Nelson, Eustus Dwayne.

Patent Trials and Appeals BoardSep 26, 2019

14644172 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Sep. 26, 2019)

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. 14/644,172 03/10/2015 Eustus Dwayne Nelson NPL-1704-02 7405 143866 7590 09/26/2019 Nelson Patent Law 2283 Lalique Cir. Colton, CA 92324 EXAMINER BROWN, SHEREE N ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3649 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 09/26/2019 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): dwayne@inlandip.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte EUSTUS DWAYNE NELSON ____________ Appeal 2019-001986 Application 14/644,172 Technology Center 3600 _______________ Before MICHAEL J. FITZPATRICK, WILLIAM A. CAPP, and LISA M. GUIJT, Administrative Patent Judges. GUIJT, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1–9.1 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER 1 Appeal is taken from the Final Office Action dated February 16, 2018. Appeal 2019-001986 Application 14/644,172 2 Claim 1, reproduced below as the sole independent claim on appeal, is also exemplary of the subject matter on appeal. 1. A method for presenting documents, the method comprising: receiving over a computer network a stream of document references from at least one source into a collection; receiving at least one user bookmark for a bookmarked document; designating at least one deemphasized document reference from said collection, said deemphasized document reference relating to a document identified as less interesting; removing said at least one deemphasized document reference from said collection if said at least one deemphasized document reference is not associated with a user bookmark; identifying groups of document references having a defined similarity from said collection; and presenting said groups of document references having a defined similarity on a display, wherein said groups of document references having a defined similarity contains [sic] a reference to said bookmarked document. THE REJECTIONS I. Claims 1–7 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Srikrishna (US 2014/0081961 A1; published Mar. 20, 2014) and Malla (US 2012/0126102 A1; published Aug. 23, 2012). II. Claim 8 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Srikrishna, Malla, and Ramnath Krishnan (US 2013/017052 A1; published July 4, 2013). III. Claim 9 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Srikrishna, Malla, and Jang (US 2013/0311869 A1; published Nov. 21, 2013). Appeal 2019-001986 Application 14/644,172 3 ANALYSIS Rejection I Regarding independent claim 1, the Examiner finds that Srikrishna discloses the claimed step of “removing at least one deemphasized document reference from said collection if said at least one deemphasized document reference is not associated with a user bookmark.”2 Final Act. 6 (citing Srikrishna ¶¶ 89, 105, 106). In support, the Examiner finds that Paragraph 104 of Srikrishna discloses that “the word groups from one or more interest document(s) are automatically selected by first starting with the list of all word groups, eliminating those (documents) which have a reference (bookmark) corpus.” Ans. 3. Alternatively, the Examiner finds that Srikrishna discloses that “‘computer(s) use the interest document(s) to automatically identify word groups that are then used in computerized filtering of documents,’ which is well known in the art, as ‘removing’ documents from the group.” Ans. 4 (citing Srikshna ¶ 39). 2 The Examiner acknowledges that Srikrishna does not disclose receiving a bookmark, as claimed, or a defined similarity containing a reference to a bookmarked document, as claimed. Final Act. 7. The Examiner relies on Malla for disclosing that bookmarks are used to mark popular websites for the user. Id. (citing Malla ¶¶ 29, 62, 63, 71). The Examiner’s proposed modification of Srikrishna is unclear to us, in that the Examiner does not explain how Malla’s bookmarks, which are used to mark popular websites for the user, are incorporated into the system of Srikrishna. See, e.g., Final Act. 7 (“It would have been obvious . . . to have further modified Srikrishna by the teachings of Malla to enable improved ways for users to utilize the information they have gathered by being able to access, search, share, rate this information and integrated this in current internet technologies.” (Citing Malla ¶ 11). Appeal 2019-001986 Application 14/644,172 4 Appellant argues that Srikrishna fails to disclose removing document references from the collection. Appeal Br. 6. Appellant submits that the Examiner “conflates two distinct concepts (‘document references’ conflated with ‘word groups’).” Id. We are persuaded by Appellant’s argument. To the extent the Examiner identifies the subscription corpus as the collection, wherein documents within the subscription corpus are ranked according to groups of words, we cannot find support for the Examiner’s finding that documents are removed from the subscription corpus, for example, due to a low ranking pursuant to Paragraph 104 of Srikrishma, as relied on by the Examiner supra. Paragraph 104 of Srikrishma states, in relevant part: In one embodiment, to create a subscription corpus automatically, due to a large number of word groups from an interest corpus, relevance engine 130 does not use search results for all word groups generated from the interest corpus that result from block 326. Instead, in one embodiment, the word groups from one or more interest document(s) are automatically selected by first starting with the list of all word groups, eliminating those which have a reference groups count less than some predetermined threshold (10^4), sorting the remaining word groups based on weight, and selecting the top N of the word groups remaining in the list (for example N=20). These top N word groups are then provided to block 329 for invoking a document crawler to perform N web searches using the N word groups, and the results of these searches (and optionally hyperlinked document therefrom) are used to form a subscription corpus for use by the document relevance ranker block 350. Srikrishma ¶ 104 (emphasis added). We agree with Appellant that this passage discusses the elimination of “those,” meaning “word groups”—not “documents” as interpreted by the Examiner supra. Further, we do not agree with the Examiner that the disclosure of “filtering” the subscription Appeal 2019-001986 Application 14/644,172 5 documents necessarily requires removing documents from the collection. Rather, filtering, as used in Srikrishma, appears to mean ranking documents within a collection according to word groups. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1, and claims 2–7 depending therefrom. Rejections II and III The Examiner’s reliance on Ramnath and on Jang fail to cure the deficiency in the Examiner’s finding with respect to Srikrishna supra. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 8 and 9. DECISION We REVERSE the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1–9 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. REVERSED