Ex Parte Karson et al

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Sep 26, 2018

13758339 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Sep. 26, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
13/758,339 02/04/2013
101373 7590 09/28/2018
Eversheds Sutherland (US) LLP / CEI
999 Peachtree Street
Suite 2300
Atlanta, GA 30309
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Steve Karson
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.
26454-0082 1210
EXAMINER
WOODWORTH, II, ALLAN J
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3682
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/28/2018 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):
patentdocket@eversheds-sutherland.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte STEVE KARSON, MICHAEL JOHN BURGISS,
BRIAN ANTONELLI and CHRIS KULINSKI
Appeal2017-007699
Application 13/758,339
Technology Center 3600
Before CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., JEFFREY S. SMITH and
ADAM J. PYONIN, Administrative Patent Judges.
WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants are appealing the final rejection of claims 1 and 3-7 under
35 U.S.C. § 134(a). Appeal Brief 2. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C.
§ 6(b ).
We affirm.
Introduction
The invention is directed to logging website user interactions and
website events. Specification, paragraph 1.
Appeal2018-007699
Application 13/758,339
Illustrative Claim
1. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions, that
when executed by one or more processors, causes the one or more
processors to:
determine that a web page received from a server is presented on a
user device display, wherein the web page comprises first content at a first
URL address;
upon determining that the web page is presented on the user device
display, generate a page tag identifier associated with the web page, wherein
the page tag identifier is further associated with a user and a particular time
the web page is received;
identify one or more advertisements presented with the web page, the
one or more advertisements received from an advertisement server;
generate one or more sub-tags associated with the one or more
advertisements, the one or more sub-tags comprising an event sub-tag
indicative of a user event associated with the one or more advertisements;
associate the page tag identifier with the one or more sub-tags, the
page tag identifier being associated with the user event via the one or more
sub-tags;
identify a first dynamic impression associated with the web page,
wherein the first dynamic impression is associated with a first product;
identify a second dynamic impression that is associated with a second
product;
associate the one or more sub-tags with the first dynamic impression
and the second dynamic impression;
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determine that the user interacted with the first dynamic impression or
the second dynamic impression;
reformat, based at least in part on the user interaction with the first
dynamic impression or the second dynamic impression, the first content to
generate second content for presentation on the web page, wherein the
second content is different than the first content;
present the second content on the user device display at the web page
at the first URL address, wherein the second content is associated with a
second URL address that is constant whether the user interacted with the
first dynamic impression or the second dynamic impression;
and
communicate one or more associations, between the page tag
identifier and the one or more advertisements, and the one or more sub-tags
and the dynamic impression, to the advertisement server.
Rejections on Appeal1
Claims 1 and 3-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §112(b) or 35 U.S.C.
§ 112 (pre-AIA), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to
particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the
inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the
invention. Non-final Action 3.
1 The 35 U.S.C. § 101 rejection was withdrawn by the Examiner. Answer 3.
Thus, we have not reviewed the issue, as "[t]he Board's primary role is to
review the adverse decision as presented by the Examiner, and not to
conduct its own separate examination of the claims." MPEP § 1213.02.
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Application 13/758,339
Claims 1 and 4-7 stand rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §I03(a) as
being unpatentable over Christensen (US Patent Application Publication
2011/0218858 Al; published September 8, 2011), Zhao (US Patent
Application Publication 2011/0029489 Al; published February 3, 2011) and
Green (US Patent 7,975,020 Bl; issued July 5, 2011). Non-final Action
6-15.
Claim 3 stands rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § I03(a) as being
unpatentable over Christensen, Zhao, Green and Dewar (US Patent
Application Publication 2009/0265196 Al; published 22, 2009). Non-final
Action 16-17.
ANALYSIS
Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellants and the Examiner,
we refer to the Specification, (filed Feb. 4, 2013); Appeal Brief (filed
November 14, 2016), the Reply Brief (filed April 25, 2017), the Examiner's
Answer (mailed February 28, 2017) and the non-final Action (mailed August
25, 2016) for the respective details.
