Stephen Ellis et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

May 18, 2021

2020001914 (P.T.A.B. May. 18, 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.
14/090,862 11/26/2013 Stephen M. Ellis 76750-044US-500 3874
85539 7590 05/18/2021
James J. Pingor
1301 East 9th Street, Suite 3500
Cleveland, OH 44114
EXAMINER
XIE, KWIN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2626
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/18/2021 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):
jpingor@walterhav.com
patents@walterhav.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte STEPHEN M. ELLIS, BIPIN SAHNI, DAVID HATCH,
and SHAHID RAZZAQ
Appeal 2020-001914
Application 14/090,862
Technology Center 2600
Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, JENNIFER S. BISK, and
BARBARA A. PARVIS, Administrative Patent Judges.
BISK, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1–20. See Final Act. 1. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.

1 We use the term “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Wells Fargo Bank,
N.A. Appeal Br. 2.
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Application 14/090,862
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CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to search context association, which can
include “search filtering and/or search expansion.” Spec. Abstract. Claim 1,
reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method for search context association, comprising:
receiving a search request associated with a user;
determining a context for the search request, wherein the
context comprises extraneous data not included in the search
request and is inferred based on one or more characteristics of
the user, one or more environmental factors, one or more social
media factors, one or more route based characteristics, or one or
more destination based characteristics;
identifying a plurality of additional data sets associated
with the context, wherein the additional data includes data from
other users in similar situations; and
producing a search result corresponding to the search
request based on cross-referencing the plurality of additional
datasets, wherein the cross-referencing comprises generating
respective search queries for each of the plurality of additional
data sets, wherein the receiving, the determining, the identifying
and the producing are implemented via a processing unit.
Appeal Br. 16 (Claims App.).
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:
Name Reference Date
Guha US 2007/0038601 A1 Feb. 15, 2007
Luna US 2012/0179801 A1 July 12, 2012
van Os US 2013/0345962 A1 Dec. 26, 2013
REJECTIONS
Claims 1, 7–9 and 17–20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(l) as
being anticipated by Guha. Final Act. 7–13.
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Claims 2–5 and 10–16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Guha and van Os. Id. at 4–24.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Guha and Luna. Id. at 24–25.
OPINION
We review the appealed rejections for error based upon the issues
identified by Appellant, and in light of the corresponding arguments and
evidence. Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010)
(precedential).
Rejection of Claims 1, 7–9, and 17–20
The Examiner rejects independent claims 1 and 17 and dependent
claims 7–9 and 18–20 as anticipated by Guha. Final Act. 7–13.
Claim 1
The Examiner relies on Guha as teaching the claim 1’s limitation
“identifying a plurality of additional data sets associated with the context,
wherein the additional data includes data from other users in similar
situations.” Final Act. 8–9 (citing Guha ¶¶ 71–84).
Appellant argues that the Examiner “has shown that Guha discloses
similar documents or documents with similar features,” but “has not shown
that Guha discloses that the users themselves, regardless of the
characteristics of the documents associated with them are similarly situation
(e.g. taking part in similar activities).” Appeal Br. 10. According to
Appellant, “similarly situated,” as used in claim 1, “amounts roughly to
taking part in similar activities.” Id. at 9. Appellant bases this interpretation
of “similarly situation” based on language in the Specification stating that an
example of individuals in similar situations includes, “when a concert or
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other event occurs, navigation to leave the concert venue may be provided
differently to mitigate congestion on a roadway” and discusses two drivers
leaving the concert being routed to two different paths. Id. (quoting Spec.
¶ 41).
In response, the Examiner asserts that the term “similarly situated” is
not limited to “some type of geographical location or doing the same
activity” because the Specification does not explicitly limit it as such. Ans.
14. Moreover, the Examiner explains that Guha discloses using additional
data from other users that are all “in a similar document search situation
looking for an attribute of a document such [as] type, source, year, location,
etc.” and that that these users qualify as being in similar situations as recited
by claim 1. Ans. 14 (quoting Guha ¶ 83). The Examiner adds that
paragraph 136 of Guha, which discusses users that visit certain web sites,
also “continues to explicitly teach users in similar situations.” Id. (quoting
Guha ¶ 136).
Appellant reiterates its reliance on paragraph 41 of the Specification
as “illuminat[ing] the term ‘similarly situated.’” Reply Br. 2. However, we
agree with the Examiner that paragraph 41 does not limit the term “users in
similar situations.” To the contrary, paragraph 41 lists only one example of
users in similar situations, and does not contain any language limiting the
term to that example. Appellant does not explain (Appeal Br. 9–10, Reply
Br. 2–3), nor do we see, any reason that the term “users in similar situations”
as recited by claim 1 is not broad enough to encompass users doing a similar
document search or visiting a similar web page, as disclosed by Guha. See
Guha ¶¶ 83, 136.
In fact, although paragraph 41 is the only time the Specification refers
to users’ situations, the Specification makes clear that the “context” of the
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search should be interpreted very broadly. The Specification discloses that a
“[c]ontext can include one or more user characteristics, such as a location of
a user, a location associated with a query, a location of one or more
destinations, potential destinations and/or corresponding destination
locations, or potential matches, a date of a query, a time of a query, one or
more tasks associated with a user or on a task list or a to-do list for the user,
one or more locations associated with one or more of the tasks, behavioral
patterns, search history, action history, past interactions, current interactions,
user profile,” “environmental factors,” “one or more social media factors,”
“traffic,” “destination based characteristics.” “Spec. ¶¶ 26–27. Because the
context of the search is used to identify data sets that include “data from
other users in similar situations,” we are persuaded that those users’ similar
situations are reasonably interpreted broadly.
Accordingly, we are not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s
rejection of claim 1 as anticipated by Guha.
Claim 17
The Examiner relies on Guha as teaching the claim 17’s limitation
“generating, without input from the user, a set of respective queries for each
of the plurality of data sets based on the context, wherein a search result
corresponding to the search is based on cross-referencing query results of the
set of respective queries.” Final Act. 12 (emphasis added) (citing Guha Fig.
10, ¶¶ 131–146).
Appellant argues that “Guha clearly shows context aggregation and
modifying a user search based on additional context,” but “makes no
indication that a query is initiated by anyone or anything but the user.”
Appeal Br. 11. According to Appellant, although “the process of revising a
search query, as disclosed in Guha, may be automated, the generation of the
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initial query is not.” Id. In particular, Appellant points to paragraph 134 of
Guha as clearly describing the user performing the initial query. Id.
In response, the Examiner asserts that “the cited portions of Guha at
Paragraphs [0131-0146] show that pre-processing the query revises,
modifies and expands the query, and performs numerous operations that are
not based in user input.” Ans. 14–15. In particular, the Examiner quotes
paragraphs 138, 141, 143, and 145 of Guha and states that the steps
described by these paragraphs “involve operations of generating queries that
are not explicitly inputted by the user, which satisfies [the generating
limitation].” Id. at 15.
We are not persuaded by Appellant’s argument that claim 17 requires
the initial query to be performed without input from the user. See Reply Br.
5 (“Generating incorporates and is often synonymous with initiating.”). In
fact, claim 17 explicitly states that “the search is based on a request for
information from the user.” The only portion of claim 17 that is required to
be performed without input from the user is the generation of queries based
on the context. We agree with the Examiner, and Appellant appears to
concede (see Appeal Br. 11; Reply Br. 4), that Guha discloses that this
step—referred to as step 1005 “prepocess[ing] query according to
aggregated context”—is done without input from the user. See Guha Fig.
10, ¶¶ 138–144; Reply Br. 4 (“While the process of revising a search query,
as disclosed in Guha, may be automated, the generation of the initial query is
not.”).
Accordingly, we are not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s
rejection of claim 17 as anticipated by Guha.
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Claims 7–9 and 18–20
Claims 7–9 depend from claim 1 and claims 18–20 depend from claim
17. Appellant does not separately argue these claims. See Appeal Br. 10,
11; Reply Br. 3, 5. For the reasons discussed above with respect to claims 1
and 17, we are not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 7–9
and 18–20 as anticipated by Guha.
Rejection of Claims 2–5 and 10–16
The Examiner rejects independent claim 11 and dependent claims 2–
5, 10, and 12–16 as obvious over the combination of Guha and van Os.
Final Act. 14–24. In particular, the Examiner relies on Guha for the
majority of limitations of independent claim 11, but explains that “Guha
does not explicitly disclose wherein the access component requests
permission from the consumer to access global positioning data from a
mobile device belonging to the consumer.” Final Act. 21. The Examiner
relies on van Os for disclosing this limitation. Id. (citing van Os ¶¶ 107,
359).
Appellant argues that the portions of Guha relied upon by the
Examiner do not disclose the limitation “wherein the data engine auto-
generates a query without impetus from the consumer when the context
component detects that the user is initiating one or more actions that may be
inferred as a query to achieve a goal.” Appeal Br. 12. According to
Appellant, Guha does not infer a query to achieve a goal and does not auto-
generate a query without impetus from the consumer. Id.
The Examiner contends that Guha teaches both of the contested
features. Ans. 16. For inferring a query to achieve a goal, the Examiner
points to Guha’s description of “links 204 are provided as navigational aids
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to further pages that address different possible information needs of the
user.” Id. (quoting Guha ¶ 38). These links are each “associated with a
related context file, which will provide further instructions to the search
engine system to tailor further stages in the search process for a specific
information need, and thereby construct the desired pages.” Guha ¶ 38.
According to the Examiner this disclosure shows that
Guha can infer whether a user’s goal is to decide what type of
camera to buy (goal: which camera) or the user’s goal is instead
what vendor to buy a particular camera from (goal: where to buy
this camera) or how to fix a defective device (goal: seeking
technical support), it has the capability to infer a user goal based
on context.
Ans. 16. The Examiner explains that in this scenario described by
Guha, “[t]he consumer does not state or provide impetus that he or she
is trying to purchase a camera or seeking technical support,” but
“initiates actions (as claimed) through a search query . . ., which is
then inferred to see what type of goal the consumer is going for.” Id.
at 16–17 (citing Guha ¶ 37). Further, the Examiner explains that
Guha’s “additional querys are automatically generated based on
context, and not expressly indicated by the user.” Id. at 17.
Appellant states that in Guha at best, “‘user intent’ to achieve [the
goal of the user] was not inferred, but was instead expressly indicated by the
user by his selection of the links provided” and “[a]t most, user actions
described in Guha (paragraphs 37 and 38) are analyzed after the fact and
inferences are made accordingly.” Appeal Br. 13. Appellant adds that the
claim “clearly indicates user actions that are not queries are used by the
system to infer based on context what the user intends.” Reply Br. 7.
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We agree with the Examiner that Guha describes a scenario
encompassed by claim 11’s language “wherein the data engine auto-
generates a query without impetus from the consumer when the context
component detects that the user is initiating one or more actions that may be
inferred as a query to achieve a goal.” In particular, we agree that by
providing “additional information” in addition to search results that satisfy a
user’s search query (Guha ¶ 37), Guha’s system is both “initiating one or
more actions that may be inferred as a query to achieve a goal” and
“autogenerat[ing] a query without impetus from the consumer.” Guha
discloses that when the user initiates a search query on a particular topic, for
example, comparing camera models, Guha’s system infers from the context
of the query the user’s goal, such as purchasing a camera. Id. at ¶¶ 37–38.
Moreover, based on that inference, Guha’s system performs a query to
obtain additional information, for example in the form of links, and provides
these links to the user. We agree with the Examiner, that this query to obtain
additional information is auto-generated without impetus from the user.
Claims 2–5 and 10 depend from claim 1 and claims 12–16 depend
from claim 11. Appellant does not separately argue these claims. See
Appeal Br. 13; Reply Br. 7. For the reasons discussed above with respect to
claim 11, we are not persuaded that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims
2–5, 10, and 12–16 as obvious over the combination of Guha and van Os.
Rejection of Claim 6
The Examiner rejects dependent claim 6 as obvious over the
combination of Guha and Luna. Final Act. 24–25. Claim 6 depends directly
from independent claim 1. In particular, the Examiner explains that Guha
discloses every element of parent claim 1, but “does not explicitly disclose
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wherein the search request for the user is automatically generated when the
processing unit is otherwise idle.” Final Act. 24. The Examiner relies on
Luna for disclosing this limitation. Id. (citing Luna ¶¶ 152, 274–281).
Appellant “does not dispute that Luna describes idle resources” or that
Guha “manage[s] search result data through user activity,” but “disputes that
the combination of Guha and Luna results in the method of claim 6.”
Appeal Br. 14; Reply Br. 8. In particular, Appellant argues that “the actions
performed in claim 6 take place at the device itself” and not at a remote
device and “the combination of Luna and Guha would result, at most, in a
method whereby a remote device alters its communication frequency with
the device and manages search result data when the remote device is idle.”
Id.
The Examiner responds that “Luna is relied upon for data
management when resources are idle” and “set[s] forth the combination of
[Guha and Luna] to modify the method of [Guha] to include the step of Luna
in such a way to automatically generate the search request when the
processing unit is otherwise idle.” Ans. 17 (citing Luna ¶¶ 152, 274–281).
The Examiner adds that Guha also discloses automatically generating
reformulated search queries. Id. at 18 (citing Guha ¶¶ 71–84, 131–146).
Appellant reiterates the argument made with respect to claim 1,
discussed above, that Guha only discloses automatically generating revised
search queries after an initial manual search query. Reply Br. 8. As
discussed above, we agree with the Examiner that Guha teaches
automatically generating revised search queries, and that claim 1 does not
require the initial search query to also be automatic. We also agree with the
Examiner that Luna discloses making use of system resources automatically
when those resources are idle. See Luna ¶¶ 44, 152, 274–281. Further, we
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agree that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to
use this teaching to modify the query search of Guha such that it the search
is done “when the processing unit is otherwise idle” as recited by claim 6.
We are not persuaded otherwise by Appellant’s noting that Luna uses remote
resources for its actions because “[t]he test for obviousness is not whether
the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the
structure of the primary reference . . . . Rather, the test is what the combined
teachings of those references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill
in the art.” In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981). See also In re
Sneed, 710 F.2d 1544, 1550 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (“[I]t is not necessary that the
inventions of the references be physically combinable to render obvious the
invention under review.”); and In re Nievelt, 482 F.2d 965, 968 (CCPA
1973) (“Combining the teachings of references does not involve an ability to
combine their specific structures.”). Rather, “if a technique has been used to
improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize
that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is
obvious unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill.” KSR Int’l
Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007).
Accordingly, we are not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s
rejection of claim 6 as obvious over the combination of Guha and Luna.
CONCLUSION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1–20.
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DECISION SUMMARY
Claim(s)
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 7–9, 17–
20
102 Guha 1, 7–9, 17–
20

2–5, 10–16 103 Guha, van Os, 2–5, 10–16
6 103 Guha, Luna 6
Overall
Outcome
1–20
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). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(iv).
AFFIRMED