Adobe Inc.Download PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardJan 12, 20212019003892 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 12, 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. 14/031,256 09/19/2013 Sayaji Hande 3463US01 1085 108982 7590 01/12/2021 FIG. 1 Patents 116 W. Pacific Avenue Suite 200 Spokane, WA 99201 EXAMINER STARKS, WILBERT L ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2122 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 01/12/2021 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): Fig1Docket@fig1patents.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________________ Ex parte SAYAJI HANDE, VINEET GUPTA, and SANDEEP ZECHARIAH GEORGE KOLLANNUR ____________________ Appeal 2019-003892 Application 14/031,256 Technology Center 2100 ____________________ Before JOHN A. EVANS, JUSTIN BUSCH, and JOHN P. PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judges. PINKERTON, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 1–7, 9–14, and 16–23, which are all of the claims pending in the application. Claims 8 and 15 are canceled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We reverse. 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 Adobe Systems Incorporated. Appeal Br. 3. Appeal 2019-003892 Application 14/031,256 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant’s Invention Appellant generally describes the disclosed and claimed invention as relating to “techniques for predicting spread of content across social networks.” Spec. ¶ 3. Illustrative Claim Claims 1, 10, and 17 are independent. Independent claim 1 is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal and provides as follows: 1. A computer-implemented method comprising: receiving at least one parameter related to a page on a social network; accessing user interactions with content posted to the page on the social network during an initial duration of time after the content is posted to the page on the social network, the content comprising a short-text post, a picture, or a video, and the user interactions with the content comprising at least one of a view of the content or a share of the content; and predicting future user interactions with the content during at least one subsequent duration of time by applying the received parameters and the accessed user interactions to a prediction model that is configured to predict the future user interactions based at least in part on a total number of the user interactions with the content during the initial duration of time, the future user interactions comprising at least one of viewing the content, clicking on the content, responding or commenting on the content, replying to responses to the content, liking the content, disliking the content, loving the content, sharing the content, or retweeting the content. Appeal Br. 40 (Claims App.). Appeal 2019-003892 Application 14/031,256 3 Reference and Rejection on Appeal Claims 1–7, 9–14, and 16–23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Lars Backstrom and Jure Leskovec, Supervised Random Walks: Predicting and Recommending Links in Social Networks, in WSDM’11: PROC. OF THE FOURTH ACM INT’L CONF. ON WEB SEARCH AND DATA MINING 635–44 (2011) (“Backstrom”).2 Ans. 4–44; see also Final Act. 4–29. ANALYSIS In rejecting claim 1, the Examiner finds Backstrom discloses, among other limitations, “accessing user interactions with content posted to the page on the social network . . . and predicting future user interactions with the content . . . by applying . . . the accessed user interactions to a prediction model.” Ans. 5–8 (citing Backstrom 635–637, 644); see also Final Act. 3–5. In particular, the Examiner finds Backstrom discloses predicting what new edges (friendships) a user node s will create over a time interval based in part on interaction attributes such as how many messages edge user nodes u and v exchanged, or how many photos they appeared in together. Ans. 5–7 (citing Backstrom 635, 637); see also id. at 46–54. The Examiner explains that Backstrom’s interaction attributes anticipate claim 1’s “user interactions” because Backstrom discloses content including messages and photos that are exchanged. Id. at 46, 48, 51, 52. The Examiner explains further that Backstrom “predicts new edges and edges are metadata of interactions,” which “must be accessed, at least to the level of counting them 2 The copy of Backstrom provided in the record does not include page numbers. We identify the pages of this paper according to its original pagination, starting with page 635 and ending with page 644. Appeal 2019-003892 Application 14/031,256 4 in order to make the edges.” Id. at 56, 58. The Examiner finds Backstrom further discloses “predictions for like recommendations” because its “Supervised Random Walks” algorithm can be applied to “like recommendations.” Id. at 7–8 (quoting Backstrom 644 (emphasis added)). The Examiner finds Backstrom also discloses “future user interactions comprising . . . clicking on the content” because Backstrom discloses its algorithm can be used for “link recommendation (positive nodes are those which user clicks on).” Id. at 8–9 (quoting Backstrom 636 (emphasis added)). The Examiner explains that in Backstrom, “the user ‘clicks on’ links and the prior art predicts links.” Id. at 59. Appellant contends the Examiner erred in finding that Backstrom discloses “accessing user interactions with content posted to the page on the social network . . . and predicting future user interactions with the content . . . by applying . . . the accessed user interactions to a prediction model” as recited in claim 1. Appeal Br. 15–22; Reply Br. 2–7. Appellant asserts that the Examiner’s rejection maps the term “content” in claim 1’s “accessing” step to Backstrom’s “messages” exchanged between nodes u and v, but then does not map “the content” of claim 1’s “predicting” step to this feature of Backstrom. Reply Br. 3–4 (citing Ans. 45–46, 54, 58). Appellant argues that, to the extent the Examiner asserts Backstrom’s messages disclose the “content” of claim 1, in order to properly reject claim 1 under § 102, Backstrom must also disclose predicting future user interactions with [the messages]. . . the future user interactions comprising at least one of viewing the [messages], clicking on the [messages], responding or commenting on the [messages], replying to responses to the [messages], liking the [messages], disliking