Ex Parte Cline et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Sep 27, 2013

10993185 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 27, 2013)

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.
10/993,185 11/19/2004 William Russell Cline JR. IMGI.117648 3464
5251 7590 09/27/2013
SHOOK, HARDY & BACON LLP
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT
2555 GRAND BLVD
KANSAS CITY, MO 64108-2613
EXAMINER
BROWN, ALVIN L
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3682
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/27/2013 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 WILLIAM RUSSELL CLINE, JR.,
GERALD BRUCE WILLIAMS,
DAVID THOMAS FEYERABEND,
JASVINDARJIT SINGH, and NEAL ARJUNA SHARMA
____________

Appeal 2011-000987
Application 10/993,185
Technology Center 3600
____________

Before MURRIEL E. CRAWFORD, JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, and
MEREDITH C. PETRAVICK, Administrative Patent Judges.

CRAWFORD, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2011-000987
Application 10/993,185

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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of the Examiner’s
final decision rejecting claims 1-13 and 15-24. We have jurisdiction over
the appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM-IN-PART.
Claim 1 is illustrative:
1. A method for quantifying potential viewer awareness of
advertising content that is within a source of media, the method
comprising:
storing, in a computer readable medium, the source of
media, thereby providing a stored source of media;
segmenting the stored source of media into a plurality of
segments of interest;
receiving an identification of one or more advertisement
detections that appear in the plurality of segments, wherein the
one or more advertisement detections were made without
employing image-recognition software;
associating one or more attributes with each of the
segments, wherein the one or more attributes include a size
indication, a duration indication, and an isolation indication
associated with the one or more advertisement detections;
based on the attributes, categorizing each of the segments
into a defined category to derive a plurality of individual
detection scores; and
aggregating the individual detection scores to provide
one or more valuation scores; and
generating one or more reports related to the one or more
advertisement detections.

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Appellants appeal the following rejections:
Claims 1-7, 10-11, 13, 15-18, 22, and 23 rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis (US 2007/0061203 Al; pub. Mar. 15,
2007) and Rosser (US 6,100,925; iss. Aug. 8, 2000).
Claim 8 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis,
Rosser, and Logan (US 2002/0120925 Al; pub. Aug. 29, 2002).
Claims 9 and 19 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Ellis, Rosser, and Shen (US 2004/0204983 Al; pub. Oct. 14, 2004).
Claim 12 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis,
Rosser, Ponte (US 7,047,242 B1; iss. May 16, 2006), Maggio (US
2002/0046098 Al; pub. Apr. 18,2002), and Landress (US 2003/0191816 Al;
pub. Oct. 9, 2003).
Claim 20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis,
Rosser, and Eldering (US 2006/0230053 Al; pub. Oct. 12, 2006) (hereinafter
“Eldering ‘053”).
Claims 21 and 24 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Ellis, Rosser, and Eldering (U.S. 6,820,277 B1; iss. Nov. 16, 2004)
(hereinafter “Eldering ‘277”).

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ANALYSIS
Claims 1-13
We are persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that the
combination of Ellis and Rosser teaches or suggests the step of “segmenting
the stored source of media into a plurality of segments of interest,” as recited
by independent claim 1 (App. Br. 18-19; Reply Br. 4-6). Appellants assert
that “Ellis’ organizing, targeting and inserting ads into computer games does
not involve any segmenting of a stored source of media” (Reply Br. 6).
The Examiner relies on the “advertisements [that] are organized and
targeted to specific users” in paragraph [0091] of Ellis to disclose this
limitation. (Ans. 3). The Examiner further determines that because Ellis
sends packets from its ad server which are assembled at the game client into
predetermined ad formats (Ans. 16), Ellis discloses the step of “segmenting
the stored source of media into a plurality of segments of interest,” as
presently claimed. We cannot agree.
In making this determination, we find that targeting ads to various
users and inserting them into gaming clients fails to disclose or suggest the
step of “segmenting the stored source of media into a plurality of segments
of interest,” as presently claimed. While the Examiner may be correct that
Ellis transmits data from the server to the client as packets (Ans. 16), we
cannot agree with the Examiner that these packets disclose “a plurality of
segments of interest” because Ellis’ packets are merely data broken down
into data units for transmission between the server and client (paras. [0045];
[0048]).
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To the extent the packets in Ellis are segmented, we do not find Ellis’
packets correspond to “segments of interest,” because packets are pieces of
data making up a file or an advertisement, and as such, would not allow for
advertisement detections to be made, as claim 1 further requires. Thus, the
Examiner has failed to establish that the advertisements in Ellis which are
organized and targeted to specific users via packets disclose or suggest
“segmenting the stored source of media into a plurality of segments of
interest,” as recited by independent claim 1.
Accordingly, as the Examiner has not set forth a prima facie case of
obviousness, we cannot sustain the rejection of independent claim 1, and
claims 2-7, 10, 11, and 13 from which they depend. We will also not sustain
the remaining rejections of claims 8, 9, and 12 over the cited prior art as
these rejections are directed to claims dependent on independent claim 1.
Cf. In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (“[D]ependent claims
are nonobvious if the independent claims from which they depend are
nonobvious.”).

Claims 15-21
We are not persuaded of error on the part of the Examiner in rejecting
claim 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), by Appellants’ argument that Ellis and
Rosser fail to disclose “a set of sponsorship detections that were derived
from advertising content within a video presentation” because Ellis and
Rosser are both directed to the insertion of advertisements, and not the
detection of sponsorships (App. Br. 21-22; Reply Br. 9-12). Initially, we
note that while independent claim 15 recites “sponsorship detections within
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the video presentation,” the claim does not specify the manner of detection
or how the sponsorship detections were derived. Nor does claim 15 recite a
stored source of media like that recited by independent claims 1 and 22.
While claim 15 does specify that “individual detection scores” are provided
without the use of image-recognition software, this limitation does not apply
to the initial association of sponsorship detections with one or more
attributes of interest. Additionally, while we acknowledge that both Ellis
and Rosser are generally directed to advertisement insertion, such a
distinction is not sufficient to prevent the “sponsorship detections” recited
by claim 15 from reading on the sponsorship insertions disclosed in Ellis and
Rosser.
Following, we find that Rosser discloses that its system uses camera
location and orientation information for detecting where to insert an
advertisement or sponsorship (col. 5:31-55; see Figs. 3 and 10). One of
ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that inserting a sponsorship at a
documented frame indexed by the location and orientation information
gathered by Rosser’s system provides a marker for detecting that insertion
later. Therefore, in the absence of any specificity as to the manner of
detection, we find the claimed “sponsorship detections,” as reasonably
broadly construed, reads on the index information gathered by Rosser for an
advertisement insertion.
We are also not persuaded of error on the part of the Examiner in
rejecting claim 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a), by Appellants’ argument that
Ellis and Rosser fail to disclose “associating each of a plurality of the
sponsorship detections within the video presentation with one or more
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attributes of interest, the attributes of interest including a size indication, a
duration indication, and an isolation indication” (App. Br. 22-23).
Specifically, Appellants argue that because “Rosser does not teach
‘sponsorship detections,’ it follows that Rosser does not teach ‘associating
each of a plurality of the sponsorship detections within the video
presentation with one or more attributes of interest,’” as recited by
independent claim 15 (App. Br. 24). However, as discussed above, we find
Rosser discloses “sponsorship detections,” as presently claimed.
In view of the foregoing, we will sustain the Examiner’s rejection of
independent claim 15, and claims 16-18 and 21 dependent thereon, under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis and Rosser. We will also sustain
the Examiner’s additional rejections of claim 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Ellis, Rosser, and Shen and claim 20 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Ellis, Rosser, and Eldering ‘053 because the
Appellants have not specifically addressed these rejections (App. Br. 30-31).

Claims 22-24
We are persuaded the Examiner erred in asserting that the
combination of Ellis and Rosser teaches or suggests the step of “storing, in a
computer readable medium, a video source that contains a plurality of
sponsorship images,” as recited by independent claim 22 (App. Br. 25;
Reply Br. 4-9). Specifically, the Appellants argue that the “occurrences”
recited by claim 22 are not the ad insertions disclosed in Ellis and Rosser,
but rather they are “‘occurrence[s] of sponsorship images’” that are
contained in a stored video source (App. Br. 25).
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The Examiner relies on the source of video disclosed at column 14,
lines 60-67 of Rosser to address this limitation (Ans. 8), however we cannot
agree with the Examiner that Rosser discloses “a video source that contains
a plurality of sponsorship images,” as presently recited by claim 22. In
making this determination, we find that the Examiner has failed to
demonstrate that the video source in Rosser includes a plurality of
sponsorship images or that such a limitation would be obvious. However, to
the contrary, given that Rosser and Ellis are both directed to inserting
advertisements, as opposed to determining occurrences of already stored
advertisements, we do not find such a limitation would be obvious in the
absence of any evidence or reasoning to the contrary on the record by the
Examiner. Thus, we find that the combination of Ellis and Rosser fails to
disclose or suggest “storing, in a computer readable medium, a video source
that contains a plurality of sponsorship images,” as recited by independent
claim 22.
Accordingly, as the Examiner has not set forth a prima facie case of
obviousness, we cannot sustain the rejection of independent claim 22 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a), and claims 23 and 24 dependent thereon.

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DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 15-21 and reverse the
Examiner’s rejections of claims 1-13 and 22-24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
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) (2011).

AFFIRMED-IN-PART

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