Ex Parte Adams

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 26, 2012

10878508 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 26, 2012)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
10/878,508 06/28/2004 Hugh William Adams JR. YOR920040140US1
(163-33)
4878
49267 7590 09/27/2012
TUTUNJIAN & BITETTO, P.C.
425 Broadhollow Road, Suite 302
Melville, NY 11747
EXAMINER
PHILLIPS, III, ALBERT M
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2155
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/27/2012 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________________

Ex parte HUGH WILLIAM ADAMS, JR.
____________________

Appeal 2010-006025
Application 10/878,508
Technology Center 2100
____________________

Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, ERIC S. FRAHM, and HUNG H. BUI,
Administrative Patent Judges.

BUI, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant1 seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1-38.2 We have jurisdiction under 35
U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM.

1 Appellant states that the real party in interest is INTERNATIONAL
BUSINESS MACHINES CORP. Appeal Brief, as amended, filed on
August 12, 2009 (“App. Br.”).
2 In the Final Office Action mailed on April 15, 2009, all claims 1-38 stand
rejected under 35 U.S.C. §102(e) and §103(a) as being unpatentable over
cited prior art. However, Appellant only presents arguments against the
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Application 10/878,508

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I. STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant’s Invention
Appellant’s claims are generally directed to a user interface having a
presentation device that presents one or more data streams of information to
one or more users. Each of the data streams has one or more samples that
are arranged in a temporal order. A relevancy display has two or more
relevance indications arranged in the temporal order that corresponds to the
order of the samples in the data stream, each of the relevance indications is
uniquely associated with one of the samples. See generally Abstract and
Summary.
Claims on Appeal
Claims 4-8, 22 and 31 are on appeal. Claims 4-8, 22 and 31 depend
upon independent claims 1, 19 and 29 respectively. Claim 4 as well as claim
1 from which it depends, are illustrative of the claimed subject matter, and
are reproduced below with disputed limitations emphasized:

rejection of dependent claims 4-8, 22 and 31, and does not dispute the
rejections of claims 1-3, 9-21, 23-30 and 32-38 (see App. Br. 1). As such,
the final rejections of claims 1-3, 9-21, 23-30 and 32-38 are affirmed, and
any dispute regarding these rejections is deemed waived. See Ex Parte Frye,
94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (citing In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d. 1443,
1445) (explaining that the BPAI reviews the appealed rejections for error
based upon the issues identified by an Appellant, and in light of the
arguments and evidence produced thereon). See also Hyatt v. Dudas, 551
F.3d 1307, 1314 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (explaining that a ground of rejection is
waived when an Appellant fails to contest the rejection and that the Board is
free to affirm such an uncontested rejection without considering the merits).

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Application 10/878,508

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1. A user interface for use with data stream
processing systems, comprising:

a data steam presentation device that presents one or
more data streams, each of the data streams having one or more
samples, the samples being placed in a temporal order; and

a relevancy display having two or more computer-
assigned relevance indications provided by a hardware visual
indication device and directly determined based on a query,
each of the relevance indications associated with one of the
samples, the relevance indications being ordered on the
relevancy display in the temporal order,

wherein each of the relevance indications indicate a
respective non-binary degree of relevance of a respective one of
the samples with respect to the query, the respective non-binary
degree of relevance based on a relevancy scale,

wherein the respective non-binary degree of relevance for
the computer-assigned relevance indications is pre-assigned by
a computer prior to a displaying thereof to a user.

4. The interface as recited in claim 1, wherein the
relevancy display indicates relevancy of future samples in
streaming data of the data stream.

Evidence Considered
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Graham U.S. 2004/0175036 A1 Sep. 9, 2004
Wei-Hao Lin, “News Video Classification Using SVM-based
Multimodal Classifiers and Combination Strategies,” 2002, pages 323-326.

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Examiner’s Rejections
Claims 1-12, 14-34, and 36-38 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §102(e)
as being anticipated by Graham (Ans. 3-14). Similarly, claims 13, 28, and
35 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over
Graham in view of Appellant’s Admitted Prior Art (AAPA) and Wei-Hao
Lin, “News Video Classification Using SVM-based Multimodal Classifiers
and Combination Strategies,” 2002, pages 323-326 (Ans. 14-16). However,
as stated above, Appellant does not dispute the Examiner’s findings
regarding the prior art, including Graham, AAPA and Lin, and have waived
any arguments contesting the substance of the Examiner’s findings as to the
prior art and ultimate conclusions of anticipation and obviousness of the
subject matter of claims 1-3, 9-21, 23-30, and 32-38. Rather, Appellant only
disputes the rejection of claims 4-8, 22 and 31 under 35 U.S.C. §102(e) as
being anticipated by Graham (Ans. 16-25).

II. ISSUES
The dispositive issue before us is whether the Examiner has erred in
rejecting claims 4-8, 22 and 31 under 35 U.S.C. §102(e) because Graham
fails to teach or suggest the argued features. In particular, the issue turns on
whether:
(a) Graham discloses or suggests the limitation “wherein the
relevancy display indicates relevancy of future samples in streaming data of
the data stream” as recited in claim 4, or alternatively, “wherein the
relevancy display indicates relevancy of future samples in streaming data
prior to their output” as recited in claims 22 and 31 (App. Br. 15); and
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(b) Graham discloses or suggests the limitation “wherein the
metadata is provided by one or more of the following: a confidence level, an
order on a hit list, a score, a score returned by a search engine, a degree of
match with pre-annotated metadata, a degree of match with an MPEG
standard annotation” as recited in claim 8 (App. Br. 20).

III. APPLICABLE LEGAL PRINCIPLES
Claim Construction
"[T]he PTO gives claims their 'broadest reasonable interpretation.'" In
re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320, 1324 (Fed. Cir. 2004) (quoting In re Hyatt, 211
F.3d 1367, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2000)). However, "limitations are not to be read
into the claims from the specification." In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181,
1184 (Fed. Cir. 1993) (citing In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321 (Fed. Cir.
1989)).

IV. ANALYSIS
We have reviewed Appellant’s arguments in the Briefs, the
Examiner’s rejections and the Examiner’s responses to Appellant’s
arguments. We are not persuaded by Appellant’s arguments and
conclusions. We adopt as our own (1) the findings and reasons set forth by
the Examiner in the final Office Action, and (2) the reasons set forth by the
Examiner in the Examiner’s Answer in response to Appellant’s Appeal
Brief. We concur with the conclusions reached by the Examiner and further
emphasize the following:
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With regard to Appellant’s first contention, we agree with the
Examiner’s findings that FIG. 6 of Graham illustrates a user interface in
which an indication that a user’s query of a particular word will show up in
particular locations throughout a video (Ans. 16), and, as FIG. 6 is
reproduced on page 18 of Examiner’s Answer, that:
“Items EX1A and EX1B represent the "current sample"
at 9:12-13, while EX2 is an example of a "future" sample. The
word "national" appears at times 9:16, 9:20, 9:38, 24:04, 35:46
and 54:56 in Fig. 6. See Fig. 6 above. The word "national" is a
word that appears in the "future" because 35:46 is after 9:12-
13… [T]he relevancy display indicates relevancy of future
samples in that the indications in the relevancy display are the
markers of the word "National" in the future frames of the
video. The indications are "prior" to the data being output
because the currently displayed sample (frame) in Fig. 6 is at
time 9:12-13. See above EX1A and EX1B. The user can move
to the "future" sample by moving the slider to a desired point
(future point) in the video.”

(Ans. 19; Graham, ¶0095).

We also agree with the Examiner’s “broadest reasonable
interpretation” that query words in different locations shown in FIG. 6, meet
the limitation of “future samples” as recited in claims 1, 22, and 31 because
they exist after the displayed time code of 9:12-13 (Ans. 20), and find that
the Examiner’s interpretation is consistent with Appellant’s specification. In
re Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367, 1372 (Fed. Cir. 2000).
Appellant further argues that Graham discloses multimedia
information that is stored and, therefore, is NOT STREAMING MEDIA, as
recited in claims 4, 22, and 31. However, we disagree. As noted by the
Examiner, Graham discloses that:
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The term “multimedia document” as used in this
application is intended to refer to any electronic storage unit
(e.g., a file) that stores multimedia information in digital
format. Various different formats may be used to store the
multimedia information. These formats include various
MPEG formats (e.g., MPEG 1, MPEG 2, MPEG 4, MPEG 7,
etc.), MP3 format, SMIL format, HTML+TIME format, WMF
(Windows Media Format), RM (Real Media) format, Quicktime
format, Shockwave format, various streaming media formats,
formats being developed by the engineering community,
proprietary and customary formats, and others. Examples of
multimedia documents include video recordings, MPEG files,
news broadcast recordings, presentation recordings, recorded
meetings, classroom lecture recordings, broadcast television
programs, or the like.

Graham ¶0046; Ans. 21.

With regard to Appellant’s second contention, we agree with the
Examiner’s findings that the relevancy indicators, shown in FIG. 6 of
Graham, can represent “metadata” which is data about multimedia
information, and that the relevancy display, shown in FIG. 6, can represent a
score, as recited in claim 8.

V. CONCLUSION
On the record before us, we conclude that Appellant has not
demonstrated that the Examiner’s anticipation rejection of claims 4-8, 22
and 31 contains error.
In addition, based on Appellant’s failure to address the Examiner’s
prima facie case of anticipation and obviousness, Appellant has failed to
show that the Examiner erred in determining that Graham anticipates the
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user interface, data stream processing system, and method of providing
relevancy information for a data stream recited in claims 1-3, 9-12, 14-21,
23-27, 29, 30, 32-34, and 36-38. Similarly, Appellant has failed to show that
the Examiner erred in determining that claims 13, 28, and 35 would have
been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over the combination of Graham,
AAPA, and Lin. Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s (i) anticipation
rejection of claims 1-3, 9-12, 14-21, 23-27, 29, 30, 32-34, and 36-38; and (ii)
obviousness rejection of claims 13, 28, and 35 pro forma. See 37 C.F.R. §
41.37(c)(1)(vii) (requiring a statement in the briefs as to each ground of
rejection presented by Appellant for review); 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii)
(stating that arguments not presented in the briefs by Appellant will be
refused consideration).

VI. DECISION
As such, we affirm the Examiner’s decisions to reject claims 4-8, 22
and 31 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e).3
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)(iv) (2011).

3 In the event of further prosecution, claims 1-3, 9-21, 23-30 and 32-38
should be canceled, as Appellant has demonstrated a clear intent in the
Appeal Brief (see App. Br. 12 and 22, only appealing and arguing claims 4-
8, 22, and 31) not to pursue these claims. See Ex Parte Ghuman, (BPAI
May 1, 2008) (precedential) (holding that when Appellants are silent in the
notice of appeal as to the specific claims being appealed, and then clearly
states in the appeal brief that some of the finally rejected claims are not
being pursued in the appeal, appellants should cancel those claims not
pursued).
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Application 10/878,508

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AFFIRMED

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