35 U.S.C. § 112 Rejection
"The rejection of claim 1 and 3-7 under 35 U.S.C. § 112 is not
appealed herein." Appeal Brief 2. Appellants elected not to argue the merits
of independent claims 1 and 3-7 rejected under 35 U.S.C. §112, second
paragraph. Accordingly we summarily sustain the Examiner's 35 U.S.C.
§112 rejection. See Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010)
(precedential) ("If an appellant fails to present arguments on a particular
issue - or, more broadly, on a particular rejection - the Board will not, as
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a general matter, unilaterally review those uncontested aspects of the
rejection. See, e.g., Hyatt v. Dudas, 551 F.3d 1307, 1313-14 (Fed. Cir. 2008)
("the Board may treat arguments appellant failed to make for a given ground
of rejection as waived").
35 U.S.C. § 103 Rejections
Appellants contend:
Green fails to cure the deficiencies of Christensen and Zhao
because Green is entirely silent as to the claimed operations of
"reformat. . . the first content to generate second content for
presentation on the web page, wherein the second content is
different than the first content," and "present the second content
on the user device display at the web page at the first URL
address, wherein the second content is associated with a
second URL address that is constant whether the user
interacted with the first dynamic impression or the second
dynamic impression."
Appeal Brief 15-16.
Appellants further contend that Green popover content is pre-loaded
and therefore "the alleged second content of Green ( asserted by the
Examiner as the popover content) is not 'associated with a second URL
address that is constant whether the user interacted with the first dynamic
impression or the second dynamic impression."' Appeal Brief 16.
"Applicant submits that Green cannot be modified to render claim 1 obvious
because to do so cuts against the purpose of Green - which is to direct users
to the hyperlinks associated with the popovers for different advertisers (e.g.,
direct users to different websites)." Appeal Brief 17.
The Examiner finds that Green discloses that "the second content may
either be pre-loaded or dynamically generated in response to the dynamic
impressions." Answer 4 (citing Green column 4, lines 35-40). We do not
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find Appellants' argument persuasive that Green's popover content is pre-
loaded and therefore not associated with the second content because the
claims do not preclude the second content from being preloaded, and the
argument is not responsive to the Examiner's finding that Green's second
content may be dynamically generated.
Appellants disclose in regard to dynamic impressions that:
Dynamic impressions may represent certain web content
provided by a web page 130 that may change depending on
circumstances surrounding the user and the web page 130. For
example, search results, as described above, may change
depending on the search parameters used to perform the search.
However, the web page 130 used to display the search results
may remain constant. Thus, the same web page 130 (i.e., the
page represented by a constant URL address) may present
different dynamic impressions to the user depending on the
circumstances.
Specification, paragraph 36. (emphasis added).
Additionally, dynamic impressions may also be present in
contexts not limited to search results. To this end, dynamic
impressions may include any type of web content in any context,
such as text, images, tables, forms, and/or the like. For instance,
consider a website for vehicle commerce in which multiple
thumbnail images corresponding to different vehicles may be
presented to a user. Clicking any of the thumbnail images may
direct the user to a particular web page 130, identified by a
certain constant URL address, regardless of which thumbnail
image may be clicked.
Specification, paragraph 37.
For example, a user may hover the cursor over a particular
dynamic impression, an advertisement, a link, and/or any other
web content. Thus, the event tags 230 may also include data
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indicating the particular web content over which the user hovered
and/or clicked.
Specification, paragraph 39.
The Examiner finds that Green discloses the second content is
associated with a second URL address that is constant as required by claim
1:
For example, if the item 38 is a link to the home page of a
recognized web site, the web browser 32 may retrieve site
statistics for this web site (see FIG. 4, discussed below). As
another example, if the item 3 8 is a link or product name
corresponding to a recognized product, the web browser 32 may
retrieve additional information (price, product reviews,
photograph, etc.) associated with this product (see FIGS. 5 and
6, discussed below). In events 6 and 7 of FIG. 1, the requested
item-related content is returned by the content server 30, and is
displayed in the overlay display object 40 to create a
supplemented or 60 updated version 34' of the web page 34.