the [messages], Appeal 2019-003892 Application 14/031,256 5 loving the [messages], sharing the [messages], or retweeting the [messages]. Id. at 4–5. According to Appellant, however, “the Examiner does not assert Backstrom as disclosing this subject matter of claim 1, nor does Backstrom disclose this subject matter of claim 1.” Id. at 4–5. Rather, Appellant asserts that “Backstrom describes predicting for each user in the social network ‘what new edges (friendships) that user will create between t and some future time t’” including “a model that treats users as nodes and is useable to suggest to an individual user ‘a list of people that the user is likely to create new connections to.’” Id. at 5 (citing Backstrom 635, 637). Appellant therefore argues that “Backstrom merely describes predicting a number of future friendships that will form between users in a social network,” which “is not the same as ‘predicting future user interactions with the content.’” Id. Appellant also disputes the Examiner’s assertion that “the user ‘clicks on’ links and the prior art predicts links” as a mischaracterization of Backstrom. Id. at 6 (citing Ans. 58–59). To the contrary, Appellant asserts that Backstrom does not “include[] a description that suggests that a user clicks on links,” but “[r]ather, . . . merely describes that nodes a user clicks on can be used as positive training examples for use in link prediction (e.g., predicting future friendships).” Id. Anticipation requires a single prior art reference to disclose each and every claim element, in complete detail, and as arranged in the claim. Net MoneyIN, Inc. v. VeriSign, Inc., 545 F.3d 1359, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2008); Richardson v. Suzuki Motor Co., 868 F.2d 1226, 1236 (Fed. Cir. 1989). For the reasons discussed below, we are persuaded of error because the Appeal 2019-003892 Application 14/031,256 6 Examiner fails to show that Backstrom discloses each and every element of claim 1. Backstrom describes predicting new edges (friendships) that a user node will create within a social network. E.g., Backstrom 635. But the Examiner has not shown, nor do we find, that Backstrom discloses “accessing user interactions with content posted to the page on the social network . . . and predicting future user interactions with the content” as recited in claim 1. Although Backstrom describes an algorithm that predicts new edges or links for node s using messages exchanged between edge nodes u and v (and photos including edge nodes u and v), a new edge or link is not the same as content. Nor has the Examiner shown that Backstrom predicts future user interactions with the messages or photos involving nodes u and v. And even though Backstrom may suggest predicting future user interactions with content (for example, that user node s will add user node x as a friend and, thereafter, communicate with user node x), that content relates to future user interactions, not past user interactions that were accessed and used in Backstrom’s prediction algorithm. Nor does Backstrom’s disclosure of “link recommendation (positive nodes are those which user clicks on)” (Backstrom 636) fill the gaps in the Examiner’s rejection. As best understood, this disclosure describes a first user node clicking on a second user node, and using this user interaction to predict a future link or friendship between the first and second nodes. See Reply Br. 6 (arguing this passage “merely describes that nodes a user clicks on can be used as positive training examples for use in link prediction (e.g., predicting future friendships)”). While this may suggest accessing user interactions with content and using them to predict future user links or Appeal 2019-003892 Application 14/031,256 7 friendships between nodes, the Examiner has not shown, nor do we find, that this also discloses “predicting future user interactions with the content” itself. For example, the Examiner has not shown that Backstrom discloses a prediction that the first user node will click on the second user node again. In addition, the Examiner’s finding that “predictions for like recommendations is taught by Backstrom” incorrectly interprets the cited disclosure of Backstrom. The cited disclosure of Backstrom states that “Supervised Random Walks are not limited to link prediction, and can be applied to many other problems that require learning to rank nodes in a graph, like recommendations, anomaly detection, missing link, and expertise search and ranking.” Backstrom 644. Contrary to the Examiner’s finding, however, the term “like” is not being used here as an adjective to modify the word “recommendations,” but rather to introduce the following examples of problems that require learning to rank nodes in a graph—“recommendations, anomaly detection, missing link, and expertise search and ranking.” Id. We therefore disagree with the Examiner’s finding that Backstrom discloses “like recommendations.” Nor has the Examiner otherwise shown that the cited disclosure of Backstrom satisfies the disputed claim limitations. Accordingly, the Examiner has not adequately shown that Backstrom discloses each and every claim element, in complete detail, and as arranged in the claim. We decline to resort to speculation to fill the gaps in the Examiner’s rejection. See Ex parte Braeken, 54 USPQ2d 1110, 1112 (BPAI 1999). We therefore determine the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) as anticipated by Backstrom. Accordingly, constrained by this record, we do not sustain the Examiner’s § 102(a)(1) rejection of claim 1. For similar reasons, we do not Appeal 2019-003892 Application 14/031,256 8 sustain the Examiner’s § 102(a)(1) rejection of claims 2–7, 9–14, and 16–23, each of which includes similar limitations. For these claims, the Examiner fails to provide a finding that cures the defects discussed above. See Ans. 9– 44; Final Act. 12–29; cf. In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (“dependent claims are nonobvious if the independent claims from which they depend are nonobvious”). CONCLUSION We do not sustain the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1–7, 9–14, and 16–23 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1). DECISION SUMMARY Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/ Basis Affirmed Reversed 1–7, 9–14, 16–23 102(a)(1) Backstrom 1–7, 9–14, 16–23 REVERSED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation