Ex Parte Madhavan et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 23, 2014

11370246 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 23, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE 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. 11/370,246 03/06/2006 Anand Madhavan 10033-2020300 8811 97531 7590 06/23/2014 Mauriel Kapouytian Woods LLP 27 W. 24th Street Suite #302 New York, NY 10010 EXAMINER CONYERS, DAWAUNE A ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2159 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/23/2014 PAPER 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. PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte ANAND MADHAVAN, MATTHEW CARINIO, and DARSHAN KANTAK __________ Appeal 2011-011628 Application 11/370,246 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before HUBERT C. LORIN, ANTON W. FETTING, and KEVIN W. CHERRY, Administrative Patent Judges. LORIN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Anand Madhavan, Matthew Carinio, and Darshan Kantak (Appellants) seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner’s Final rejection of claims 21–40. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b) (2002). Appeal 2011-011628 Application 11/370,246 2 SUMMARY OF DECISION We REVERSE.1 THE INVENTION Claim 21, reproduced below, is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal. 21. A method to select advertising content for display on a web page, the method comprising: parsing, in a computer, an original search query received from a user over a network through a query web page to obtain at least one parsed search query term; retrieving a plurality of keywords from a database, wherein said keywords relate contextually to a category of said query web page; generating, in a computer, a set of modified queries, each modified query comprising said at least one query term and at least one keyword; retrieving, from a database, a plurality of advertising offers related to said modified queries; removing, in a computer, any advertising offer that is not related contextually to said category of said query web page; storing, in a database, as filtered modified queries, said modified queries corresponding to advertising offers not removed; thereafter, receiving, in a computer, a subsequent search query received from a user over a network through a corresponding query web page; 1 Our decision will make reference to the Appellants’ Appeal Brief (“App. Br.,” filed Mar. 3, 2011) and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed Jul. 11, 2011), and the Examiner’s Answer (“Answer,” mailed May 11, 2011). Appeal 2011-011628 Application 11/370,246 3 retrieving a plurality of filtered modified queries from a database related to said subsequent search query and said corresponding query web page; retrieving advertising offers related to said filtered modified queries retrieved; and retrieving advertising content from a database related to an advertising offer retrieved. THE REJECTION The Examiner relies upon the following as evidence of unpatentability: Agarwal Marquadt Guha US 2005/0222901 A1 US 2006/0069613 A1 US 2007/0038614 A1 Oct. 6, 2005 Mar. 30, 2006 Feb. 15, 2007 The following rejection is before us for review: 1. Claims 21–40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) as being unpatentable over Agarwal, Marquardt, and Guha. ISSUE The central issue is whether Agarwal discloses “storing, in a database, as filtered modified queries, said modified queries corresponding to advertising offers not removed” (claim 21). Appeal 2011-011628 Application 11/370,246 4 FINDINGS OF FACT We rely on the Examiner’s factual findings stated in the Answer. Additional findings of fact may appear in the Analysis below. As to the issue, the Examiner found that Agarwal discloses storing, in a database, as filtered modified queries, said modified queries corresponding to advertising offers not removed (Agarwal: paragraph[0055]-paragraph[0064], “ FIG. 8 is a flow diagram of an exemplary method 800 that may be used to associate query terms/phrases with advertisements, and use such query terms/phrases as one or more types of ad information.”); the reference describes using modified query information interpreted as at least one query term with AD information interpreted as at least one keyword. The modifying queries are stored and used to query targeted advertising identification and target keywords (figure 7, element 735) which are used to generate corresponding ad creative (paragraph [0064]). The examiner interprets ad creative as advertising offers not removed. Thus, the ads are not removed when generated and stored. For further support, the reference describes using the examiners interpreted modified queries to suggest ad creative in paragraph [0078]. The reference describes storing this information in paragraph [0057]-paragraph[0058]); Ans. 15–16, see also Reply Br. 4. ANALYSIS There are three independent claims: method claim 21, medium claim 29; and system claim 37, which parallel each other in including, respectively, limitations to steps, instructions and functions for 1) generating, in a computer, a set of modified queries, each modified query comprising at least one query term and at least one keyword; and 2) storing, in a database, as filtered modified queries, said modified queries corresponding to advertising offers not removed. Appeal 2011-011628 Application 11/370,246 5 We select claim 21 as the representative claim. The Examiner took the position that Agarwal discloses the claim limitation “storing, in a database, as filtered modified queries, said modified queries corresponding to advertising offers not removed” (claim 1) at ¶¶ 55– 64. Ans. 15. The Appellants disagree, arguing that [T]he Examiner’s remarks [are] entirely silent with regard to storing any filtered modified queries. The appealed independent claims recite “removing, in a computer, any advertising offer that is not related contextually to said category of said query web page” and “storing, in a database, as filtered modified queries, said modified queries corresponding to advertising offers not removed.” As such, advertising offers are removed and filtered modified queries correspond to advertising offers that have not been removed. However, the Examiner’s remarks are entirely silent with regard to filtering of any query, let alone filtering modified queries that correspond to advertising offers that have not been removed. Moreover, Agarwal at the cited portion merely discloses “[c]ertain ‘stop’ terms that often occur in search queries but which carry little or no meaning (e.g., ‘the,’ ‘a,’ ‘and,’ ... etc.) may be filtered out of the query information.” [citing ¶ 57 of Aggarawal][.] As such, Agarwal merely discloses filtering words with little or no meaning from a query. Thus, Agarwal cannot reasonably be considered to disclose filtered modified queries that correspond to advertising offers that are not removed, let alone storing such queries in a database. Reply Br. 4, 5 We agree with the Appellants’ reading of Agarwal. We have reviewed ¶¶ 55–64 of Agarwal and do not see there disclosed “storing, in a database, as filtered modified queries, said modified queries corresponding Appeal 2011-011628 Application 11/370,246 6 to advertising offers not removed” (claim 1). The evidence does not support the finding that Agarwal discloses said claim limitation. Agarwal discloses filtering stop terms out of “query information” (see ¶ 57). Also, Agarwal states “[i]nformation about existing advertiser documents/domains . . . may be used to filter out documents/domains selected that do not correspond to any existing advertiser.” Id. However, filtering modified queries relating to advertisements is not disclosed. Fig. 9 of Agarwal makes clear that, instead of filtering modified queries as the claims require, documents and/or domains not related to any advertisements are filtered out. Furthermore, we do not see that Agarwal discloses storing modified queries as the claimed subject matter requires. The Examiner took the view that a modified query is a combination of a search query and ad information, which includes keywords. See Ans. 14, 15. However, even if the claim phrase “modified query” is reasonably broadly defined as a combination of a search query and ad information, to support the Examiner’s position, Agarwal would have to disclose storing both the search query and the ad information to reach the storing of modified queries as claimed. In that regard, in Agarwal, the ad information is separately used. It is not combined with the search query. This is shown in ¶¶ 63, 64 and Fig. 8 which explains the separate use of ad information to determine a final set of suggested targeting keywords; that is, first, ad information is used to identify a document/domain and then the document/domain is used to find associated query terms/phrases with that particular document/domain. For this reason, we find that while Agarwal discloses storing ad information and query Appeal 2011-011628 Application 11/370,246 7 term/phrases, Agarwal does not disclose storing modified queries, even assuming the claim phrase “modified query” is reasonably broadly defined as a combination of a search query and ad information. For the foregoing reasons, we do not find that a prima facie case of obviousness for the claimed subject matter given the prior art combination has been made out in the first instance. CONCLUSION The rejection of claims 21–40 under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) as being unpatentable over Agarwal, Marquardt, and Guha is not sustained. DECISION The decision of the Examiner to reject claims 21–40 is reversed. REVERSED rvb