SonicWALL, Inc.

Patent Trials and Appeals BoardMar 6, 2020

13853946 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 6, 2020)

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. 13/853,946 03/29/2013 Thomas E. Raffill SWUS-058REI 4033 138555 7590 03/06/2020 Polsinelli LLP - SONICWALL US HOLDINGS INC. 3 Embarcadero Center Suite 2400 San Francisco, CA 94111 EXAMINER WASSUM, LUKE S ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3992 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 03/06/2020 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): sfpatent@polsinelli.com uspt@polsinelli.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte THOMAS E. RAFFILL, SHUNHUI ZHU, ROMAN YANOVSKY, BORIS YANOVSKY, and JOHN GMEUNDER ____________ Appeal 2020-001587 Reissue Application 13/853,946 Patent 7,917,522 B1 Technology Center 3900 ____________ Before JOHN A. JEFFERY, ERIC B. CHEN, and JENNIFER L. McKEOWN, Administrative Patent Judges. JEFFERY, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1–10. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. 1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as SonicWALL US Holdings Inc. Appeal Br. 3. Appeal 2020-001587 Application 13/853,946 Patent 7,917,522 B1 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant seeks to reissue U.S. Patent 7,917,522 B2 (“’522 patent”) directed to building a statistical model for content classification. In one aspect, a threshold for each of plural categories based on (1) validation document pre-classification; (2) occurrence of N-grams in validation documents; (3) N-gram-based scores; and (4) a predetermined false positive limit. See generally ’522 patent, col. 1, ll. 14–16; col. 4, ll. 26–67; col. 5, l. 28 – col. 6, l. 10; Figs. 1A–3. Claim 1 is illustrative: 1. A computer-implemented method, comprising: generating a plurality of scores for each of a plurality of N-grams with respect to each of a plurality of categories based on occurrence of the plurality of N-grams in a plurality of training documents; setting a threshold for each of the plurality of categories based on preclassification of a plurality of validation documents, occurrence of the plurality of Ngrams in the plurality of validation documents, the plurality of scores, and a predetermined false positive limit; generating a statistical content classification model based on the plurality of scores and the threshold; assigning a plurality of weights for each of the plurality of N- grams, wherein each of the plurality of weights is associated with a distinct one of the plurality of categories; storing the statistical content classification model in a data storage device; and allowing content filters to access the statistical content classification model in the data storage device over a network, wherein the content filters classify contents into one of the plurality of categories using the statistical content classification model. Appeal 2020-001587 Application 13/853,946 Patent 7,917,522 B1 3 THE REJECTIONS The Examiner rejected claims 1–10 under 35 U.S.C. § 251 as based on a defective reissue declaration. Final Act. 8–9.2 The Examiner rejected claims 1–10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over Guilak (US 2003/0225763 Al; published Dec. 4, 2003), Alspector (US 7,725,475 Bl; issued May 25, 2010), and Gardner (US 2006/0053174 Al; published Mar. 9, 2006). Final Act. 10–45. THE § 251 REJECTION Because Appellant does not contest the Examiner’s § 251 rejection of claims 1–10 (Final Act. 8–9; Ans. 4), we summarily sustain this rejection. See Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) § 1205.02 (9th ed. Rev. 08.2017, Jan. 2018) (“If a ground of rejection stated by the examiner is not addressed in the appellant’s brief, appellant has waived any challenge to that ground of rejection and the Board may summarily sustain it, unless the examiner subsequently withdrew the rejection in the examiner’s answer.”). THE OBVIOUSNESS REJECTION The Examiner finds that Guilak discloses every recited element of independent claim 1 including setting a threshold for each category, but does not do so based on (1) validation document pre-classification; (2) occurrence of N-grams in the validation documents; (3) the recited scores; and (4) a 2 Throughout this opinion, we refer to (1) the Final Rejection mailed March 28, 2019 (“Final Act.”); (2) the Appeal Brief filed August 2, 2019 (“Appeal Br.”); (3) the Examiner’s Answer mailed October 23, 2019 (“Ans.”); and (4) the Reply Brief filed December 23, 2019 (“Reply Br.”). Appeal 2020-001587 Application 13/853,946 Patent 7,917,522 B1 4 predetermined false positive limit. Final Act. 10–14. The Examiner, however, cites Alspector for teaching the first three bases, and Gardner for teaching basis (4) in concluding that the claim would have been obvious over the cited references’ collective teachings. Final Act. 12–15. Appellant argues that the Examiner’s reliance on Gardner for teaching setting a threshold for each category based on a predetermined false positive limit is misplaced because, among other things, Gardner’s rules engine and associated rules do not pertain to a document classifier. Appeal Br. 9–13; Reply Br. 6–14. According to Appellant, Gardner’s rule constraints are not equivalent to the recited threshold, nor does Gardner set or generate a threshold, let alone do so based on a false positive limit as claimed. Appeal Br. 11–13; Reply Br. 6–14. ISSUE Under § 103, has the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 by finding that Guilak, Alspector, and Gardner collectively would have taught or suggested setting a threshold for each category based on, among other things, a predetermined false positive limit (“the false positive limitation”)? ANALYSIS We begin by noting that the Examiner’s reliance on the teachings of Guilak and Alspector in connection with the particular limitations on which they were relied is undisputed, including the Examiner’s reliance on Guilak for teaching setting a threshold for each category, albeit lacking the four particular recited techniques for doing so. See Final Act. 10–14; Ans. 18, Appeal 2020-001587 Application 13/853,946 Patent 7,917,522 B1 5 20. Nor does Appellant dispute the cited references’ combinability. Rather, as noted above, this dispute turns solely on the Examiner’s reliance on Gardner for teaching the fourth recited basis on which a threshold is set for each category, namely that the threshold is set based on a predetermined false positive limit. Therefore, we confine our discussion principally to Gardner. On this record, we see no error in the Examiner’s reliance on Gardner for at least suggesting the false positive limitation. See Final Act. 14–15; Ans. 14–18. As noted in the Abstract, Gardner’s system extracts and manages data to create multi-relational ontologies, where extraction can involve rules and natural-language processing. To this end, Gardner’s system can use a “rules engine” that enables creating, organizing, validating, modifying, storing, and/or applying various rules to create, maintain, and use ontologies. Gardner ¶ 120. These rules can pertain to, among other things, linguistic analysis, assertion extraction, curation, semantic normalization, and inference. Id. As Gardner explains, applying rules to a corpus of documents may generate rule-based products including, for example, tagged document content, rule-based assertions, or “other product information.” Id. A key aspect of Gardner’s rules engine is that it can validate rules by comparing the actual results of applying a rule to expected results. See Gardner ¶ 123. This validation produces information regarding an individual rule’s quality in terms of, for example, the percentage of false positives returned by a particular rule. Id. To validate rules, Gardner’s rules engine may use predetermined thresholds for false positives and negatives. Id. ¶ 124. For example, if the Appeal 2020-001587 Application 13/853,946 Patent 7,917,522 B1 6 percentage of false positives exceeds predetermined thresholds for a particular rule, that rule may be deleted, replaced, or modified, the latter including “tightening” the rule’s constraints to reduce or eliminate unexpected results. Id. The clear import of this functionality is that by “tightening” a rule’s constraints responsive to the percentage of false positives exceeding a predetermined threshold, such that this “tightening” reduces or eliminates unexpected results, Gardner at least suggests setting the threshold accordingly. Although Gardner may not state explicitly that this threshold adjustment is for each of plural categories as claimed, we nonetheless see no reason why such a threshold adjustment technique could not be provided in connection with Guilak’s system that sets thresholds for each of plural categories as shown in in step 612 of Figure 6 as the Examiner proposes to, among other things, increase category-based classification accuracy—a predictable result. See Final Act. 14–15; Ans. 6–11 (citing Guilak ¶ 55). Such an enhancement uses prior art elements predictably according to their established functions—an obvious improvement. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007). To the extent that Appellant contends that applying a threshold adjustment technique, such as that disclosed in Gardner, to Guilak’s category-based threshold setting technique as the Examiner proposes would have been uniquely challenging or otherwise beyond the level of ordinarily skilled artisans, there is no persuasive evidence on this record to substantiate such a contention. Appellant’s arguments regarding Gardner’s individual shortcomings in this regard (see Appeal Br. 10–13; Reply Br. 7–12) do not show nonobviousness Appeal 2020-001587 Application 13/853,946 Patent 7,917,522 B1 7 where, as here, the rejection is based on the cited references’ collective teachings. See In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir. 1986). Therefore, we are not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1, and claims 2–10 not argued separately with particularity. CONCLUSION In summary: Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s) /Basis Affirmed Reversed 1–10 251 Defective Reissue Declaration 1–10 1–10 103 Guilak, Alspector, Gardner 1–10 Overall Outcome 1–10 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)(1). AFFIRMED