Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jan 3, 2022

2020003563 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 3, 2022)

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. 15/018,833 02/08/2016 Zhaowei Charlie Jiang 335824.02 8677 69316 7590 01/03/2022 MICROSOFT CORPORATION ONE MICROSOFT WAY REDMOND, WA 98052 EXAMINER JACOBS, EDWARD ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2159 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/03/2022 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 ZHAOWEI CHARLIE JIANG, STEVEN WILLIAM MACBETH, SYED MUHAMMAD MUJAHID HASAN, and JACOB SABULSKY ____________ Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 Technology Center 2100 ____________ Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, JOHN A. EVANS, and MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges. MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 21, 22, 24-29, and 31-42, which constitute all the pending claims in this application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. 1 Appellant identifies Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC as the real party in interest. Appeal Br. 3. Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 2 THE INVENTION Appellant’s claimed invention is directed to a bidirectional mapping established between network content and application programs, based on declarations at both the network content and at the application. Abstract. Additionally, bidirectional mapping can provide for deep links, which can associate specific network content with a specific presentation of data in an application program. Id. Independent claim 21, reproduced below, is representative of the subject matter on appeal: 21. A computing device comprising: one or more processing units; and one or more computer- readable storage media comprising computer-executable instructions, which, when executed by the processing units, cause the computing device to: obtain, from network content, an application mapping document identifying an application corresponding to at least some portions of the network content; generate a mapping between the at least some portions of the network content and the application based at least in part on the obtained application mapping document; receive a request for a first portion of the network content; determine, from the mapping, that the first portion is part of the at least some portions of the network content; and invoke the application to execute on the computing device instead of presenting the network content, the invoking being triggered by the determining. Appeal Br. 26 (Claims Appendix). Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 3 REFERENCES The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is: Name Reference Date Patel US 8,990,697 B2 Mar. 24, 2015 Kamen US 2004/0006653 Al Jan. 8, 2004 Gupta US 2008/0134049 Al June 5, 2008 Schmidt US 2012/0011167 Al Jan. 12, 2012 THE REJECTIONS The Examiner made the following rejections: 1. Claims 21, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 36, 37, 41, and 42 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by Schmidt. 2. Claims 34 and 39 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Schmidt in view of Gupta. 3. Claims 26 and 33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Schmidt in view of Patel. ANALYSIS We adopt the Examiner’s findings in the Answer and Final Office Action and we add the following primarily for emphasis. We note that if Appellant failed to present arguments on a particular rejection, we will not unilaterally review those uncontested aspects of the rejection. See Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential); Hyatt v. Dudas, 551 F.3d 1307, 1313-14 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (the Board may treat arguments Appellant failed to make for a given ground of rejection as waived). Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 4 1. Does Schmidt disclose the limitation of “obtain, from network content, an application mapping document identifying an application corresponding to at least some portions of the network content” as recited in claim 21? Appellant argues that Schmidt does not disclose the limitation of “obtain, from network content, an application mapping document identifying an application corresponding to at least some portions of the network content” as recited in claim 21. See Appeal Br. 16-18. In particular, Appellant argues that the Examiner’s reliance on Schmidt as a whole is misplaced because Schmidt nowhere teaches any document, let alone a document obtained from a “website” or “network Content,” that indicates a correspondence between two specific things: (1) an application and (2) the same website/network content from which the document was obtained. Appeal Br. 17. Appellant argues that Schmidt teaches a place registry 201 that aggregates individual links to one thing (such as a booking web page for a specific hotel). Id. (citing Schmidt para. 82). Appellant argues that the only links that Schmidt teaches as being received from a website are URLs of pages of the website. See id. (“[t]he hotel booking service provider . . . publishes the URL of each hotel’s booking page in the place resource service 209”). Appellant argues that links to applications (or portions of applications) are not received from a website and, instead they are provided by the application developer themselves. See id. (citing Schmidt para. 83 stating “[f]or a developer of an application . . . the integrating module 309 facilitates the manual publication of . . . links to the portions of the application that include the places with the registry 201”). Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 5 Appellant argues that the deep links into applications that are “built with a special software development kit” are also not received from a website and, instead they are also provided by the application developers themselves. See id. (citing Schmidt para. 85 stating “[t]he developer of the application A that refers to places manually publishes with the registry 201 the place data and deep links to the portions of the application that include the places”). Appellant argues that each of the independent claims recites the obtaining of an “application mapping document” from a “website” or “network content.” Appeal Br. 18. Appellant re-iterates that Schmidt teaches the obtaining of links to applications from the application developers themselves and the only links that are obtained from websites are URLs of web pages of those web sites. Id. Appellant argues that Schmidt teaches the obtaining of links that identify only one thing-the thing being linked to. Id. If there is any correspondence between two things, it is between the thing being linked to and the place. See id. (citing Schmidt para. 83 stating (“the integrating module 309 facilitates the manual publication of the place data and links to the portions of the application that include the places with the registry 201”); see also id. (citing Schmidt para. 85 stating “[t]he developer of the application A that refers to places manually publishes with the registry 201 the place data and deep links to the portions of the application that include the places”). We do not agree with Appellant’s argument. The Examiner finds, and we agree, that Schmidt discloses that a place resource servicing application can extract all or a portion of content from one or more resources according to one or more standardized metadata format. Ans. 3 (citing Schmidt para. Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 6 95). The Examiner finds that Schmidt also discloses that these resources can be a website (Schmidt para. 94) and that the content metadata that is extracted includes links to one or more resources, applications, or a combination thereof to the content (Schmidt para. 95). Ans. 3. The Examiner explains that Schmidt discloses that a resource servicing application extracts content, i.e., obtains content, from resources, which are defined as websites or network content, and it places the extracted content into a standard metadata format, i.e., a document. Ans. 4. The Examiner finds that Schmidt further clarifies that the content or links extracted can be links to an application, a link to an online store carrying the application, and a link for accessing to the application from one or more resources, i.e. network content. Id. (citing Schmidt para. 96, noting that these links are deep links). We agree with the Examiner’s interpretation that Schmidt discloses that the content extracted includes links between the content and one or more of resources, applications or a combination there of (Schmidt para. 95), and the standardized metadata format that has been extracted and stored, as a document, includes an application mapping from a resource, i.e., a website or network content, to an application. Ans. 4. Thus, we agree with the Examiner that the extraction of content, utilizing the place resource servicing application, to obtain links from the resource to one or more applications in standard metadata formats, is tantamount to obtaining, from network content, an application mapping document identifying an application corresponding to at least some portion of the network content. Id. We further agree with the Examiner that because the content the resource servicing application, when it extracts content from resources Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 7 which have been previously defined as websites (Schmidt para. 94), extracts content metadata that includes links (Schmidt para. 95), these links are links to one or more other resources or applications or a combination thereof (Schmidt para. 95). Ans. 5. Thus, we agree with the Examiner that it is clear that the links of Schmidt are obtained from an application mapping document, or content metadata, and not from the developer. Id. Accordingly, we agree with the Examiner that Schmidt discloses the disputed limitation of “obtain, from network content, an application mapping document identifying an application corresponding to at least some portions of the network content,” as recited in claim 21. 2. Does Schmidt disclose the limitation of “generate a mapping between the at least some portions of the network content and the application based at least in part on the obtained application mapping document” as recited in claim 21? Appellant argues that Schmidt does not disclose the limitation of “generate a mapping between the at least some portions of the network content and the application based at least in part on the obtained application mapping document” as recited in claim 21. Appeal Br. 18-20. In particular, Appellant argues that the deep links taught by Schmidt are not a mapping “between a website and an application”, but rather, links between two applications. Appeal Br. 19 (citing Schmidt para. 84). Appellant argues that Schmidt describes an “embodiment when a web application A is built with a special software development kit (SDK) that uses web technologies but makes the application reside[] only on a device installed with the application and cannot be linked via a regular hyperlink.” Id. Appellant argues that something that cannot be linked via a regular Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 8 hyperlink is not a website. Id. Appellant argues that Schmidt defines the term “deep links” using quotation marks to signify that it is a term of art with a special definition: “To make the web mapping application ‘linked’ by another web mapping application B of the same nature, each of the web mapping application A, B is defined with its own ‘domain,’ and the SDK provides mechanism for ‘deep links’ between the two domains.” Id. Appellant argues that the “deep links” of Schmidt are between two “domains” of “web mapping applications” that “cannot be linked via a regular hyperlink.” Appeal Br. 19-20 (citing para. 112 stating that “[a]lthough the location based applications can often use web technologies, they are quite different from regular websites. For example, these location based applications do not use regular hyperlinks for navigation and do not live on the web”). Appellant argues that the disclosed “deep links” between applications that, by Schmidt’s own description, are “quite different from regular websites” are not a teaching of a correspondence between an application and website. Appeal Br. 20. Appellant argues that the only mapping taught by Schmidt is a mapping between a provided resource (such as a web page about a place or, separately, an application having information about the place) and the place itself. Appeal Br. 20 (citing Schmidt paras. 90-91 (describing receipt of a resource and a place identifier and storing the resource in the registry based on the place identifier). Appellant argues that to state that the registry of Schmidt generates a mapping between a URL and an application is the same as arguing that a search engine generates a mapping between a client computer and a website simply because the website was provided as a search result to the client. Id. Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 9 We do not agree with Appellant’s argument. The Examiner finds, and we agree, that Schmidt discloses that deep links may be utilized to link applications to resources. Ans. 6 (citing Schmidt paras. 114, 100). The Examiner finds, and we agree, that deep links are utilized to map application information between two resources of different domains (Schmidt para. 84), such as a web service domain and an application domain. Ans. 6 (citing Schmidt para. 84). Thus, deep links are at least an application mapping within the meaning of the claim. Id. The Examiner re-iterates that Schmidt discloses the extraction of content from resources which includes links to other resources or applications (Schmidt paras. 