International Business Machines CorporationDownload PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardDec 17, 20212020002739 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 17, 2021) 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. 14/297,267 06/05/2014 Corville O. Allen AUS920140054US1 2300 45725 7590 12/17/2021 Walder Intellectual Property Law PC 445 Crestover Circle Richardson, TX 75080 EXAMINER MCGHEE, TRACY M ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2154 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/17/2021 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 CORVILLE O. ALLEN, ALBERT A. CHUNG, ANDREW R. FREED, and DORIAN B. MILLER _______________ Appeal 2020-002739 Application 14/297,267 Technology Center 2100 _______________ Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, JAMES W. DEJMEK, and JOYCE CRAIG, Administrative Patent Judges. DEJMEK, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Non-Final Rejection of claims 1–13 and 15–21. Appellant has canceled claim 14. See Amdt. 8 (filed Nov. 2, 2016). We have jurisdiction over the remaining pending claims under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). See Ex parte Lemoine, 46 USPQ2d 1420, 1423 (BPAI 1994) (precedential). We reverse. 1 Throughout this Decision, we use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42 (2019). Appellant identifies International Business Machines Corporation as the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 2. Appeal 2020-002739 Application 14/297,267 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellant’s disclosed and claimed invention generally relates to “time-based optimization of answer generation by a question and answer system. Spec. ¶ 1. More specifically, Appellant describes generating an answer to an input question wherein, although the input question does not specify a temporal categorization, the question is processed “to identify a temporal categorization of the input question indicating an intended time context for an answer.” Spec. ¶ 5. Further, analysis of a corpus of information based on the temporal categorization of the input question and temporal categorizations of sources of information in the corpus of information to determine, for each source of information, a degree of correspondence of the temporal categorization of the input question to a temporal categorization of the source of information. Spec. ¶ 5. Based on the degrees of correspondence between the temporal categorizations of the input question and the sources of information, an answer is generated and presented to the user. Spec. ¶ 5. Claim 1 is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal and is reproduced below with the disputed limitations emphasized in italics: 1. A method, in a data processing system comprising at least one processor and at least one memory, wherein the at least one memory comprises instructions that are executed by the at least one processor to specifically configure the at least one processor to implement a question answering (QA) system, comprising a QA pipeline and a temporal categorization engine, for generating an answer to an input question, the method comprising: processing, by the temporal categorization engine of the QA system implemented by the data processing system, a received input question to identify a temporal categorization of Appeal 2020-002739 Application 14/297,267 3 the input question indicating an intended time context for an answer to the input question at least by performing natural language processing on the input question to identify a domain of the input question, wherein the domain is a subject matter domain specifying a subject matter of the input question, wherein the input question does not specify a temporal categorization of the input question, and wherein the temporal categorization of the input question is identified based on an association of the domain of the input question with a temporal categorization corresponding to the domain, and wherein the data processing system processes input questions associated with a plurality of different subject matter domains and at least two subject matter domains in the plurality of different subject matter domains have different corresponding temporal categorizations; performing, by the temporal categorization engine, analysis of a corpus of information based on the temporal categorization of the input question and temporal categorizations of sources of information in the corpus of information to determine, for each source of information, a degree of correspondence of the temporal categorization of the input question to a temporal categorization of the source of information; generating, by the QA pipeline of the QA system implemented by the data processing system, at least one answer to the input question based on the degrees of correspondence of the sources of information determined by the temporal categorization engine; and outputting, by the QA pipeline of the QA system implemented by the data processing system, to a source computing device that is a source of the input question, the at least one answer to the input question. The Examiner’s Rejection Claims 1–13 and 15–21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Roberts (US 2011/0153312 A1; June 23, 2011) and Jones Appeal 2020-002739 Application 14/297,267 4 et al. (US 2010/0131538 A1; May 27, 2010) (“Jones”). Non-Final Act. 3– 16. ANALYSIS2 In rejecting claim 1, inter alia, the Examiner relies on the combined teachings of Roberts and Jones. See Non-Final Act. 3–16. We begin our analysis with a brief review of these references. Roberts generally relates to a system for answering natural language questions. Roberts ¶ 1. Roberts describes receiving an input question and matching the received question with a linked pair of questions and answers stored in a database. Roberts ¶ 37. Additionally, Roberts describes the system as configured to “determine whether a question received by the system is time dependent.” Roberts ¶¶ 51–52, 68–69; see also Roberts ¶¶ 165 (explaining “some types of question depend upon ‘current information’, e.g. ‘What is tomorrow’s weather forecast?’”), 176 (providing examples of time-dependent questions relating to weather, financial markets, and sports results). For time-dependent questions, Roberts states the system may query a real-time data feed, rather than a database of stored question and answer pairs, to generate an answer. Roberts ¶¶ 68–69, 176, 178. Jones generally relates to “expanding search queries and, more specifically, to identifying and expanding queries which are implicitly temporally qualified.” Jones ¶ 1. In a disclosed approach, Jones describes 2 Throughout this Decision, we have considered the Appeal Brief, filed September 25, 2019 (“Appeal Br.”); the Reply Brief, filed February 26, 2020 (“Reply Br.”); the Examiner’s Answer, mailed January 9, 2020 (“Ans.”); and the Non-Final Office Action, mailed May 1, 2019 (“Non-Final Act.”), from which this Appeal is taken. Appeal 2020-002739 Application 14/297,267 5 determining whether a received query, which does not have an explicit temporal reference, has an implicit temporal reference. Jones ¶ 4. Jones describes this determination is made “with reference to a first query term included in the first search query and query log data that relate a plurality of previous query terms included in previous search queries to specific temporal references included in the previous search queries.” Jones ¶ 4. That is, based on a query log analysis, a query term is analyzed to determine if it generally has been associated with a temporal reference and, if so, the received query is modified to include an explicit temporal reference. Jones ¶¶ 15–16, 21–22. Jones describes that “[s]earch results are then generated that are responsive to the reformulated query.” Jones ¶ 21. Appellant disputes the Examiner’s conclusion that the combination of Roberts and Jones teaches the particular technique of claimed invention. Appeal Br. 6–22; Reply Br. 2–8. More particularly, Appellant argues, inter alia, that neither Roberts nor Jones (alone or in combination) teach: determining what the temporal categorization is of a question based on the domain of the question and the association of a temporal categorization with the domain, and determining an answer to the question based on degrees of correspondence of temporal categorizations of domains of sources of information with the determined temporal categorization of the input question based on the determined domain of the input question. Reply Br. 4; see also Appeal Br. 10–12 (asserting Roberts does not describe temporal categorizations corresponding to domains of input questions), 17– 18 (asserting Jones merely reformulates a search query based on a search query log analysis and returns ranked results based on previous search queries). Additionally, Appellant argues that contrary to the Examiner’s findings (see Non-Final Act. 3–4), Roberts fails to teach performing an Appeal 2020-002739 Application 14/297,267 6 analysis of a corpus of information based on the temporal categorizations of the input question and that of the sources of information. Appeal Br. 10–13 (asserting that Roberts merely describes a generic “means” to determine whether a search query is time dependent). Based on our review of Roberts and Jones, we find Appellant’s arguments persuasive of Examiner error. More particularly, the portions of Roberts and Jones relied upon by the Examiner (see, e.g., Non-Final Act. 3– 7 (citing Roberts ¶¶ 51–52, 69; Jones ¶¶ 9, 16, 19–20, 22–35)) generally relate to analyzing the received search query to determine if it is time dependent (as in Roberts) or has an implicit temporal reference (as in Jones). As discussed above, Roberts teaches that if a question is time dependent, a real-time data feed, rather than a database of stored questions and answers, is used to provide the search result. See, e.g., Roberts ¶¶ 51, 69. However, the Examiner has not provided sufficient evidence or technical reasoning that Roberts teaches an analysis of the corpus of information based on a temporal categorization of the input search query. Instead, Roberts merely describes that the disclosed system includes a means for determining whether the input query is time dependent. See Roberts ¶ 69. In addition, as discussed above, Jones teaches reformulating an input search query based on an analysis of a log of previous queries that relate to a query term so that the received search query can be reformulated. See, e.g., Jones ¶¶ 15–16, 19, 21. Although Jones describes ranking the results to produce a temporally biased ranking (see, e.g., Jones ¶ 33), the Examiner has not provided sufficient evidence or technical reasoning that Jones analyzes a temporal categorization of sources of information in the corpus of Appeal 2020-002739 Application 14/297,267 7 information to determine a degree of correspondence with a temporal categorization of the input search query, as recited in the claims. For the reasons discussed supra, we are persuaded of Examiner error. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1. For similar reasons, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 19 and 20, which recite similar limitations. In addition, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 2–13, 15–18, and 21, which depend directly or indirectly from independent claim 1. CONCLUSION We reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1–13, and 15–21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. DECISION SUMMARY Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1–13, 15– 21 103 Roberts, Jones 1–13, 15– 21 REVERSED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation