Ex Parte Brunn et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Dec 13, 2016

14075611 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 13, 2016)

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.
14/075,611 11/08/2013 Jonathan F. Brunn RSW920130044US2 4640
75949 7590
IBM CORPORATION
C/O: Fabian Vancott
215 South State Street
Suite 1200
Salt Lake City, UT 84111
12/15/2016 EXAMINER
WYSZYNSKI, AUBREY H
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2434
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/15/2016 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):
patents @ fabianvancott.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JONATHAN F. BRUNN,
JESSICA W. FORRESTER, STEPHEN C. HESS, and
JEFFREY R. HOY
Appeal 2016-003583
Application 14/075,611
Technology Center 2400
Before ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, SCOTT B. HOWARD, and
ALEX S. YAP, Administrative Patent Judges.
MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2016-003583
Application 14/075,611
STATEMENT OF CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a rejection of claims
1—19. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
THE INVENTION
The claimed invention is directed to delivering author specific content
including identifying author specific content with tags inserted into its
metadata across multiple online resources and delivering updates about the
author specific content to a user specified activity stream. Abstract.
Claims 1 and 15, reproduced below, are illustrative of the claimed
subject matter:
1. A method for delivering author specific content,
comprising:
identifying any content on multiple online resources
that appears to have been generated by a specific identified
author; and
delivering to a subscribing user, via an activity
stream, an indication of the content identified as being by
the specific identified author from the multiple online
resources.
15. A method for delivering author specific content,
comprising:
crawling open content across said multiple online
resources;
identifying content in any of the multiple online
resources that appears to have been generated by a specific
identified author;
determining whether said content is from an online
resource that is trusted;
authenticating that the author who appears to have
generated said content is the author of said content if said
online resource is not trusted; and
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delivering to a subscribing user, via an activity
stream, an indication of the content identified as being by
the specific identified author from the multiple online
resources.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Heilman US 2003/0163597 A1 Aug. 28,2003
Su US 2009/0249451 A1 Oct. 1,2009
REJECTIONS
The Examiner made the following rejections:
Claims 1,2, and 7—10 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as
being anticipated by Su.
Claims 3—6 and 11—19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Su in view of Heilman.
ISSUES
The pivotal issues are whether the Examiner erred in finding that Su
discloses the limitation of “identifying any content on multiple online
resources that appears to have been generated by a specific identified
author,” as recited in claim 1; the limitations of “determining whether said
content is from an online resource that is trusted; authenticating that the
author who appears to have generated said content is the author of said
content if said online resource is not trusted;” as recited in claim 15; and the
limitations of “authenticating who is author of said content if said content
fails to qualify as trusted content according to said trust policy; . . . and
dynamically delivering ongoing updates about content discovered by said
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crawling that was generated by the specific author via said activity stream,”
as recited in claim 17.
ANALYSIS
We adopt the Examiner’s findings in the Final Action, Advisory
Action, and Answer, and we add the following for emphasis.
Claims 1, 2, and 7—10 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)
Appellants argue Su does not actually teach or suggest “identifying
any content on multiple online resources that appears to have been
generated by a specific identified author,” as recited in claim 1 (App. Br.
11). In particular, Appellants argue that the Examiner’s finding that Su
teaches User Generated Content (i.e., UGC) being collected from the
plurality of social network sites and the collected UGC being correlated with
the extended social networks, including identifying the owners of content
according to the extended social networks of registered users (para. 28;
Advisory Act. 2) indicates that the authorship of content is never questioned
and is never authenticated (App. Br. 11). Appellants conclude that Su
merely describes crawling for content by identified authors from relatively
secure social media sites, such as Facebook and Google, where authorship is
not in question (para. 37; Fig. 6, as cited by the Final Act. 3; App. Br. 11).
We do not agree with Appellants’ argument. During prosecution,
claims must be given their broadest reasonable interpretation while reading
claim language in light of the specification as it would be interpreted by one
of ordinary skill in the art. In re Am. Acad, of Sci. Tech. Ctr., 367 F.3d
1359, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2004). In construing the meaning of claims terms,
caution must be taken not to import limitations from the specification as “[i]t
is the claims that measure the invention.” See SRIInt 7 v. Matsushita Elec.
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Corp. of Am., 775 F.2d 1107, 1121 (Fed. Cir. 1985) (enbanc) (citations
omitted). During ex parte prosecution, claims must be interpreted as broadly
as their terms reasonably allow since Applicants have the power during the
administrative process to amend the claims to avoid the prior art. In re Zletz,
893 F.2d 319, 322 (Fed. Cir. 1989).
Nothing in the recited language of claim 1 requires the authorship of
content to be questioned and the content to be authenticated (see claim 1).
Although the claim recites that “any content. . . that appears to have been
generated by a specified author,” we refuse to import limitations from the
Specification into the claim regarding questioning content and requiring
authentication. We further agree with the Examiner’s finding that Su (paras.
27—28) discloses collecting user generated content (UGC) that is trusted,
wherein the user registration information contains one or more identities that
correspond to different social network service providers (Ans. 15). The
Examiner finds, and we agree, Su teaches identifying multiple identities of a
single user in different social networks and then merges the user’s social
network that includes all the scattered relationships (Id. ). The correlated
UGC is filtered according to the user configuration of a user making a
request, and then the results are presented to the requesting user (Id.). Thus,
we agree with the Examiner that any result from an author search in Su
“appears” to be content from a specified author because they are identified
from relatively trusted sources until the results are authenticated (see Id.). In
other words, while we agree with Appellants that the content in Su is
retrieved “from relatively secure social media sites” (emphasis added, App.
Br. 11), this relativity is what reads on the claimed term “appears” to be
generated by “a specific identified author,” as recited in claim 1. The results
will appear to be content from a specified author until they are authenticated.
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Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 and, for
the same reasons, the Examiner’s rejection of claims 2 and 7—10, which are
not argued separately.
Claims 3—6 and 11—19 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
Appellants argue that the combination of Su and Heilman does not
teach or suggest the limitations of “determining whether said content is from
an online resource that is trusted; authenticating that the author who appears
to have generated said content is the author of said content if said online
resource is not trusted;” as recited in claim 15 (App. Br. 12—14). More
particularly, Appellants argue that authorship is never in question in the
discussion of Heilman and no authentication of authorship is described as
occurring based on the trusted status of the online resource purportedly
providing content from that author (Id. at 15). Appellants raise similar
arguments with respect to the limitation “determining whether said content
is trusted as content generated by the specific author based on a trust policy”
of claim 17 (Id. at 15—17).
We do not agree. We agree with the Examiner’s finding that Heilman
teaches a user may list authors that are trusted and can describe a “trust
policy” by listing trusted groups (para. 215; see Ans. 15). The Examiner
finds, and we agree, that Heilman teaches maintaining digital signatures for
authentication content of an identified author (see para. 167; Advisory
Action 2, Final Act. 6). Heilman teaches determining whether the content is
from an online resource that is trusted by a certificate or chain of certificates
signed by a well-known certification authority associating the digital
signature with the author (para. 212, Advisory Action 2).
Appellants additionally argue with respect to claim 17 that there is no
teaching or suggestion of “dynamically delivering ongoing updates about
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content discovered by said crawling that was generated by the specific
author via said activity stream” (App. Br. 15—17).
We do not agree. The Examiner finds, and we agree, Su teaches or
suggests that all content generated by a user in any social network site is
made available to friends, or in other words, all those that are linked to the
user via any social network (para. 35) and a crawler 506 also schedules itself
to crawl regularly in order to detect new content (para. 48, Advisory Action
2).
Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 15 and 17
and for the same reasons the rejection of claims 3—6, 11—14, 18, and 19
which were not argued separately.
CONCLUSION
The Examiner did not err in finding that Su discloses the limitation of
“identifying any content on multiple online resources that appears to have
been generated by a specific identified author,” as recited in claim 1; the
limitations of “determining whether said content is from an online resource
that is trusted; authenticating that the author who appears to have generated
said content is the author of said content if said online resource is not
trusted;” as recited in claim 15; and the limitations of “authenticating who is
author of said content if said content fails to quality as trusted content
according to said trust policy; . . . and dynamically delivering ongoing
updates about content discovered by said crawling that was generated by the
specific author via said activity stream,” as recited in claim 17.
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DECISION
For the above reasons, the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1—19 is
affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv).
AFFIRMED
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