Green, column 3, lines 50-60; Non-final Action 11.
The Examiner further finds that Green discloses:
An important aspect of this example of FIG. 6 is that the user can
interactively browse the electronic catalog without losing the
context of the current web page 34, and without having to open
a separate browser window. For instance, the 15 user can hover
the mouse pointer 42 over each product link on the search results
page 34 to view more detailed information about each product
before proceeding to a particular product detail page.
Answer 6 ( citing Green, column 14, lines 10-18).
Appellants argue:
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There is nothing in Green that remotely relates to dynamic
impressions that are associated with different products and that
maintain a constant URL address. At best, Green appears to
discuss product links that can be hovered over, where the product
link may remain unchanged when hovered over. There is no
teaching or suggestion in Green of the claimed operation of
"present the second content on the user device display at the web
page at the first URL address, wherein the second content is
associated with a second URL address that is constant
whether the user interacted with the first dynamic
impression or the second dynamic impression ... "
Reply Brief 3-4.
Appellants contend that support for the limitation - "present the
second content on the user device display at the web page at the first URL
address, wherein the second content is associated with a second URL
address that is constant whether the user interacted with the first dynamic
impression or the second dynamic impression" is provided in paragraphs
"[0018], [0022]-[0023], and [0037]-[0048]" and Figures 1-2, 4 and 7.
Appeal Brief 3. However, after reviewing the cited paragraphs, we find only
an indication that web page 130 used to display the search results may
remain constant "i.e., the page represented by a constant URL address."
Specification, paragraph 36.
We agree with the Examiner's findings because Green discloses that
the second content is associated with a second URL that is constant in the
same manner as required by the claims read in light of the Specification as
noted above. See Green Figure 1, 6. Appellants disclose that the claimed
dynamic impressions are well known elements currently utilized on
webpages and therefore do not postulate novel elements. See Specification
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paragraphs 36, 37. We do not find Appellants arguments persuasive because
the content displayed on the webpage is well known in the art, and the claim
limitations require the manipulation of the elements such as images, tables,
forms and the like associated with the content. We do not find that the
claims manipulate the well-known elements in a manner that distinguish the
claims over the cited art. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner's
obviousness rejections of claims 1 and 4-7.
Appellants argue, "the asserted rationale for the combination of
Christensen, Zhao, and Green is legally insufficient" and Dewar fails to
address the flaw in the noted combination in regard to claim 3. Appeal Brief
19. Appellants argue:
Again, in Christensen, a user is rewarded for referral links
that are accessed by other users. The user in Christensen is not
interested in determining whether another user hovered over the
advertisement but did not click. Such information is not needed
in Christensen and therefore, the motivation to combine the
teachings is lacking.
Appeal Brief 19.
The Examiner finds, "Christensen paragraph [0086] discloses 'the
linking module detects user input corresponding to the advertisement ...
includ[ing] a click by a user ... the linking module records a click associated
with an advertisement identifier and records the click for analytical
purposes"' and "Dewar teaches that relying on click-throughs alone does
'not accurately reflect the value of a particular piece of content"' and
accordingly, "one of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to
monitor a user hovering over advertisements in addition to a user clicking
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advertisements so that user interest information about a particular piece of
content that 'accurately reflect[s] the value of a particular piece of content'
(Dewar [0003]) can be determined." Answer 10. We find such attorney
argument without supporting evidence to be conclusory, and, therefore,
unpersuasive. See In re Geisler, 116 F.3d 1465, 1470 (Fed. Cir. 1997)
( attorney argument is not the kind of factual evidence required to rebut a
prima facie case of obviousness). Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner's
obviousness rejection of dependent claim 3.
DECISION
The Examiner's 35 U.S.C. § 112 rejection of claims 1 and 3-7 is
affirmed.
The Examiner's 35 U.S.C. §103 rejections of claims 1 and 3-7 are
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)(l ). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(l )(v).
AFFIRMED
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