95, 96), showing that Schmidt discloses that the deep links from the resource are extracted and utilized to map between two domains. Id. Thus, the extraction of content metadata and subsequent deep links allow for a mapping to occur between network content and the application. Id. The Examiner finds that Schmidt in an exemplary scenario describes a web service that is trying to access an application that may or may not be installed at the user terminal; in other words there is a web site or network content that may have a correspondence with an application. Ans. 6 (citing Schmidt para. 100). The Examiner explains that in determining that the application is installed at the user terminal the application is linked, by the place resource application which extracted mapping data above, to the web service via the deep link that was extracted. Id. The deep link serves as a linking mechanism between a web service, or website or network content, and the application associated with the web service thereby generating a mapping between the two, and thus disclosing the claimed “generating a mapping between the at least some portions of the network content and the Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 10 application based at least in part on the obtained application management document,” as recited in claim 21. With respect to Appellant’s argument that the only mapping taught in Schmidt is a mapping between a provided resource and the place itself, the Examiner finds that, Schmidt discloses a mapping between a web service and an application that utilizes the web service. Ans. 7 (citing Schmidt para. 100). Thus, we agree with the Examiner that Schmidt discloses the limitation of “generate a mapping between the at least some portions of the network content and the application based at least in part on the obtained application mapping document” as recited in claim 21. 3. Does Schmidt disclose the limitation of “invoke the application to execute on the computing device instead of presenting the network content” as recited in claim 21? Appellant argues that Schmidt does not disclose the limitation of “invoke the application to execute on the computing device instead of presenting the network content” as recited in claim 21. Appeal Br. 20-22. In particular, Appellant argues that any linking performed by Schmidt is “through the place registry 201,” and if a “hotel booking service wants to be linked from a location-based service (e.g., mapping, navigation, travel guide, etc.) . . . [t]he hotel booking service provider . . . publishes the URL of each hotel’s booking page in the place resource service 209. . . [and w]hen the web mapping service connected to the place resource service 209 searches for one of those hotels, the search result contains a link to the booking page.” Id. In other words, Appellant argues that the “linking” between a website and an application described by Schmidt is the same as Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 11 the “linking” between a client computer and a website when the website is provided as a search result to the client by a search engine. Id. Appellant argues that this is why Schmidt explicitly states that the linking is “through the place registry 201.” Id. Appellant argues that even if Schmidt disclosed a linking between a website and an application, there is no disclosure of any sort of substitution where a “request” for “network content” / “web page” is responded to by “invoking the application . . . instead of presenting the network content” as explicitly recited by independent claims 21. Appeal Br. 22. Appellant argues that the Examiner provided no explanation of how the cited section teaches any sort of substitution. Id. Appellant argues that, to the contrary, the teachings of Schmidt are exactly the opposite: if a URL to a web page is requested, that web page is presented. Appeal Br. 22 (citing Schmidt para. 36). Appellant argues that the only way an application is invoked is if the application itself is requested. See id. Schmidt para. 115. We do not agree with Appellant’s argument. The Examiner finds, and we agree, that the term “presenting” is key in that presenting implies a user, whereas if the claim were to disclose displaying then no such user would be implied. Ans. 7. The Examiner reasonably interprets the claim to require that the application be invoked such that the user views the content on the application instead of the user viewing the content on the web page. The Examiner finds, and we agree, that Schmidt discloses a linking between a web service and an application such that the information from the web service can be displayed or invoked through the application. Ans. 7 (citing Schmidt para. 82). Schmidt provides more exemplary embodiments at paragraph 100 and Figures 7-9, wherein Schmidt discloses that the web Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 12 services utilizes an application installed on the user terminal in order to display content (Schmidt para. 100), thus the application is invoked, and the user can view the content through the application. Ans. 7. The user has no need to view the content of the web page itself, and therefore the network content is not presented, i.e., the web page itself is not presented. Id. We agree with the Examiner’s reasonable interpretation that invoking the application to execute instead of presenting the network content involves a choice by the user by invoking the application to display the content of the web service and the user has no need to view the content in the web page itself. Id. Thus, Schmidt discloses the limitation of “invoke the application to execute on the computing device instead of presenting the network content” as recited in claim 1. Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claim 21. 4. Claims 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 36, 37, 41, and 42 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) over Schmidt Appellant does not separately argue the Examiner’s rejection of claims 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 36, 37, 41, and 42. Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 36, 37, 41, and 42 for the same reasons articulated supra. 5. Claims 26, 33, 34, 39 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) Appellant does not separately argue the Examiner’s rejection of claims 26, 33, 34, and 39. See Appeal Br. 22-24. Accordingly, we affirm Appeal 2020-003563 Application 15/018,833 13 the Examiner’s rejection of claims 26, 33, 34, and 39 for the same reasons articulated supra. DECISION SUMMARY In summary: Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 21, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 36, 37, 41, 42 102(e) Schmidt 21, 22, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 36, 37, 41, 42 34, 39 103(a) Schmidt, Gupta 34, 39 26, 33 103(a) Schmidt, Patel 26, 33 Overall Outcome 21, 22, 24- 29, 31-42 TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE 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