Ex Parte Forman et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 27, 2016

12242752 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 27, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
12/242,752 09/30/2008 George Forman
56436 7590 04/29/2016
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
3404 E. Harmony Road
Mail Stop 79
Fort Collins, CO 80528
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.
82235354 9160
EXAMINER
HUANG, MIRANDA M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2157
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/29/2016 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):
hpe.ip.mail@hpe.com
mkraft@hpe.com
chris.mania@hpe.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte GEORGE FORMAN
and SHY AMSUNDAR RAJARAM
Appeal2014-007794
Application 12/242,752
Technology Center 2100
Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, JON M. JURGOV AN, and
AARON W. MOORE, Administrative Patent Judges.
MOORE, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal2014-007794
Application 12/242,752
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1-9, 12-18, and 20-27, which constitute all of the claims now
pending in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We reverse.
THE INVENTION
The application is directed to "systems, methods and techniques for
document-based processing." (Abstract.) Claim 1, reproduced below, is
illustrative:
1. A method of document-based processing, comprising:
inputting a document;
extracting features from the document;
querying an index using at least a subset of the extracted
features and, in response, receiving identifications for selected
document classifiers from a larger pool of document classifiers;
processing, by a system having a central processing unit, the
document using individual ones of the selected document
classifiers, thereby generating corresponding classifier outputs;
and
based on the classifier outputs, at least one of ( 1) categorizing
the document and (2) providing feedback information to a user.
1 Appellants identify Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP as the
real party in interest. (See App. Br. 1.)
2
Appeal2014-007794
Application 12/242,752
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Lulich et al.
Cha et al.
Forman et al.
US 2002/0174095 Al Nov. 21, 2002
US 2007/0244882 Al Oct. 18, 2007
US 7,593,903 B2 Sept. 22, 2009
THE REJECTIONS
1. Claims 1-2, 4--9, 12, 13, 15-18, and 20-23 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Cha. (See Final Act. 4--13. 2)
2. Claims 3 and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Cha and Lulich. (See Final Act. 14--15.)
3. Claims 24--27 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Cha and Forman. (See Final Act. 15-17.)
APPELLANTS' CONTENTION3
Appellants argue that the rejections were improper because in Cha
"retrieving [a classification] code does not constitute selecting, based at least
on the subset of the features, classifiers from a larger pool of supervised
classifiers" and "[ t ]he character strings making up the various codes of Cha
clearly do not process the set of features." (See App. Br. 7.)
2 The Final Action states that claims 1-2, 4--13, and 15-23 were rejected as
anticipated, but claims 10-11 and 19 had been cancelled. (See Final Act. 2.)
3 Because our resolution of this issue is dispositive, we do not reach
Appellants' additional contentions of error.
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Appeal2014-007794
Application 12/242,752
ANALYSIS
Generally speaking, Appellants' exemplar claim 1 is directed to a
system that, in part, (a) extracts features from a document, ( c) queries an
index using at least a subset of the features to identify selected classifiers
from a larger pool of classifiers, and ( d) processes the document using the
individual selected classifiers to generate classifier outputs. In other words,
the claimed system queries the index with the extracted features to narrow
the set of classifiers to which the document is individually compared. (See
Spec. i-f 16 (explaining that "[i]n order to avoid classifying all of the
documents 12 using all of the potential classifiers within system 15, the
preferred embodiments of the present invention use a classifier index").)
As analyzed by the Examiner, Cha teaches a system in which features
are extracted from a document and compared to a set of classifiers, where
each classifier consists of a code (e.g., "CRT" or "DTV") and a set of
features and feature values. (See Final Act. 4--5; Cha. i-fi-158---60.) Cha does
not, however, describe using the extracted features to identify selected
document classifiers from a larger pool of classifiers and processing the
document using the individual selected document classifiers. For this
reason, we decline to sustain the Section 102 rejections of claims 1-2, 4--9,
12, 13, 15-18, and 20-23, and, for the same reason, we decline to sustain the
Section 103 rejections of claims 3, 14, and 24--27, as the secondary
references are not alleged to cure these deficiencies of Cha.
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Appeal2014-007794
Application 12/242,752
DECISION
The rejections of claims 1-9, 12-18, and 20-27 are reversed.
REVERSED
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