Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Dec 21, 2021

2020006300 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 21, 2021)

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.
14/622,140 02/13/2015 Sumit Gulwani 341384-US-NP 1054
69316 7590 12/21/2021
MICROSOFT CORPORATION
ONE MICROSOFT WAY
REDMOND, WA 98052
EXAMINER
STORK, KYLE R
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2144
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/21/2021 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):
chriochs@microsoft.com
ljohnson@microsoft.com
usdocket@microsoft.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________________

Ex parte SUMIT GULWANI, EDWARD C. HART JR., VU MINH LE,
HENRIQUE S. MALVAR, MARK MARRON, JAMES D. MCCAFFREY,
GUSTAVO ARAUJO SOARES, and BENJAMIN G. ZORN
____________________

Appeal 2020 -006300
Application 14/622,1401
Technology Center 2100
____________________

Before MARC S. HOFF, JOHNNY A. KUMAR, and JOHN P.
PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judges.

HOFF, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a Final Rejection of
claims 1–9 and 11–21.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
Appellant’s invention concerns manipulating an input document based
on examples and/or natural language inputs. A data manipulation system

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37
C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant states that the real party in interest is Microsoft
Technology Licensing, LLC. Appeal Br. 2.
2 Claim 10 has been cancelled.
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includes an interface component configured to receive an input document,
and further includes an extraction component configured to synthesize,
based on a first input, a first program for parsing data of the input document.
An extraction component is configured to execute the first program on the
input document to form structured data. An operation component is
configured to synthesize, based on second input, a second program for
performing an operation on the structured data. Abstract.
Claim 1 is reproduced below:
A computing system, comprising:
at least one processor; and
memory that comprises computer-executable instructions that, when
executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to
perform acts including:
receiving an input document, the input document being at least one of
a semi-structured document or an unstructured document;
synthesizing a first program for parsing data of the input document,
the first program synthesized based on a first input, the first input comprises
examples in the input document of structure to be imposed on the input
document, the examples in the input document of the structure to be imposed
on the input document comprise highlighted regions with user selected
values of a visual characteristic of highlighting over portions of the data of
the input document, wherein the highlighted regions comprise a first
highlighted region with a first user selected value of the visual characteristic
of the highlighting and a second highlighted region with a second user
selected value of the visual characteristic of the highlighting, and wherein
the first user selected value of the visual characteristic of the highlighting
and the second user selected value of the visual
characteristic of the highlighting differ;
executing the first program on the input document to form structured
data;
synthesizing a second program for performing an operation on the
structured data, the second program synthesized based on a second input;
and
executing the second program on the structured data to generate a
result of the operation, the result of the operation being outputted.
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The prior art relied upon by the Examiner as evidence is:
Name Reference Date
Kimber US 2014/0223277 A1 Aug. 7, 2014
Lundberg US 2013/0268260 A1 Oct. 10, 2013
Gulwani US 2011/0302553 A1 Dec. 8, 2011
Summers US 2009/0300482 A1 Dec. 3, 2009
Armstrong US 2006/0136194 A1 Jun. 22, 2006
Albornoz US 2005/0209989 A1 Sep. 22, 2005

Claims 1–4, 6–9, 11–16, and 18–21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §
103 as being unpatentable over Kimber, Gulwani, Armstrong, Albornoz, and
Summers.
Claims 5 and 17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Kimber, Gulwani, Armstrong, Albornoz, Summers, and
Lundberg.

Throughout this decision, we make reference to the Appeal Brief
(“Appeal Br.,” filed Mar. 17, 2020), the Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed Sep.
8, 2020), and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed Jul. 7, 2020) for their
respective details.
ISSUES
Does the combination of Kimber, Gulwani, Armstrong, Albornoz,
and Summers teach or suggest synthesizing a first program for parsing data
of an input document, the first program synthesized based on a first input,
the first input comprising examples in the input document of structure to be
imposed on the input document?

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PRINCIPLES OF LAW
One cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references individually
where the rejections are based on combinations of references. In re Keller,
642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981). The test of obviousness is not whether the
features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the
structure of the primary reference, nor is it that the claimed invention must
be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the test is
what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to
those of ordinary skill in the art. Id. at 425.

ANALYSIS
Claims 1-4, 6-9, 11-16, and 18-21
Independent claim 1 recites, in pertinent part, “synthesizing a first
program for parsing data of the input document, the first program
synthesized based on a first input, the first input comprises examples in the
input document of structure to be imposed on the input document.”
Independent claims 15 and 19 recite an analogous limitation.
The Examiner combines Kimber, Gulwani, Armstrong, Albornoz, and
Summers and concludes that Appellant’s invention would have been
obvious. Final Act. 2-10. The Examiner finds that Kimber and Gulwani do
not disclose an “example in the input document of the structure to be
imposed on the input document comprises a highlighted region over a
portion of the data of the input document,” and cites Armstrong for a
teaching of that limitation. Ans. 42-43. The Examiner finds that Armstrong
teaches invoking the parsing of input data 108 by passing an example
substring and the data that is to be parsed (a sample 114) as a parameter. Id.
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Armstrong discloses generating a program (regular expression)
for processing a string based upon a received substring
(paragraphs 0058-0060). Armstrong provides an example string
having structure, in this instance an email address has an
identified structure of “From: \S+@\S+”, and a regular
expression is extracted for use in processing textual data based
upon the example string (paragraphs 0064-0065). Finally, this
regular expression is applied to an input file (paragraph 0065).

Ans. 43.
Appellant presents various arguments to the effect that an individual
reference of the Examiner’s combination does not teach all of the sub-
elements of this claim limitation concerning synthesizing a first program.
Appeal Br. 8, 11, 12, 13. Appellant’s attacks against individual references
are not persuasive to show that the Examiner erred in asserting the
combination of references against Appellant’s claims. See Keller, 642 F.2d
at 425.
Appellant further argues that
[r]ather than synthesizing a program for parsing data of an
input document based on examples in the input document of
structure to be imposed on the input document, Armstrong
provides that a substring can be highlighted and a regular
expression that matches the substring can be constructed based
on a set of templates.

Appeal Br. 11, citing Armstrong ¶¶ 58-59. “[I]n Armstrong, regular
expression templates are used based on an example substring that is inputted
to attempt to approximate the structure,” and Appellant contends that an
example substring differs from an example in an input document of structure
to be imposed on the input document. Appeal Br. 12.
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Figure 2 of Armstrong is a flow chart of semanticizing email text as
input electronic data. Armstrong ¶ 14. Element 108 of Armstrong illustrates
the input data to be parsed. Armstrong ¶ 58. In response to Appellant’s
argument that “an example substring differs from an example in an input
document of structure to be imposed on the input document,” the Examiner
finds that Armstrong teaches extracting the example substring from an input
file (108) and generating a regular expression from the example. Ans. 43,
citing Armstrong ¶ 64.
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Appellant argues in the Reply Brief that pattern generator 106
attempts to approximate the structure of input file 108 based on regular
expression templates 160. Reply Br. 2-3. Appellant contends that
[s]ince the input in Armstrong does not include the regular
expression, and instead the regular expression is generated from
the example substring to approximate the structure, it follows
that Armstrong does not suggest the first input comprises
examples in the input document of structure to be imposed on
the input document.

Reply Br. 3. We do not agree with Appellant’s argument. As Appellant
concedes, “[i]t is clear in Armstrong that dean@cs.umd.edu is an example
substring that serves as sample data 114 from an input file.” Reply Br. 2,
citing Armstrong ¶ 64. Armstrong teaches that this “example substring” is
present in input file 108. Armstrong Fig. 2. We thus agree with the
Examiner’s finding that Armstrong teaches a first input that comprises
examples in the input document of structure to be imposed on the input
document.
Appellant next argues that Albornoz fails to teach highlighting user
selected values of a visual characteristic of highlighting, but rather that in
Albornoz the annotatable elements are automatically identified and
highlighted. Appeal Br. 14. Appellant continues by contending that
Summers does not make up for this deficiency by teaching user selection of
one or more sections – that “user selection of a section is distinguishable
from a user selected value of a visual characteristic of highlighting.” Id.
Appellant’s argument is not persuasive in view of the Examiner’s
proffered combination of references. The Examiner finds that Summers
teaches a user selecting one or more sections; then the application provides
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an initial classification of a section by parsing the content of the section and
assigning a concept to each identifiable fact item that is detected. Ans. 44,
citing Summers ¶ 52. The Examiner relies on Albornoz for its teaching of
(automatically) identifying and highlighting data based on parsing and
searching with different categories of data elements indicated by different
color highlighting. Ans. 44, citing Albornoz ¶ 83. The Examiner states
reasoning to combine Albornoz’s teaching of differently highlighting
elements based on categorization with Summers’ teaching of user selection
and categorization -- to provide a user with the advantage of easily
differentiating self-defined categorization of data -- having a rational
underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness. Ans. 46.
With respect to independent claim 15, Appellant argues for
patentability due to the combination of Kimber, Gulwani, Armstrong,
Albornoz, and Summers failing to suggest the claimed “first input.” Appeal
Br. 16. Appellant’s argument is not persuasive because, as analyzed supra,
we do not agree that the combination of references asserted against claim 1
fails to teach or suggest the “first input.”
We determine that the Examiner did not err in combining Kimber,
Gulwani, Armstrong, Albornoz, and Summers to obtain the invention under
appeal. We will sustain the Examiner’s § 103 rejection of claims 1–4, 6–9,
11–16, and 18–21.
Claims 5 and 17
Appellant does not separately argue for the patentability of the claims,
relying instead on the arguments made with respect to independent claims 1
and 15. Thus, we sustain the Examiner’s § 103 rejection of claims 5 and 17
over Kimber, Gulwani, Armstrong, Albornoz, Summers, and Lundberg, for
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the same reasons expressed supra with respect to the Examiner’s § 103
rejection of claims 1 and 15.

CONCLUSION
The combination of Kimber, Gulwani, Armstrong, Albornoz, and
Summers suggests synthesizing a first program for parsing data of an input
document, the first program synthesized based on a first input, the first input
comprising examples in the input document of structure to be imposed on
the input document.
DECISION SUMMARY
In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C.
§
Reference(s)/
Basis
Affirmed Reversed
1–4, 6–9, 11–
16, 18–21
103 Kimber, Gulwani,
Armstrong,
Albornoz,
Summers
1–4, 6–9,
11–16,
18–21

5, 17 103 Kimber, Gulwani,
Armstrong,
Albornoz,
Summers,
Lundberg
5, 17
Overall
Outcome
1–9, 11–
21

ORDER
The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1–9 and 11–21 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)(1)(iv). See
37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).
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AFFIRMED