Ex Parte Jain et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardSep 18, 2018

13554023 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 18, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR 13/554,023 07/20/2012 Akhil Kumar Jain 119741 7590 09/20/2018 Keller Jolley Preece / Adobe 1010 North 500 East, Suite 210 North Salt Lake, UT 84054 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. 20030.671 7005 EXAMINER OBISESAN, AUGUSTINE KUNLE ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2156 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 09/20/2018 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): docketing@kjpip.com gjolley@kjpip.com tmeid@kjpip.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte AKHIL KUMAR JAIN and AMIT JAIN Appeal2018-002538 Application 13/554,023 1 Technology Center 2100 Before MARC S. HOFF, DENISE M. POTHIER, and MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134(a) from the Examiner's rejection of claims 1-9, 12-15, 18-22, and 24, which are all the claims pending in this application. Claims 10, 11, 16, 17, and 23 are cancelled. App. Br. 2. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b). We affirm. 1 Appellants identify Adobe Systems Incorporated as the real party in interest. App. Br. 2. Appeal2018-002538 Application 13/554,023 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellants' application relates to dynamic filtering of an object graph in a content repository. Spec. ,r 1. In particular, Appellants' application discloses that an object is a programming construct that combines hierarchical data with a set of methods for storing, accessing, and managing the data. Id. ,r 2. An object graph is a web of linked objects, representing a view of a content repository at a particular point in time. Id. ,r 2. Appellants' application relates to dynamically filtering an object graph and allowing an operation to be performed on attributes of the objects within the graph without retrieving the entire object. Id. ,r 3. Claim 1 is illustrative of the appealed subject matter and reads as follows: 1. A computer implemented method for performing a command on a subset of an object graph in a content repository, the method comprising: forming a request containing at least one filtering expression, wherein the at least one filtering expression identifies one or more specific attributes of a selected subset of objects in an object graph in an object content repository and an operation to perform on the one or more specific attributes; retrieving the one or more specific attributes of each object in the selected subset of objects, wherein retrieving an attribute from an object comprises retrieving the attribute without retrieving the entire object; and executing the formed request by performing the operation identified by the at least one filtering expression on the retrieved one or more specific attributes of each object in the selected subset of objects, wherein performing the operation comprises creating, deleting, modifying, or updating, for each object in the selected subset of objects, the retrieved one or more specific attributes without retrieving the entire object. 2 Appeal2018-002538 Application 13/554,023 The Examiner's Rejection Claims 1-9, 12-15, 18-22, and 24 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. Â§ I03(a) as being unpatentable over Breeds et al. (US 2010/0079460 Al; Apr. 1, 2010), Goldberg et al. (US 2003/0135503 Al; July 17, 2003), and Sudarshan Murthy et al., Querying Bi-level Information, Dept. of CSE, OGI School of Sc. & Eng. At OHSU ("Murthy"). Non-Final Act. 3-11. ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellants' contentions that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellants' contentions. Except as noted below, we adopt as our own: (1) the findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken and (2) the reasons set forth by the Examiner in the Examiner's Answer in response to Appellants' Appeal Brief. We concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner. We highlight the following additional points. Appellants argue the Examiner erred in finding Murthy teaches or suggests "retrieving the one or more specific attributes of each object in the selected subset of objects ... without retrieving the entire object." App. Br. 12-13; Reply Br. 5-7. In particular, Appellants argue Murthy relates to superimposed information management, wherein a superimposed application adds excerpts from base documents into a superimposed layer with links back to the base documents. App. Br. 12 ( citing Murthy Â§Â§ 2-3). According to Appellants, querying source documents for abstracts of papers related to a topic is not the same as the recited "retrieving" step. Id. at 13. 3 Appeal2018-002538 Application 13/554,023 Appellants have not persuaded us of Examiner error. The Examiner finds, and we agree, Murthy teaches querying a group of objects named "Garlic," wherein the query "returns the text of a context element whose name attribute is 'Abstract', but only for items in the required group." Non- Final Act. 6 (citing MurthyÂ§ 3.2) (emphasis omitted). In other words, Murthy discloses retrieving the text of the Abstract element for objects in the Garlic group without retrieving entire objects. We agree with the Examiner that Murthy's teaching (see Non-Final Act. 5-6) in combination with Breeds' object graph that allows dynamic filtering (see Non-Final Act. 3-4) and Goldberg's object graph that allows retrieval of individual attributes and operations on those attributes (see Non-Final Act. 4-5) teaches or suggests the disputed claim limitations. Appellants' arguments to the contrary are conclusory and fail to persuasively identify error in the Examiner's findings. Appellants further argue Murthy is non-analogous art. App. Br. 13- 14. In particular, Appellants argue Murthy is not directed to the same field of endeavor as the present invention because Murthy is directed to super- imposed information management, as opposed to the present application which relates to the management of object graphs. App. Br. 13. Appellants further contend Murthy is not reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventors because "[i]n considering the inefficiencies of prior object graph management systems, there is almost zero likelihood that the attention of the inventors would be drawn to an application most commonly used by researchers to create a document with research notes and copied portions of source documents." App. Br. 14. Appellants have not persuaded us of Examiner error. The claimed invention relates to an object graph in a content repository. See, e.g., Spec. 4 Appeal2018-002538 Application 13/554,023 ,r 1, Claim 1. The object graph is made up of a web of linked objects, where each object combines hierarchical data with a set of methods for storing, accessing, and managing those data. Spec. ,r 2. Murthy is similarly directed to a content repository-in particular, a collection of documents that tend to be unstructured or semi-structured with marks delimiting selections within the documents. Murthy Abstract. Murthy discloses techniques for querying the documents to retrieve information, i.e., methods for accessing data in the repository. See id. Accordingly, Murthy is in the same field of endeavor as the claimed invention. Moreover, the particular teachings of Murthy relied upon by the Examiner relate to an XPath expression for querying content objects in the base documents and superimposed and superimposed information. Murthy Â§ 3 .2. Appellants' claim 2 recites "the filtering expression is an XP A TH style expression constructed using Extensible Markup Language (XML) Path (XPATH) Language." Accordingly, the claimed invention relates to the same types of queries used in Murthy to retrieve information from stored content. Appellants also argue the Examiner erred because an ordinarily skilled artisan would not have been motivated to modify Breeds and Goldberg in view of Murthy to retrieve "only relevant data" as found by the Examiner. App. Br. 14-15 (citing Non-Final Act. 6). In particular, Appellants argue Murthy teaches that a weakness of its system is that the system retrieves context information for all parts of a document the superimposed document refers to, regardless of whether all of those parts are relevant to the executed query. App. Br. 14 (citing MurthyÂ§ 4). 5 Appeal2018-002538 Application 13/554,023 Appellants have not persuaded us of Examiner error. The Examiner finds, and we agree, Murthy teaches querying objects in a group to retrieve a particular attribute, as discussed above. See supra, MurthyÂ§ 3.2. The Examiner's proposed combination would use Murthy's teachings related to querying base documents to retrieve an attribute of the base document without retrieving the entire document, and would not require querying Murthy's superimposed layer. See Non-Final Act. 6. Accordingly, the identified "weakness" of Murthy would not affect the proposed combination's ability to retrieve only the relevant information (i.e., only the desired attribute) from the objects in the content repository. Appellants' argument is unpersuasive because it presumes that the entirety of Murthy's teachings would be bodily incorporated into the combined system of Breeds and Goldberg. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413,425 (CCPA 1981) (citations omitted) ("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 Nievelt, 482 F.2d 965, 968 (CCP A 1973) ("Combining the teachings of references does not involve an ability to combine their specific structures."). Appellants further argue the Examiner erred because Goldberg does not teach or suggest "performing [an] operation identified by [a] filtering expression on the retrieved one or more specific attributes ... without retrieving the entire object ... wherein performing the operation comprises creating, deleting, modifying, or updating ... the retrieved one or more specific attributes without retrieving the entire object." See App. Br. 15-17. 6 Appeal2018-002538 Application 13/554,023 Appellants also argue the Examiner erred because Breeds does not teach or suggest "wherein the at least one filtering expression identifies ... an operation to perform on the one or more specific attributes." See id. at 18- 19. We are not persuaded by Appellants' arguments. The Examiner finds the combination of Breeds and Goldberg, not either reference alone, along with Murthy disclose these limitations. Non-Final Act. 3-5. Specifically, the Examiner finds Goldberg teaches performing an operation on an objects' attributes and Murthy teaches interacting with an object's attributes without retrieving the object as a whole. See id. at 3-6. Similarly, the Examiner finds Breeds teaches a filtering expression and Goldberg teaches performing operations on an object's attributes. See id. at 3-5. Appellants' arguments focus on the individual disclosures of Goldberg and Breeds, respectively, instead of addressing the combination of references as a whole. See id. at 15-19. One cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references individually when the rejection is based on a combination of references. In re Merck & Co. Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir. 1986); see also In re Keller, 642 F.2d at 425. We, therefore, are not persuaded of Examiner error with respect to these limitations. For these reasons, we sustain the rejection of independent claim 1 as unpatentable over Breeds, Goldberg, and Murthy. We also sustain the rejection of independent claims 8 and 14, for which Appellants rely on the same arguments. See App. Br. 11. We also sustain the rejection of dependent claims 2-7, 9, 12, 13, 15, 18-22, and 24, for which Appellants rely on the same arguments. See id. at 19-20. 7 Appeal2018-002538 Application 13/554,023 DECISION We affirm the decision of the Examiner rejecting claims 1-9, 12-15, 18-22, and 24. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. Â§ 1.136(a)(l)(iv). See 37 C.F.R. Â§ 41.50(Â±). AFFIRMED 8