Newmark & Company Real Estate, Inc.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jul 10, 2020

15369334 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Jul. 10, 2020)

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.
15/369,334 12/05/2016 Marshall O'Moore 15-2466 4490
63710 7590 07/10/2020
INNOVATION DIVISION
CANTOR FITZGERALD, L.P.
110 EAST 59TH STREET (6TH FLOOR)
NEW YORK, NY 10022
EXAMINER
STERRETT, JONATHAN G
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3623
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
07/10/2020 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):
lkorovich@cantor.com
mcatarino@cgolaw.com
patentdocketing@cantor.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
__________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
__________

Ex parte MARSHALL O’MOORE,
MAUREEN WELCH, and ROOSEVELT V. SEGARRA
__________

Appeal 2020-000628
Application 15/369,334
Technology Center 3600
__________

Before ERIC B. GRIMES, FRANCISCO C. PRATS, and
TAWEN CHANG, Administrative Patent Judges.

PRATS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1–24. We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37
C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant states that the real party in interest Newmark
Grubb Knight Frank, a corporation organized and existing under the laws of
Delaware, and having a place of business at 125 Park Avenue, New York,
New York 10017. Appeal Br. 3.
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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant’s Specification explains that “commercial real estate (CRE)
asset bubbles . . . may occur when the prices of securities or other assets rise
so sharply and at such a sustained rate that they exceed valuations justified
by fundamentals.” Spec. ¶ 2. The Specification explains that “[s]uch a rise
in asset prices make[s] a sudden collapse in prices likely. Similar to natural
disasters, the recovery after a dramatic downturn can be long and the
cleanup can be arduous.” Id.
The Specification also uses the term “peak” to refer to a sharp rise or
fall in real estate values:
In one example, a “peak” may be defined as the start of a major
downturn in real estate values. In a further example, when
processor 106 identifies a twenty percent increase over two
years in cap rate spreads vs. ten year treasuries, the previous
low point is tagged as a peak.
Spec. ¶ 29.
Appellant’s Figure 3, reproduced below, shows peaks in commercial
real estate values in New York City, from 1978–2014:

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FIG. 3 is a working example of peak identification for the
New York City market, with a spike representing a peak. This
shows that the results are largely unaffected by the choice of lag
period. Peaks are identified in 1981, 1984, 1994, 2000 and
2007. This largely agrees with market practitioners’ experience
of market peaks. The only notable exception is the Savings and
Loan crisis in the late 80’s. This crisis occurred within the
overall context of a booming market, and thus our drawdown
calculation never finds a peak.
Spec. ¶ 31.
Appellant’s invention is directed to a “method for predicting real
estate bubbles based on big data analytics.” Spec. ¶ 14; see also id.
(disclosing that Appellant’s invention includes a processor configured to
“generate a prediction of a future peak in real estate values based at least
partially on [a] plurality of previous peaks”).
Appellant’s Specification explains that “[v]ast amounts of historical
data may need to be digitally processed to produce a quality prediction of
ebbs and flows in the real estate market.” Spec. ¶ 13. To accommodate the
large amount of data used to predict peaks in real estate values, Appellant’s
invention distributes the data among “a plurality of nodes on a network such
that a size of a [data] portion assigned to a respective node is in accordance
with a real-time workload of the respective node.” Id. ¶ 14.
The Specification discloses that predicting peaks in real estate values
according to the invention employs a number of mathematical models. See
Spec.¶¶ 32–41 (explaining how equations 1–8 are used to predict peaks in
real estate values).
Appellant’s claim 1 is representative of the claims on appeal and reads
as follows:

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1. An apparatus comprising:
a memory device;
a network interface;
at least one processor to:
communicate via the network interface with
remote data sources containing historical variable data
associated with real estate assets, the historical variable
data being stored in a plurality of diverse data sets;
distribute portions of the historical variable data
via the network interface to a plurality of nodes on a
network such that a size of a portion assigned to a
respective node is in accordance with a real-time
workload of the respective node, a total size of the
historical variable data being larger than an available size
in the memory device;
receive historical real estate values from the
plurality of nodes that are based at least partially on the
distributed portions of the historical variable data;
identify a plurality of previous peaks in the
historical real estate values based at least partially on the
historical real estate values received from the plurality of
nodes;
generate a prediction of a future peak in real estate
values based at least partially on the plurality of previous
peaks; and
transmit an alert comprising the prediction.
Appeal Br. 17.
The following rejections are before us for review:
(1) Claims 1–24, under 35 U.S.C. § 101, as being directed to subject
matter not eligible for patenting (Final Act. 7–9);2 and

2 Final Office Action entered February 13, 2019.
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(2) Claims 1–24, under 35 U.S.C. § 103, as being unpatentable over
Fleming3 and Zhang4 (Final Act. 10–18).
35 U.S.C. § 101—
ELIGIBILITY FOR PATENTING
The Examiner’s Rejection
The Examiner determined that Appellant’s claims are directed to “the
abstract idea of performing numerical manipulations to generate a
forecast.” Final Act. 7; see also id. at 7–8 (“Independent claim 1 recites
limitations directed to the abstract idea of generating a forecast (One of
ordinary skill in the art would recognize that what is being performed is
numerical forecasting based on different data inputs, where the forecasting is
implemented using Hadoop).”).
Further, the Examiner reasoned, although the claims recite “computer
systems and software to process the data to perform the claimed abstract
idea steps, this implementing the abstract idea in the manner of ‘apply it’
and confining the abstract idea to a particular technological environment . . .
does not provide ‘something more’ to make the claims patent eligible.”
Final Act. 7.
As to claim 1 in particular, the Examiner determined that the
computer elements recited in the claim are intertwined with the abstract idea,
in that the computer elements merely confine the idea to a specific
technological environment:

3 US 2013/0282596 A1 (published Oct. 24, 2013).
4 Rui Zhang & Changbing Jiang, The Bank Risk Forewarning Model of BP
Neural Network Based on the Clound Computing, COMPUTING AND
NETWORKING TECHNOLOGY 91–94 (2012) (ieeexplore.ieee.org) (citation
provided by Examiner).
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The limitations of communicating, distributing, receiving,
identifying and generating, are abstract idea limitations directed
to the algorithmic steps analyzing intangible data. Limitations
directed to the use of a computer to process data (including in
the distributed manner claimed) and display it and then to
further allow a user to interact with a computer display merely
implement the abstract idea in the manner of apply it and
confine the abstract idea to a particular technological
environment - these limitations do not provide significantly
more.
Final Act. 8.
Accordingly, the Examiner determined, “because the claimed
invention is an abstract idea whose implementation or embodiment on a
computer does not provide ‘something more’, the claimed invention is not
patent eligible under 35 USC [§] 101.” Final Act. 8 (internal quotations in
original).
As to the distribution of data recited in the claims, the Examiner
determined in particular that “[u]sing MapReduce (i.e. using Hadoop) to
provide the functionality of the abstract idea is routine and conventional and
does not provide significantly more.” Final Act. 8 (citation omitted); see
also id. n.1 (citing Dean5 as detailing “Google’s initial work in the Hadoop
approach for distributed computing” and noting that “Hadoop is extremely
well known and its[]s use to implement the abstract idea of forecasting or
predicting is merely confining the abstract idea to a particular technological
environment without significantly more”).
Principles of Law

