Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLCDownload PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardDec 21, 20212020006300 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 21, 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. 14/622,140 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. Appeal 2020-006300 Application 14/622,140 2 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. Appeal 2020-006300 Application 14/622,140 3 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? Appeal 2020-006300 Application 14/622,140 4 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. Appeal 2020-006300 Application 14/622,140 5 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. Appeal 2020-006300 Application 14/622,140 6 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. Appeal 2020-006300 Application 14/622,140 7 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 Appeal 2020-006300 Application 14/622,140 8 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 Appeal 2020-006300 Application 14/622,140 9 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). Appeal 2020-006300 Application 14/622,140 10 AFFIRMED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation