Auction.com, LLC

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

May 25, 2021

2020005642 (P.T.A.B. May. 25, 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.
15/593,048 05/11/2017 Robert Friedman AUCT.P001C1 5961
30554 7590 05/25/2021
MAHAMEDI IP LAW LLP
910 Campisi Way, Suite 1E
Campbell, CA 95008
EXAMINER
LUDWIG, PETER L
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3687
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/25/2021 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):
uspto@m-iplaw.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ROBERT FRIEDMAN and FARAMARZ FARHOODI
Appeal 2020-005642
Application 15/593,048
Technology Center 3600
Before CATHERINE SHIANG, BETH Z. SHAW, and
JULIET MITCHELL DIRBA, Administrative Patent Judges.
SHAW, 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 1–4 and 7–22. 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(a). Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Auction.com.
Appeal Br. 3.
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CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to an online marketplace system. Spec. ¶ 2.
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A computing system for managing multiple online
marketplace services, comprising:
one or more processors; and
one or more memory resources storing instructions that,
when executed by the one or more processors, cause the
computing system to implement multiple instances of a set of
logical components to concurrently and independently host the
multiple online marketplace services, each of the multiple
online marketplace services being hosted by the computing
system at a respective, distinct domain, a first instance of the set
of logical components hosting a first online marketplace service
of the multiple online marketplace services by performing
operations that include:
receiving information from a seller that identifies an asset
for sale on the first online marketplace service;
transmitting data to user devices to enable the user
devices to display information regarding the asset;
implementing the first online marketplace service for the
asset; and
wherein an amount of processing resources from the one
or more processors for providing one or more of the multiple
instances of logical components is dynamically adjusted based
on a demand level of one or more of the multiple online
marketplace services.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:
Name Reference Date
Balassanian US 2013/0254181 Al Sept. 26, 2013
Ravichandran US 2011/0179147 Al July 21, 2011

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REJECTION
Claims 1–4 and 7–22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Balassanian and Ravichandran. Final Act. 2.
OPINION
On this record, Appellant has not shown any reversible error in the
Examiner’s conclusion that claim 1 is obvious over the combination of
Balassanian and Ravichandran. We refer to, rely on, and adopt the
Examiner’s findings and conclusions set forth in the Final Rejection and
Answer.
First, Appellant argues the Examiner erred “in providing a proper
rationale that one of ordinary skill would have combined Balassanian with
Ravichandran.” Appeal Br. 9.
An explicit teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the references is not
necessary to support a conclusion of obviousness. KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex
Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415–16 (2007); In re Ethicon, Appeal 2015-1696 (Fed.
Cir. Jan. 3, 2017) (Order). The Supreme Court has instructed that “a court
must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior
art elements according to their established functions” (KSR, 550 U.S. at
417), and apply “an expansive and flexible approach” to obviousness (id. at
415).
The Examiner relies on Balassanian to teach most of the claim
limitations, and relies to Ravichandran to teach the hosting of online
marketplaces limitation(s). See Ans. 5, 6. The Examiner refers to
Ravichandran to illustrate that a person of ordinary skill in the online
marketplace (e-commerce) art would have been motivated to modify
Balassanian’s computer system that aggregates products from online stores,
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which comprises crawling one or more websites associated with one or more
online stores, collecting information pertaining to products of the stores,
extracting key data about each product, and classifying the products into one
or more categories based on the key data, with the further ability to host
multiple online marketplace services—instead of simply crawling and
collecting data from the multiple sites. Ans. 5. Ravichandran explains that
web hosting systems “provide space on a server they own or lease for use by
their clients as well as providing internet connectivity, typically in a
datacenter.” See Ravichandran ¶ 5.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine
Balassanian and Ravichandran to have Ravichandran’s ability to host
multiple online marketplace sites instead of crawling and collecting data.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to the ordinarily-skilled artisan at the
time of the invention to combine Balassanian’s teachings of collecting data,
such as product data (see Balassanian ¶¶ 32–34, 49, 67, 72, 74, 11, 13, 14)
with Ravichandran’s ability to host multiple online marketplace sites (see
Ravichandran ¶¶ 5, 7, Abstract, Fig. 3) because Ravichandran is also
directed to marketplace services online. Ans. 5; Ravichandran ¶ 7, Abstract,
Fig. 3. Because both references are directed to marketplace services online,
the ordinarily-skilled artisan would have reasonably used Ravichandran’s
ability to host multiple online marketplace sites, even if Balassanian does
not explicitly teach hosting multiple online marketplace sites. See
Ravichandran ¶ 7, Abstract, Fig. 3.
Moreover, such a combination is an obvious predictable variation of
known elements. “The combination of familiar elements according to known
methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable
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results.” KSR, 550 U.S. at 416. “If a person of ordinary skill can implement
a predictable variation, § 103 likely bars its patentability.” Id. at 417. The
ordinarily-skilled artisan, being “a person of ordinary creativity, not an
automaton,” would be able to fit the teachings of Balassanian and
Ravichandran together like pieces of a puzzle to predictably result in the
claimed invention. Id. at 420–21. Because Appellant has not demonstrated
that the proposed combination would have been “uniquely challenging or
difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art,” the proposed modification
would have been well within the purview of the ordinarily skilled artisan.
Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir.
2007) (citing KSR, 550 U.S. at 418).
Further, we are not persuaded by Appellant’s argument that the
Examiner does not provide a “reasonable explanation of how Balassanian
and Ravichandran would have worked together.” Appeal Br. 10, 11. As the
Examiner explains, and we agree, Ravichandran teaches, among other
things, how it is possible for a computer system to host multiple online
marketplace services. Ans. 8 (citing Ravichandran, Fig. 3). Although
Appellant argues the Examiner uses a “hindsight-based approach,” (Reply
Br. 5), “any judgment on obviousness is . . . necessarily a reconstruction
based on hindsight reasoning, but so long as it takes into account only
knowledge which was within the level of ordinary skill at the time the
claimed invention was made and does not include knowledge gleaned only
from applicant's disclosure, such a reconstruction is proper.” In re
McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 1395 (CCPA 1971). See also Radix Corp. v.
Samuels, 13 USPQ2d 1689, 1693 (D.D.C. 1989) (“[A]ny obviousness
inquiry necessarily involves some hindsight.”).
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Here, the Examiner’s reasons for combining teachings from
Balassanian and Ravichandran are based on the teachings of Balassanian and
Ravichandran. These reasons do not include knowledge gleaned only from
the Appellant’s disclosure. Accordingly, we are not persuaded that one
having ordinary skill in the art would not have been motivated to
Balassanian and Ravichandran.
Additionally, Appellant argues that the Examiner fails to establish that
Balassanian is analogous art. Appeal Br. 9–10. The Examiner explains that:
[T]he examiner has referred to Ballasanian for most of the
limitations, and then referred to Ravichandran for the hosting of
online marketplaces limitation(s). For example, Ballasanian is
“reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor” in
the sense that the problem of figuring out how to collect data
from websites on particular products and transmitting for
display is addressed by Ballasanian. Further, Ravichandran is
“reasonably pertinent to the problem faced by the inventor,” as
Ravichandran relates to hosting multiple online marketplace
services, each of the services being hosted by the computing
system at distinct domains, and one of the problems addressed
by the claimed subject matter is such hosting of online services.

