Ex Parte Yan et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJan 23, 201713759838 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 23, 2017) Copy Citation 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. 13/759,838 02/05/2013 Rong Yan 26295-20813 5126 87851 7590 01/25/2017 Faoehnnk/Fen wi ok EXAMINER Silicon Valley Center SKHOUN, HICHAM 801 California Street Mountain View, CA 94041 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2155 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/25/2017 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): ptoc @ fenwick.com fwfacebookpatents @ fenwick.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte RONG YAN, EYTAN BAKSHY, HAO ZHANG, and HUAJING LI Appeal 2016-002372 Application 13/759,838 Technology Center 2100 Before BRUCE R. WINSOR, ADAM J. PYONIN, and KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, Administrative Patent Judges. PYONIN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1—20, which are all of the pending claims. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction The Application is directed to social networks that “optimize the communication of sponsored story units, which include a sponsored story Appeal 2016-002372 Application 13/759,838 and/or one or more related posts or activities,” and which allow “advertisers or the social networking system to modify selection of sponsored stories.” Spec. 5—6. Claims 1,11, and 17 are independent. Claim 1 is reproduced below for reference: 1. A method comprising: storing, in a social networking system, a user profile associated with a viewing user, the user profile identifying one or more users of the social networking system connected to the viewing user; receiving a story request for a sponsored story unit, the story request identifying content and a type of action to be included in the sponsored story unit; identifying interactions with objects by users of the social networking system connected to the viewing user, the interactions identified based on the content and the type of action identified by the story request; generating a plurality of candidate sponsored stories based on the identified interactions, each candidate sponsored story describing an interaction performed by a user of the social networking system who is connected to the viewing user; ranking, by a processor, the candidate sponsored stories based on a performance metric; selecting a candidate sponsored story from among the candidate sponsored stories based at least in part on the ranking; generating the sponsored story unit including the selected candidate sponsored story; and presenting the sponsored story unit to the viewing user. References and Rejections Claims 1,2, 4—7, 10-15, and 17—19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by Kendall (US 2012/0109757 Al; May 3, 2012). Final Act. 2. 2 Appeal 2016-002372 Application 13/759,838 Claim 3 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kendall and Chan (US 2008/0262931 Al; Oct. 23, 2008). Final Act. 9. Claims 8, 9, 16, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kendall and Liu (US 2011/0238486 Al; Sept. 29, 2011). Final Act. 10. ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’ arguments. We adopt the Examiner’s findings and conclusions in the Final Action and Examiner’s Answer as our own, to the extent they are consistent with our analysis below. We add the following primarily for emphasis. A. Independent Claims Appellants argue the Examiner erred, because Kendall fails to disclose or suggest at least “generating a plurality of candidate sponsored stories based on the identified interactions, each candidate sponsored story describing an interaction performed by a user of the social networking system who is connected to the viewing user,” and “ranking, by a processor, the candidate sponsored stories based on a performance metric,” as recited in independent claims 1, 11, and 17. App. Br. 5. Particularly, Appellants contend that Kendall discloses methods for generating both newsfeed stories and social ads, “but the examiner seems to conflate the two in his analysis.” Id. 6. Regarding KendalFs social ads, Appellants assert that “KendalFs social ads are more similar to the claimed sponsored stories than are newsfeed stories, but still do not meet the claimed limitations,” because the reference “does not contemplate generating 3 Appeal 2016-002372 Application 13/759,838 multiple ‘candidate’ social ads from a single request as the claim recites for sponsored stories (‘generating a plurality of candidate sponsored stories’), nor does Kendall describe then ‘ranking’ and ‘selecting’ from a plurality of social ads, since it does not generate a plurality of candidates.” Reply Br. 6. We are not persuaded the Examiner erred. Rather, we agree with the Examiner that Kendall’s process—for social advertising that is responsive to receiving ad requests—discloses generating and ranking a plurality of candidate sponsored stories as claimed: Each of the triggering actions that were obtained ... for the qualifying ad requests represent a candidate social ad that may be generated by the ad server 380. To select which one or ones of the candidate social ads to generate, the ad server computes 925 an expected value for each of the candidate social ads. Kendall 172; see Final Act. 13—14. Once Kendall has selected a candidate sponsored story (i.e., “candidate social ad”) based on the ranking, Kendall generates a sponsored story unit (i.e., “social ad”) within the meaning of the claim. See Kendall 173 (“Once the expected values are computed for the candidate social ads, the ad server composes 930 a social ad for the candidate with the highest expected value”); see also Final Act. 4. We find unavailing Appellants’ contention that “Kendall only composes the ‘desired number’ of candidate ads” (App. Br. 7), at least because Kendall describes generating fewer social ads than the multiple candidate social ads.1 See Final Act. 14; Kendall Tflf 71—73. In particular, 1 We find Kendall discloses the claim limitations as argued by Appellants; therefore we do not reach the issue of whether the claims further encompass generating a sponsored story unit for each candidate sponsored story. See Genentech, Inc. v. Chiron Corp., 112 F.3d 495, 501 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (“Comprising is a term of art used in claim language which means that the 4 Appeal 2016-002372 Application 13/759,838 Appellants do not provide sufficient evidence or argument to show that the recited steps, including “generating a plurality of candidate sponsored stories” and “generating the sponsored stories,” preclude Kendall’s disclosed process, including the steps of identifying candidate social ads and composing social ads. See Kendall Abstract; see also 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv) (“any arguments or authorities not included in the appeal brief will be refused consideration”); cf. In re Baxter Travenol Labs., 952 F.2d 388, 391 (Fed. Cir. 1991) (“It is not the function of [the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit] to examine the claims in greater detail than argued by an appellant, looking for nonobvious distinctions over the prior art.”). Accordingly, we are satisfied that Kendall discloses the disputed limitations of independent claims 1,11, and 17. B. Dependent Claim 20 Appellants argue the Examiner erred in rejecting dependent claim 20, because “the ranking factors of Liu are independent of the ad itself but rather rely on external factors used to measure revenue.” App. Br. 9; see also Reply Br. 7. We are not persuaded the Examiner erred. The Examiner finds the combination of Liu and Kendall teaches or suggests the limitations of claim 20.2 See Final Act. 12; Ans. 4 (“the combination of Kendall and Liu named elements are essential, but other elements may be added and still form a construct within the scope of the claim”). 2 Separately, and not relied upon for this Decision, we note dependent claim 7 recites similar limitations as claim 20; claim 7, however, is rejected as anticipated by Kendall. See Final Act. 5. 5 Appeal 2016-002372 Application 13/759,838 references overcome the argued limitation.”). Particularly, the Examiner finds “Kendall teaches . . . ranking the candidate sponsored stories so candidate sponsored stories describ[e] a type of action specified by the request.” Ans. 4; see also Kendall 172. Appellants do not present arguments with respect to the Examiner’s Kendall findings; nor do Appellants challenge the Examiner’s reliance on the combination of references. Accordingly, we are not persuaded the Examiner’s rejection of claim 20 is in error. CONCLUSION We sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1,11 and 17, and dependent claim 20. Appellants advance no further argument on dependent claims 2—10, 12—16, 18, 19, and 33—36. See Appeal Br. 5, 8. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejections of these claims for the same reasons discussed above. DECISION The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1—20 is 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)(iv). AFFIRMED 6 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation