. See App. Br. 5.
Claims 3 7—42
Appellants contend Lopez does not teach the various additional
limitations of dependent claims 37—42, and that Agam cannot be relied upon
to teach these additional limitations because, as argued with respect to claim
26, one of ordinary skill in the art would not modify Agam based on Lopez.
See App. Br. 5—6.
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We find these arguments to be unpersuasive. The Examiner relies
upon Agam, not Lopez, for these additional limitations (see Final Act. 6—7).
For the reasons stated above with respect to claim 26, we are unpersuaded
that Agam cannot be modified by Lopez to teach or suggest the limitations
of claims 37-42. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of
claims 37-42.
DECISION
The Examiner’s rejection of claims 26—28, and 37-42 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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