Ans. 7.
Balassanian is directed to collecting information pertaining to
products associated with online stores. See Balassanian, Abstract. In the
Reply Brief, Appellant argues that collecting data from websites on
particular products and transmitting for display, as taught by Balassanian, is
not relevant to the claimed invention. Reply Br. 4, 5. We disagree. Appellant
has not demonstrated that Balassanian is not reasonably pertinent to the
claimed invention. We are not persuaded by Appellant’s argument because
we agree with the Examiner that Balassanian, which teaches receiving and
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transmitting data on particular products, logically would have commended
itself to the inventors’ attention in considering their problem—providing an
online marketplace system (Spec ¶ 2, cited in Reply Br. 4)). See In re Clay,
966 F.2d 656, 659 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (“A reference is reasonably pertinent if,
even though it may be in a different field from that of the inventor's
endeavor, it is one which, because of the matter with which it deals,
logically would have commended itself to an inventor’s attention in
considering his problem.”). Thus, we find that, contrary to Appellant’s
contention, Balassanian is in an analogous art.
Appellant also argues that Balassanian and Ravichandran fail to teach
or suggest “implementing the first online marketplace service for the asset.”
Appeal Br. 8; Reply Br. 6. In particular, Appellant argues that “merely
displaying one or more webpages relating to an item” as discussed in
paragraph 49 of Balassanian does not teach the claimed “implementing the
first online marketplace service for the asset.” Appeal Br. 12.
Appellant provides insufficient evidence that the Specification or
claims limit “implementing the first online marketplace service” in a way
that, under a broad but reasonable interpretation, does not encompass
Balassanian’s teachings of a web application that is configured to display
one or more web pages relating to one or more products based on user
action. Balassanian ¶ 49. “A user action directing the web app to display one
or more web pages can be a response to the user’s performance of at least
one of the following actions: local search, third party search . . . or web page
browsing.” Id. Moreover, the Examiner pointed to more than simply
paragraph 49 of Balassanian for teaching this limitation, findings which
Appellant does not dispute. See Final Act. 3 (citing Balassanian ¶¶ 49, 67,
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72, 74, 11, 13, 14); Ans. 8 (citing Balassanian ¶¶ 49, 67, 72, 74, 11, 13, 14).
In the absence of sufficient evidence or line of technical reasoning to the
contrary, we find no reversible error.
Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of claim 1. For the same
reasons, we sustain the rejection of claims 2–4 and 7–22, which are not
argued separately with particularity.
CONCLUSION
The Examiner’s rejection is affirmed.
DECISION SUMMARY
In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C.
§
Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–4, 7–22 103 Balassanian,
Ravichandran
1–4, 7–22

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