5 Jeffrey Dean & Sanjay Ghemawat, MapReduce: Simplified Data
Processing on Large Clusters, OSDI 2004: Sixth Symposium on Operating
System Design and Implementation pp. 137–150, San Francisco, CA (2004).
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An invention is patent-eligible if it claims a “new and useful process,
machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. The
Supreme Court has long interpreted 35 U.S.C. § 101 to include implicit
exceptions, however: “[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract
ideas” are not patentable. Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 216
(2014).
In determining whether a claim falls within an excluded category, we
are guided by the Supreme Court’s two-step framework, described in Mayo
Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories., Inc., 566 U.S. 66
(2012) and Alice, 573 U.S. at 217–18 (citing Mayo, 566 U.S. at 75–77). In
accordance with that framework, we first determine what concept the claim
is “directed to.” See Alice, 573 U.S. at 219 (“On their face, the claims
before us are drawn to the concept of intermediated settlement, i.e., the use
of a third party to mitigate settlement risk.”).
Concepts determined to be abstract ideas, and thus patent ineligible,
include certain methods of organizing human activity, such as fundamental
economic practices (Alice, 573 U.S. at 219–20; Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S.
593, 611 (2010)); mathematical formulas (Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584,
594–95 (1978)); and mental processes (Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63,
69 (1972)).
If the claim is “directed to” an abstract idea, we turn to the second
step of the Alice and Mayo framework, where “we must examine the
elements of the claim to determine whether it contains an ‘inventive
concept’ sufficient to ‘transform’ the claimed abstract idea into a patent-
eligible application.” Alice, 573 U.S. at 221 (quotation marks omitted).
Early in 2019, the PTO published revised guidance on the application
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of § 101. USPTO, 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance,
84 Fed. Reg. 50 (January 7, 2019) (“Memorandum” or “2019 Office
Guidance” or “Office Guidance”).6 In light of comments received in
response to the Office Guidance, the PTO subsequently issued the October
2019 Patent Eligibility Guidance Update (“October 2019 Update”).7
Following the Office Guidance and the October 2019 Update, under
Revised Step 2A, we first look to whether the claim recites the following:
(1) any judicial exceptions, including certain groupings of
abstract ideas (i.e., mathematical concepts, certain methods of
organizing human activity such as a fundamental economic
practice, or mental processes); and
(2) additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into
a practical application (see MPEP § 2106.05(a)–(c), (e)–(h)).
Only if a claim (1) recites a judicial exception and (2) does not integrate that
exception into a practical application, do we then look, under Step 2B of the
Office Guidance, to whether the claim:
(3) adds specific limitations beyond the judicial exception that
are not “well-understood, routine, conventional” in the field
(see MPEP § 2106.05(d)); or
(4) simply appends well-understood, routine, conventional
activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high
level of generality, to the judicial exception.
See Memorandum.
Analysis
Office Guidance—Revised Step 2A, Prong 1

6 Available at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2019-01-
07/pdf/2018-28282.pdf.
7 https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/peg_oct_2019_
update.pdf.
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Appellant’s claim 1 is representative of the claims subject to this
rejection. Applying Revised Step 2A, Prong 1, of the 2019 Office Guidance,
we find that claim 1 recites a judicial exception, in the form of a mental
process. See Office Guidance (84 Fed. Reg. at 52 (abstract ideas include
“(c) Mental processes—concepts performed in the human mind (including
an observation, evaluation, judgment, opinion”) (citations omitted).
Specifically, claim 1 recites a generic apparatus with a processor that
“generate[s] a prediction of a future peak in real estate values based at least
partially on [a] plurality of previous peaks.” Appeal Br. 17. Forming a
prediction as recited in claim 1 involves making a judgment as to a future
condition based on an evaluation of past conditions, which can be
accomplished using the human mind. Accordingly, we find that claim 1
recites an abstract idea, in the form of a mental process. See Office
Guidance (84 Fed. Reg. at 52 (mental processes include “concepts
performed in the human mind (including an observation, evaluation,
judgment, opinion”) (citations omitted)).
We acknowledge the prediction in claim 1 involves using a processor.
As explained in the 2019 Office Guidance, however, “[i]f a claim, under its
broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance in the mind but for
the recitation of generic computer components, then it is still in the mental
processes category unless the claim cannot practically be performed in the
mind.” 84 Fed. Reg. at 52 n.14 (citing Intellectual Ventures I LLC v.
Symantec Corp., 838 F.3d 1307, 1318 (Fed. Cir. 2016)). In the present case,
claim 1 merely requires generating a prediction based on historical data.
Thus, the fact that claim 1 recites the use of a processor to generate the
prediction does not persuade us that claim 1 does not recite a mental process.
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See Appeal Br. 9. (“The Final Action has not established how the human
mind could possibly process such diverse information in real-time or how a
human could process all the data with the aid of pencil and paper.”).
As the Examiner found, moreover, claim 1’s prediction of a future
peak in real estate values can be considered a mathematical concept, which
is also an abstract idea. See Office Guidance (84 Fed. Reg. at 52 (abstract
ideas include “(a) Mathematical concepts—mathematical relationships,
mathematical formulas or equations, mathematical calculations”)).
Specifically, as noted above, the Specification discloses that
generating a prediction of a future peak in real estate values in accordance
with Appellant’s invention employs a number of mathematical models. See
Spec.¶¶ 32–41 (explaining how equations 1–8 can be used to predict peaks
in real estate values). Accordingly, we agree with the Examiner that, when
given its broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the Specification,
claim 1’s generating a prediction of a future peak in real estate values recites
using a mathematical calculation, which is an abstract idea. See Office
Guidance (84 Fed. Reg. at 52 (mathematical concepts include mathematical
relationships and mathematical calculations)).
Office Guidance—Revised Step 2A, Prong 2
Having determined under Revised Step 2A, Prong 1, of the 2019
Office Guidance that Appellant’s claim 1 recites a judicial exception, we
turn to Revised Step 2A, Prong 2, of the Office Guidance to determine
whether claim 1 recites additional elements that integrate the judicial
exceptions into a practical application. See Office Guidance (84 Fed. Reg. at
54–55).
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We find that Appellant’s claim 1 does not recite additional elements
sufficient to integrate the judicial exceptions into a practical application.
Aside from the abstract idea of generating a prediction, the additional
elements in the apparatus of claim 1 are a memory device, a network
interface, and a processor configured to (a) communicate with remote
sources of data pertaining to historical real estate values, (b) distribute the
data to a plurality of network nodes according to the nodes’ workloads, (c)
receive the data from the nodes, (d) identify a plurality of peaks in the
historical real estate values, and (e) after predicting a future peak based on
the data, transmit an alert that includes the prediction. See Appeal Br. 17.
Because claim 1 merely recites using the computer elements,
including the processor, as tools to perform the abstract idea (the prediction),
we agree with the Examiner that the computer elements in claim 1 do not
integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. See Office Guidance
(84 Fed. Reg. at 55 (example in which a judicial exception is not integrated
into a practical application includes situation in which claim “merely
includes instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely
uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea”).
We are not persuaded, moreover, that the data gathering and
organizing steps, or the step of transmitting an alert that includes the
prediction, integrate the prediction into a practical application. See Office
Guidance (84 Fed. Reg. at 55 n.31 (additional element that merely adds
insignificant extra-solution activity to a judicial exception includes “mere
data gathering such as a step of obtaining information about credit card
transactions so that the information can be analyzed in order to detect
whether the transactions were fraudulent”)).
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Appellant contends that claim 1 “clearly meets at least consideration 1
and 5 (i.e., technical improvement and meaningful application of a judicial
exception). The distribution of the diverse data amongst the nodes based on
workload clearly meets these two factors.” Appeal Br. 9.
As discussed above, however, claim 1 merely recites using the
computer elements, including the data-distributing processor, as tools to
perform the abstract idea, generating the prediction of a future peak in real
estate values. Appellant does not persuade us, therefore, that the computer
elements in claim 1 are sufficient to integrate the abstract idea into a
practical application. See Office Guidance (84 Fed. Reg. at 55 (judicial
exception is not integrated into a practical application when claim “merely
