Ex Parte Udupa et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 8, 201310890496 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 8, 2013) Copy Citation UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte RAGHAVENDRA U. UDUPA and TANVEER A. FARUQUIE ____________ Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 Technology Center 2600 ____________ Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, DEBRA K. STEPHENS, and LYNNE E. PETTIGREW, Administrative Patent Judges. PETTIGREW, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of claims 1-3, 5, 8-12, 14, 17-21, 23, 26, and 27.1 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm-in-part and enter a new ground of rejection pursuant to our authority under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b). 1 Claims 4, 6, 7, 13, 15, 16, 22, 24, 25, and 28 have been cancelled. Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction According to Appellants, their invention relates to machine translation of text from a source language to a target language. Spec. 1, ll. 5-6. Claims 1, 9, 10, 18, 19, and 27 are independent. Claims 1 and 9 are illustrative of the invention (disputed limitations in italics): 1. A computer-implemented method for decoding source text in a first language to target text in a second language, said method comprising: decoding, by a computer, said source text having a word length, M, based on a specified alignment, from all possible alignments, between words in said source text and said target text having a word length, L, wherein said decoding provides a probability of an optimal translation in said target text from said source text; subsequently, specifying, by said computer, another specified alignment, from said all possible alignments, and decoding said source text, based on said another specified alignment; determining, by said computer, said probability of an optimal translation for each of said all possible alignments; and outputting, by said computer, said target text, in said second language, associated with a highest probability value of probabilities of an optimal translation of said all possible alignments. Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 3 9. A computer-implemented method for decoding source text in a first language to target text in a second language, said method comprising: inputting, by a computer, said source text of word length, M; initializing, by said computer, a value of a most probable translation to a target language as null, and initializing, by said computer, a most probable alignment between said source text and said target text as null; initializing, by said computer, a first processing loop variable, L, for each value of L from M/2 to 2M, wherein L corresponds to a word length of said target text; initializing, by said computer, a second processing loop variable, A, for each alignment between said source text and said target text; from said initial value and for each successive value of L of said first processing loop, determining, by said computer, a probability of said most probable translation of said target text for each value of A of said second processing loop, based on decoding said corresponding source text; and outputting, by said computer, said target text, in said second language, associated with a highest probability value of probabilities of an optimal translation of said all possible word lengths and alignments. Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 4 Rejections on Appeal2 The Examiner has rejected claims 9, 18, and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which Appellants regard as their invention. Ans. 3-4. The Examiner has rejected claims 1-3, 10-12, and 19-21 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Marcu (US 2002/0188439 A1, Dec. 12, 2002). Ans. 4-6. The Examiner has rejected claims 5, 8, 14, 17, 23, and 26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Marcu and Tillmann (Tillmann and Ney, Word Re-ordering and DP-based Search in Statistical Machine Translation, International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Computational Linguistics, vol. 2, 2000). Ans. 6-8. Issues on Appeal Based on Appellants’ arguments, the issues on appeal are: (1) Did the Examiner err in rejecting claims 9, 18, and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as being indefinite for failure to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which Appellants regard as the invention (App. Br. 15-18)? 2 The Examiner has objected to claims 14, 17, and 26 as depending from cancelled claims 13, 16, and 25, respectively. Ans. 3. For purposes of this appeal, the Examiner treats claim 14 as depending from claim 10, claim 17 as depending from claim 14, and claim 26 as depending from claim 23. Id. We adopt the Examiner’s treatment of these claims for purposes of this appeal. We also note Appellants’ statement that the Examiner did not enter proposed claim amendments (Amendment, Sept. 21, 2009) that would have corrected the dependencies. App. Br. 22. Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 5 (2) Did the Examiner err in rejecting claims 1, 10, and 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because Marcu fails to disclose “determining, by said computer, said probability of an optimal translation for each of said all possible alignments,” as recited in claim 1 and similarly recited in claims 10 and 19 (App. Br. 18-21)? (3) Did the Examiner err in rejecting claims 5, 8, 14, 17, 23, and 26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) because the combination of Marcu and Tillmann fails to teach or suggest the recited limitations (App. Br. 21-22)? ANALYSIS Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, Second Paragraph: Claims 9, 18, and 27 Claim 9 recites “initializing, by said computer, a first processing loop variable, L, for each value of L from M/2 to 2M,” and “from said initial value and for each successive value of L of said first processing loop, determining . . . a probability . . . for each value of A of said second processing loop.” The Examiner concludes the claim is indefinite because “it is unclear how and why a variable [L] is initialized for each value of itself from a range,” and “it is unclear to which initial value the [second] limitation refers since there seems to be a plurality of initialized values recited prior to this limitation.” Ans. 4. Appellants contend that claim 9 clearly recites two nested processing loops—a first processing loop for L (word length of the target text) and a second processing loop for A (alignment between target text and source text). App. Br. 16-18. According to Appellants, the invention “initializes the first processing loop, L, to M/2 . . . and then determines the probability of a most probable translation of the target text for each possible alignment, Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 6 A.” App. Br. 16. After processing this first loop with L set to M/2, Appellants explain that “the first processing loop L then iterates to another loop corresponding to the next incremental target text word length, M/2 + 1,” and “[t]he first processing loop, L, is incremented until it reaches the value 2M.” App. Br. 17; see also Reply Br. 4. We agree with the Examiner that the claim language is not clear enough to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which Appellants regard as the invention as explained in their arguments. Ans. 8. Appellants argue the claim recites initializing L to M/2 and then incrementing L by 1 until it reaches 2M, as described by Appellants; however, the Examiner interprets claim 9 as reciting initializing L to M/2 and then re-initializing L “for each value of L from M/2 to 2M.” Because claim 9 has at least two plausible claim constructions, it is indefinite for that reason alone. See Ex parte Miyazaki, 89 USPQ2d 1207, 1211 (BPAI 2008) (precedential). Appellant must therefore more precisely define the metes and bounds of the claimed invention to clarify this ambiguity. Additionally, because the Examiner’s interpretation results in multiple initial values of L, it is unclear which of the initial values provides antecedent basis for the later recitation of “said initial value.” Claims 18 and 27 include similar limitations and therefore suffer from the same lack of clarity. For these reasons, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 9, 18, and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, for failure to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which Appellants regard as the invention. Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 7 Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b): Claims 1, 10, and 19 Appellants contend that Marcu does not disclose “determining, by said computer, said probability of an optimal translation for each of said all possible alignments,” as recited in independent claim 1 and similarly recited in claims 10 and 19. App. Br. 18-21; Reply Br. 5-7. Rather than determine a probability of a most probable translation for each of all possible alignments, Appellants argue that Marcu’s “decoder tries to find an alignment (and implicitly, a translation) of higher probability by applying one or more sentence modification operators.” Marcu, ¶ [0027]; App. Br. 20. Appellants further contend that Marcu’s sentence modification operators do not “necessarily find all possible alignments as does the present invention.” Reply Br. 6 (emphasis in original). We agree with Appellants. Marcu discloses an iterative process in which the decoder tries to improve the current translation by applying sentence modification operations “until the sentence modification operations cease (as determined in block 435) to produce translation solutions having higher probabilities of correctness, at which point, the decoding process halts and the current translation is output as the final decoding solution (block 445).” Marcu, ¶ [0035]; see also Marcu, Fig. 4. Alternatively, Marcu teaches that “the decoder 115 could cease after a predetermined number of iterations chosen, for example, either by a human end-user or by an application program.” Marcu, ¶ [0035]. Thus, whether Marcu’s process terminates when it produces an alignment that does not have a higher probability of being correct than the current translation or terminates after a predetermined number of iterations, Marcu’s process does not necessarily Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 8 determine the probability of an optimal translation for all possible alignments. The Examiner points to Marcu’s disclosure that, in each iteration, the decoder “may use a process loop (blocks 425-440) to iterate exhaustively over all alignments that are one [sentence modification] operation away from the alignment under consideration.” Ans. 9 (quoting Marcu, ¶ [0036]); see also Marcu, Fig. 4. The Examiner also notes that one of Marcu’s sentence modification operations is swapSegments, which “creates a new alignment from the old one by swapping non-overlapping English word segments” and “iterates over all possible non-overlapping span pairs that can be built on a sequence of length |e|.” Marcu, ¶ ¶ [0032], [0037]; see also Ans. 9. We disagree with the Examiner’s finding that these passages disclose determining the probability of an optimal translation for each of all possible alignments, as recited in claim 1. Rather, we find these passages describe the new alignments obtained during one iteration of Marcu’s process by applying sentence modification operators to the current alignment. As discussed, this iterative process does not necessarily determine the probability of an optimal translation for all possible alignments, as recited in claim 1. For these reasons, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1, 10, and 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Marcu, nor do we sustain the § 102(b) rejection of dependent claims 2, 3, 11, 12, 20, and 21. See App. Br. 20. Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 9 Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a): Claims 5, 8, 14, 17, 23, and 26 As set forth above, we do not sustain the Examiner’s anticipation rejection based on Marcu of independent claims 1, 10, and 19, from which claims 5 and 8, claims 14 and 17, and claims 23 and 26 depend, respectively. Because the Examiner has not shown that Tillmann cures the deficiencies of Marcu, as applied by the Examiner, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of dependent claims 5, 8, 14, 17, 23, and 26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Marcu and Tillmann. New Ground of Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a): Claims 1, 10, and 19 Although we find that Marcu does not anticipate the invention as recited in claims 1, 10, and 19, we conclude that, in view of Marcu, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art to determine the probability of an optimal translation for each of all possible alignments. Marcu teaches an iterative process that tries to improve the current translation by applying sentence modification operations to find an alignment having a higher probability of correctness. Marcu, ¶¶ [0027], [0035]. While Marcu describes terminating the process once the probability of correctness can no longer be improved, the reference also suggests continuing the process until the occurrence of some other condition. Marcu, ¶ [0035], claim 8 (“repeating said applying, said determining and said setting until occurrence of a termination condition”). In view of that suggestion, we conclude that it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to continue Marcu’s iterative process until the probabilities of correctness of all possible alignments between source text Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 10 and target text have been determined, rather than terminate the process at some earlier point. Moreover, determining the probability of an optimal translation for each of said all possible alignments, as recited in claim 1 and similarly recited in claims 10 and 19, would have been within the skills of an ordinary artisan and would have yielded predictable results. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 500 U.S. 398, 417 (2007). We designate our analysis in combination with the Examiner’s analysis as to the remaining limitations in claims 1, 10, and 19 to be a new ground of rejection of claims 1, 10, and 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Marcu. Although we have rejected independent claims 1, 10, and 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) pursuant to our discretionary authority under 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b), we have not reviewed the remaining claims to the extent necessary to determine whether these claims are unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). We leave it to the Examiner to evaluate the patentability of the remaining claims and determine the appropriateness of any further rejections. See MPEP 1213.02. DECISION The Examiner’s rejection of claims 9, 18, and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, is affirmed. The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-3, 10-12, and 19-21 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Marcu is reversed. The Examiner’s rejection of claims 5, 8, 14, 17, 23, and 26 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Marcu and Tillmann is reversed. Appeal 2010-007997 Application 10/890,496 11 Pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b), we enter a new ground of rejection of claims 1, 10, and 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Marcu. Rule 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) states that “[a] new ground of rejection pursuant to this paragraph shall not be considered final for judicial review.” 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) also provides that the Appellant, WITHIN TWO MONTHS FROM THE DATE OF THE DECISION, must exercise one of the following two options with respect to the new ground of rejection to avoid termination of the appeal as to the rejected claims: (1) Reopen prosecution. Submit an appropriate amendment of the claims so rejected or new evidence relating to the claims so rejected, or both, and have the matter reconsidered by the examiner, in which event the proceeding will be remanded to the examiner . . . . (2) Request rehearing. Request that the proceeding be reheard under § 41.52 by the Board upon the same record . . . . No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). AFFIRMED-IN-PART 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(b) msc Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation