Ex Parte Waldbaum et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardAug 23, 2017

12968572 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 23, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office 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. 12/968,572 12/15/2010 Brett Waldbaum 330650.01 2602 69316 7590 08/25/2017 MICROSOFT CORPORATION ONE MICROSOFT WAY REDMOND, WA 98052 EXAMINER ORTIZ, DERIC OMAR ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2194 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 08/25/2017 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): u sdocket @ micro soft .com chriochs @microsoft.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte BRETT WALDBAUM and CAITLIN KEHOE Appeal 2016-005814 Application 12/968,5721 Technology Center 2100 Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, JOHNNY A. KUMAR, and JOHN D. HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judges. HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants file this appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1—3, 5—8, and 11—23. Claim 6 was objected to as being an incomplete sentence. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC. App. Br. 2. Appeal 2016-005814 Application 12/968,572 THE CLAIMED INVENTION Appellants’ claimed invention relates to “web applications, generally, and more to facilitating extensible template pipelines for web applications, specifically.” Spec. 11. Claim 11 is illustrative of the subject matter of the appeal and is reproduced below. 11. A method for localizing a webpage, the method performed on at least one computing device, where the at least one computing device includes at least one processor and memory, the method comprising: receiving, by the at least one computing device, metadata that describes the webpage and that specifies a webpage template, webpage controls, and a locale for a localized version of the webpage; identifying, by the at least one computing device based on the received metadata, localizable elements of the webpage; receiving, by the at least one computing device, localized versions of the localizable elements of the webpage, where the localized versions are in a language indicated by the locale; merging, by the at least one computing device in response to the receiving the localized versions of the localizable elements of the webpage, the received localized versions of the localizable elements of the webpage with the webpage template and the webpage controls; and generating, by the at least one computing device in response to the merging and based on the merged localized versions, webpage template, and webpage controls, the localized version of the webpage that is configured for being downloaded by a client device. REJECTION ON APPEAL The Examiner rejected claims 1—3, 5—8, and 11—23 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Campbell et al. (US 7,747,941 B2; issued June 29, 2010) (hereinafter “Campbell”) and “Getting Started with Localizer for ASP.NET,” TMG Development Ltd., published 2003 2 Appeal 2016-005814 Application 12/968,572 (http://www.winformreports.co.uk/localizer_intro_howto.htm) (hereinafter “Localizer”). ISSUE The dispositive issue for this appeal is whether Campbell teaches or suggests “receiving, by the at least one computing device, metadata that describes the webpage,” as recited in independent claims 1,11, and 18. ANALYSIS We find Appellants’ arguments persuasive with respect to the cited portions of Campbell failing to teach or suggest the above dispositive, disputed limitation. Appellants argue Campbell teaches automatically generating webpages using received files and certain metadata which does not describe the webpage. App. Br. 5—7; Reply Br. 7 (citing Campbell col. 5,11. 19—20, 22—23, 28—29). Rather the received metadata consists of: [Information associated with the files, such as which files have been recently modified[,] . . . file[ 1 system-attributes (e.g., directory structure, filenames, and location of the file in the file system) and interaction attributes (e.g., frequency of file usage, what application is used with the file, what group of files were modified “together”, and what group of files was published to the web at the same time). Likewise, meta-data such as size, content, type of file, and the application associated with the file type can also be used to associate files with each other. App. Br. 6 (quoting Campbell col. 5,11. 28—38). According to Appellants, Campbell instead teaches metadata that “relate to files” rather than webpages. App. Br. 5—6 (citing Campbell col. 5,11. 28—36). Lor example, 3 Appeal 2016-005814 Application 12/968,572 Campbell’s file system-attributes, interaction-attributes, and file characteristic metadata (e.g., file size, file content, file type, and application associated with the file type) relate to files. App. Br. 6—7 (citing Campbell col. 5,11. 28-38). The Examiner finds Campbell teaches or suggests the disputed limitation. Ans. 20—21. More specifically, the Examiner finds Campbell teaches or suggests receiving files and automatically generating the layout of a webpage “based on (a) user preferences; (b) company context (e.g. company may have rules as to how the website should appear (i.e., style guide)[)]; (c) workgroup context; and (d) metadata or other information associated w[ith] the files.” Ans. 20 (citing Campbell col. 5,11. 23—30). The Examiner finds Campbell teaches the metadata can “describe size, content, type of file, and the application associated with the file type.” Ans. 20 (citing Campbell col. 5,11. 35—37). Furthermore, the Examiner finds Campbell also teaches extracting metadata associated with the received files and analyzing the content of the files (e.g., determining whether there are photos, a publication list, key words) to appropriately present on a webpage information associated with the files. Ans. 20—21 (citing Campbell col. 6,11. 3—14; Fig. 1). The Examiner concludes that Campbell’s teaching of extracting metadata and analyzing the content of the received files to determine appropriate presentation teaches “metadata that describes [a] web page.” Ans. 21. We agree with Appellants that the cited portions of Campbell fail to teach or suggest the disputed limitation to one of ordinary skill in the art. Campbell teaches that the received metadata (upon which the Examiner does not rely) relates to file attributes, such as file size, file type, file name, file 4 Appeal 2016-005814 Application 12/968,572 content,2 and the file’s location, rather than to a description of a webpage. See Campbell col. 5,11. 18—38. Rather than focusing on the received metadata, the Examiner incorrectly finds Campbell’s teaching of extracting metadata and analyzing the content of the received files teaches or suggests received metadata that describes a web page. Besides not being received metadata, this teaching, at most, describes the file rather than the webpage. See, e.g., Campbell Fig. 1; col. 3,11. 4—10; col. 5,11. 18—38; col. 6,11. 3—21. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1,11, and 18, as well as claims 2, 3, 5—8, 12—17, and 19—23, which each depend directly or indirectly from one of these independent claims. DECISION We reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1—3, 5—8, and 11-23. REVERSED 2 Campbell teaches that this file content metadata is “used to associate files with each other,” rather than being used for webpage layout. Campbell col. 5,11. 36-38. 5