includes instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely
uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea”).
Moreover, the fact that the data and prediction involve real estate
values does not persuade us that the abstract prediction is sufficiently
integrated into a practical application. See Office Guidance (84 Fed. Reg. at
55 (example in which a judicial exception is not integrated into a practical
application includes situation in which “an additional element does no more
than generally link the use of a judicial exception to a particular
technological environment or field of use”).
Office Guidance—Step 2B
For the reasons discussed above, we are persuaded that Appellant’s
representative claim 1 recites a judicial exception (abstract idea in the form
of a mental process and/or mathematical concept) under Revised Step 2A,
Prong 1, of the 2019 Office Guidance, and does not integrate that judicial
exception into a practical application under Revised Step 2A, Prong 2.
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Accordingly, we turn to Step 2B of the Office Guidance to determine
whether (a) claim 1 recites specific limitations beyond the judicial
exceptions that are not well-understood, routine, or conventional in the field,
or (b) whether claim 1 simply appends well-understood, routine,
conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high
level of generality, to the judicial exception. See Office Guidance (84 Fed.
Reg. at 56).
In the present case, as seen above, when the elements of
representative claim 1 are viewed as an ordered combination, the overall
apparatus claimed, as a whole, is a generic device that includes generic
computer elements programmed to distribute data to a plurality of network
nodes according to the nodes’ workload capacities, to receive the data, and
to use the data to generate a prediction, resulting in transmission of an alert
that includes the prediction. See Appeal Br. 17.
As the Examiner found, the distribution of data recited in claim 1
encompasses the use of a map reduce algorithm. See Spec. ¶ 27 (“The nodes
112 may process their respective portions in parallel and communicate their
respective output back to computer apparatus 102. In one example, a map
reduce algorithm may be employed to schedule the processing across the
nodes, monitor the nodes, and re-execute any failures of a given node.”).
As the Examiner also found, Dean provides evidence that the map
reduce algorithm was well understood, routine, and conventional in this art.
See Dean 1 (“Programmers find the system easy to use: hundreds of
MapReduce programs have been implemented and upwards of one thousand
MapReduce jobs are executed on Google’s clusters every day.”)
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Thus, on the current record, as a whole, claim 1 recites an apparatus
composed of a combination of generic computer elements configured to
perform an abstract calculation, based on data distributed in a well
understood, routine, and conventional fashion. We find, therefore, that when
claim 1 is viewed as an ordered combination, claim 1 simply appends well-
understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the
industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception.
Viewing the elements of claim 1’s apparatus individually, we come to
the same conclusion. As noted above, aside from the abstract generation of
a prediction, claim 1’s apparatus includes only generic computer elements:
a memory device, a network interface, and a processor configured as
discussed above. Accordingly, viewing the elements of claim 1’s apparatus
individually, we find that claim 1 simply appends well-understood, routine,
conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high
level of generality, to the judicial exception.
Moreover, given the Examiner’s citation of the Dean reference in both
the Final Action and Examiner’s Answer (see Final Act. 8 n.1; Ans. 6),
Appellant does not persuade us that the Examiner failed to advance evidence
sufficient to support a finding that the data distribution elements of
Appellant’s claim 1 are well-understood, routine, and conventional activities
previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality. See
Appeal Br. 10 (citing Berkheimer v. HP Inc., 881 F.3d 1360 (Fed. Cir.
2018)).
In sum, for the reasons discussed, viewing Appellant’s claim 1 as a
whole as an ordered combination, and considering the claimed steps and
elements individually, we find that the evidence of record supports the
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Examiner’s determination that claim 1 simply appends well-understood,
routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified
at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception recited in the claim.
Eligibility for Patenting—Conclusion
As discussed above, we are persuaded that Appellant’s representative
claim 1 recites a judicial exception under Revised Step 2A, Prong 1, of the
2019 Office Guidance, and does not integrate that judicial exception into a
practical application under Revised Step 2A, Prong 2. As also discussed
above, we are persuaded that, to the extent claim 1 recites additional
elements beyond the judicial exception recited in the claim, claim 1 simply
appends well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known
to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial
exception.
Accordingly, applying the principles set forth in the 2019 Office
Guidance and October 2019 Update, we find that the preponderance of the
evidence supports the Examiner’s determination that Appellant’s claim 1 is
directed to subject matter that is ineligible for patenting. We, therefore,
affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 on that ground. Claims 2–24 fall
with claim 1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv).
OBVIOUSNESS
The Examiner’s Rejection
In rejecting claims 1–24 for obviousness, the Examiner cited Fleming
as disclosing a computer-implemented process of predicting future peaks in
real estate values, the process including the claimed steps of communicating
data as to historical real estate values, identifying a plurality of previous
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peaks in historical real estate values, and predicting a future peak based on
the previous historic peaks. Final Act. 10–12.
The Examiner found that Fleming differs from the claims in that
Fleming does not describe distributing the historical real estate value data to
a plurality of nodes according to the real-time workload of each of the
nodes, and then receiving the data from the nodes. Final Act. 12–13.
The Examiner cited Zhang as evidence that, despite the differences
between Fleming and Zhang, a skilled artisan would have considered the
claimed apparatuses and processes obvious:
The distributed computing approach applied by Zhang
provides the well known benefit of distributed computing in
order to perform massive data processing using many machines
running in parallel. Given the large data sets involved, using
Hadoop to solve the kinds of forecasting problems addressed by
Fleming would provide the benefit of being able to effectively
process massive amounts of data in order to make an accurate
forecast. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art to have modified the teachings of
Fleming to have included using the distributed computing
approach of Zhang because it would have provided the benefit
of being able to analyze a problem whose details lay in very
large amounts of data. The improvement would be the ability
to forecast macroeconomic events such as real estate bubbles in
order to [allow] financial planners to anticipate and mitigate the
associated economic shock of bursting real estate bubbles.
Final Act. 14.
Analysis
In this instance, Appellant persuades us that the evidence of record
does not support the Examiner’s prima facie case of unpatentability. In
particular, we agree with Appellant that the Examiner did not explain
sufficiently how Fleming describes the step of generating a prediction of a
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future peak in real estate values, based at least partially on a plurality of
previous peaks in historical real estate values, as recited in each of
Appellant’s independent claims 1, 9, and 17. See Appeal Br. 12; see also id.
at 17, 19, 20 (claims 1, 9, and 17 reciting step of generating prediction).
As noted above, Appellant’s Specification uses the term “peak” to
refer to a sharp rise, fall, or major downturn, in real estate values. See Spec.
¶ 29 (“[A] ‘peak’ may be defined as the start of a major downturn in real
estate values. In a further example, when processor 106 identifies a twenty
percent increase over two years in cap rate spreads vs. ten year treasuries,
the previous low point is tagged as a peak.”); see also id. ¶ 31 and
Appellant’s Fig. 3 (describing and depicting historical peaks in commercial
real estate values in New York City, from 1978–2014).
In contrast to describing a prediction of a sharp rise, fall, or major
downturn in real estate values, Fleming describes methods of ensuring the
accuracy of appraisals of real estate properties:
Embodiments of the systems and methods described
herein can be used to determine a statistical estimate of the
degree of certainty of an appraisal of a property. The degree of
certainty can be expressed as a confidence interval . . ., a
standard deviation, a variance (e.g., the standard deviation
squared), a confidence score, index, or ranking, or some other
statistical measure of the likelihood that the appraisal accurately
measures or estimates the true market value for the property.
Fleming ¶ 21.
In the paragraphs cited by the Examiner as corresponding to
Appellant’s claimed prediction of a future peak in real estate values (see
Final Act. 11), Fleming describes how the accuracy of an appraisal may be
assigned a numerical score:
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In some implementations, the appraisal accuracy score
may be a weighted combination of the factors discussed above,
which are transformed to a statistical standard score reflecting a
“distance,” as measured in standard deviations, of a fiducial
appraisal measure Cit, from the expected value of the appraisal
E[Ait]. . . .
The fiducial appraisal measure Cit can be provided by a
user (e.g., a customer), input into the system automatically or
via a user computing device, input manually by an individual,
or input or determined by querying public and proprietary
databases. The standard score may be further transformed to a
scale between 0 and 1000 (or between any other lower and
upper bounded categorical or numeric range) such that the score
represents a frequency of occurrence (e.g. standard score
greater than 900 occurs 5% of the time) or a certain level of
certainty (e.g. a standard score of 900 indicates a forecasted
standard deviation of 5%) that the fiducial appraisal measure is
significantly understated or overstated relative to the expected
value of the appraisal of the property.
Fleming ¶¶ 43–44.
Appellant persuades us that the Examiner has not explained with
sufficient clarity how, in assigning a numerical score to the accuracy of a
real estate appraisal, Fleming describes, teaches, or suggests generating a
prediction of a future sharp rise, fall, or major downturn in, real estate values
based on historical data. In particular, although Fleming discloses that
determining the accuracy of a real estate appraisal can involve evaluation of
historical data (see Fleming ¶ 31), we are not persuaded that the Examiner
has explained sufficiently how Fleming’s process involves predicting
significant and sudden changes to real estate values in the future, as recited
in Appellant’s claims.
The Examiner contends that Fleming predicts peaks in future real
estate values because Fleming’s process uses a stochastic model that
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identifies random peaks in values, in contrast to a deterministic model. See
Ans. 7–13. We are not persuaded. The fact that Fleming might use a
stochastic model in its evaluations fails to explain clearly or sufficiently how
Fleming’s determination of the accuracy of a real estate appraisal teaches or
suggests generating a prediction of a future sharp rise, fall, or major
downturn in real estate values, i.e. a future peak, based on historical data.
In sum, for the reasons discussed, Appellant persuades us that the
Examiner has not explained sufficiently how or why the combination of
Fleming and Zhang teaches or suggests all of the features recited in
Appellant’s claims 1–24. We therefore reverse the Examiner’s obviousness
rejection of claims 1–24 over Fleming and Zhang.

CONCLUSION
In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/
Basis
Affirmed Reversed
1–24 101 Ineligibility 1–24
1–24 103 Fleming,
Zhang
1–24
Overall
Outcome
1–24

TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE
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.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED