Ex Parte Ayoub et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

May 24, 2017

13915960 (P.T.A.B. May. 24, 2017)

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.
13/915,960 06/12/2013 Khalil A. Ayoub CA920120012USl_8150-0353 2981
73109 7590 05/26/2017
Cuenot, Forsythe & Kim, LLC
20283 State Road 7
Ste. 300
Boca Raton, EL 33498
EXAMINER
PHAM, KHANH B
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2166
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/26/2017 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):
ibmptomail@iplawpro.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte KHALIL A. AYOUB, PAUL IONESCU, IOSIF VIOREL ONUT,
and WAYNE DUNCAN SMITH
Appeal 2017-001018
Application 13/915,96c1
Technology Center 2100
Before JAMES R. HUGHES, ERIC S. FRAHM, and
MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges.
McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
rejection of claims 1-3,6-10, 13-17, and 20, which are all the claims
pending and on appeal in this application.2 We have jurisdiction under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is IBM Corporation.
App. Br. 1.
2 The Examiner has indicated claims 4, 5, 11, 12, 18, and 19 are objected to
as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if
rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base
claim and any intervening claims. Final Act. 5.
Appeal 2017-001018
Application 13/915,960
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Introduction
Appellants’ application relates to a website crawler that identifies
equivalent links on a web page and determines whether or not to separately
crawl each of the equivalent links. Abstract. Claim 1 is illustrative of the
appealed subject matter and reads as follows:
1. A computer-implemented process for identifying
equivalent links on a page, the computer-implemented process
comprising:
determining whether a crawler visited all required
universal resource locators;
responsive to a determination that the crawler has not
visited all required universal resource locators, locating a next
URL to be crawled to form a current URL;
processing the current URL, using a processor, to identify
equivalent URLs;
determining whether the crawler visited the current URL;
responsive to a determination that the crawler has not
visited the current URL, determining whether necessary to crawl
all identified equivalent URLs; and
responsive to a determination that it is necessary to crawl
all identified equivalent URLs, adding all identified equivalent
URLs to a list of URLs to be crawled.
The Examiner’s Rejection
Claims 1-3, 6-10, 13-17, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Najork (US 2006/0218143 Al; Sep. 28, 2006)
(“Najork ’143”) and Najork et al. (US 6,952,730 Bl; Oct. 4, 2005) (“Najork
’730”). Final Act. 2-5.
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Appeal 2017-001018
Application 13/915,960
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in consideration of
Appellants’ contentions and the evidence of record. Appellants persuade us
the Examiner fails to establish the claims are unpatentable over the cited
prior art.
The Examiner finds the combination of Najork ’143 and Najork ’730
teaches or suggests “responsive to a determination that it is necessary to
crawl all identified equivalent URLs, adding all identified equivalent URLs
to a list of URLs to be crawled,” as recited in claim 1. Final Act. 3—4; Ans.
4-6. In particular, the Examiner finds the Najork references both teach this
limitation by teaching adding a subset of equivalent URLs to the list of
URLs to be crawled. Ans. 6. The Examiner finds adding a subset of
equivalent URLs is sufficient because the limitation “all identified
equivalent URLs” is optional. Ans. 4-6. The Examiner concludes this
limitation is optional because step 816 in Figure 8 (“Add all equivalent
URLs of the identified equivalent URLs to a list of the URLs to be
crawled”) (Ans. 4-5) only occurs when the outcome of step 812
(“Determine whether necessary to crawl all identified equivalent URLs”) is
“Yes.” Ans. 4 (citing Fig. 8).
Appellants argue the Examiner erred because the Examiner has
rewritten the limitation “adding all identified equivalent URLs to a list of
URLs to be crawled” to be adding all “or a subset of all” identified
equivalent URLs to a list of URLs to be crawled. Reply Br. 8.
Appellants have persuaded us the Examiner erred. Claim 1 recites
“responsive to a determination that the crawler has not visited the current
URL, determining whether necessary to crawl all identified equivalent
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Appeal 2017-001018
Application 13/915,960
URLs.” Claim 1 further recites “responsive to a determination that it is
necessary to crawl all identified equivalent URLs, adding all identified
equivalent URLs to a list of URLs to be crawled.” In other words, the
computer-implemented process of claim 1 is only performed when a
determination is made that it is “necessary to crawl all identified equivalent
URLs” and “all identified equivalent URLs” are added to a list of URLs to
be crawled. We agree with Appellants that the Examiner has abrogated this
limitation by finding that adding a mere subset of all identified equivalent
URLs satisfies the limitation. The Examiner’s reliance on Figure 8 is
misplaced because the Examiner relies on a scenario that has not been
claimed (determining that not all identified equivalent URLs need be
crawled) to rewrite the claim language.
Accordingly, on this record we do not sustain the rejection of claim 1.
We also do not sustain the rejection of independent claims 8 and 15, which
recite similar limitations, or dependent claims 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17,
and 20.
DECISION
We reverse the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 1-3, 6-10,
13-17, and 20.
REVERSED
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