10901556 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 17, 2013)

Ex Parte Erhart et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardSep 17, 2013

10901556 (P.T.A.B. Sep. 17, 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. 10/901,556 07/29/2004 George W. Erhart AVYA.53US01 9440 109149 7590 09/17/2013 Cochran Freund & Young/ AVAYA, Inc. 2026 Caribou Drive Suite 201 Fort Collins, CO 80525 EXAMINER ADESANYA, OLUJIMI A ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2658 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 09/17/2013 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 GEORGE W. ERHART, VALENTINE C. MATULA, DAVID SKIBA, and NA'IM TYSON ___________ Appeal 2011-003246 Application 10/901,556 Technology Center 2600 ____________ Before MARC S. HOFF, DEBRA K. STEPHENS, and DANIEL N. FISHMAN, Administrative Patent Judges. FISHMAN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2011-003246 Application 10/901,556 2 This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final rejection of claims 1-20. App. Br. 6. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants’ invention relates to classifying a spoken utterance into at least one of a plurality of categories. A spoken utterance is translated into text and a confidence score is provided for one or more terms in the translation. The spoken utterance is classified into at least one category, based upon (i) a closeness measure between terms in the translation of the spoken utterance and terms in the at least one category and (ii) the confidence score. See generally Abstract. Claim 1 is illustrative: 1. A method comprising: obtaining, at an electronic call classification system, a translation of a spoken utterance into text; obtaining, at the electronic call classification system, a confidence score for one or more terms in said translation, wherein said confidence score indicates a reliability of said translation of said one or more terms; and classifying, at the electronic call classification system, said spoken utterance into at least one category, based upon (i) a closeness measure between terms in said translation of said spoken utterance and terms in said at least one category and (ii) said confidence score. THE REJECTIONS Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed to non- statutory subject matter. Ans. 3-4. Appeal 2011-003246 Application 10/901,556 3 Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Li (Improving Latent Semantic Indexing Based Classifier with Information Gain; Proc. ICSLP, (2002) and Hakkani-Tur (Active Learning for Automatic Speech Recognition; IEEE, 3904-07 (2002) (hereinafter “Hakkani”). THE § 101 REJECTION The Examiner rejects claim 1 finding that the recited steps are not associated with a machine or transformation but rather recite mental steps that could be performed completely by a human. Ans. 4. Appellants argue that the Examiner’s interpretation of the steps of claim 1 is unreasonably broad. App. Br. 20. We are unpersuaded. Claim 1 does not require use or application of a computer (or the recited “electronic call classification system”) in the recited steps. Rather, the claim merely recites that the steps are performed “at an electronic call classification system.” See claim 1. The recitation does not impose a limitation on the claim that the call classification system (e.g., a computer) be used for the recited steps. Rather, under a broad but reasonable interpretation of claim 1, a human could mentally completely perform the recited steps (i.e., while positioned at or near a computer or electronic call classification system). Such a method that can be performed by human thought alone is merely an abstract idea and is not patent-eligible under § 101. Methods which can be performed entirely in the human mind are unpatentable not because there is anything wrong with claiming mental method steps as part of a process containing non-mental steps, but rather because computational methods which can be performed entirely in the human mind are the Appeal 2011-003246 Application 10/901,556 4 types of methods that embody the “basic tools of scientific and technological work” that are free to all men and reserved exclusively to none. Benson, 409 U.S. at 67, 93 S.Ct. 253. CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2011). In view of the above discussion, we sustain the rejection of claim 1 under § 101 and claims 2-10 dependent from claim 1. THE § 103 REJECTION The Examiner rejects claim 1, finding that Li teaches all recited steps including classifying a translated spoken utterance based on a closeness measure and a confidence score but fails to teach that the confidence score “indicates a reliability of said translation of said one or more terms.” Ans. 5. The Examiner finds that Hakkani teaches computing a confidence score as a probability of a word being correctly recognized. Ans. 6. The Examiner further finds that the skilled artisan would combine the teachings of Li and Hakkani to “so as to obtain correct translations/recognition of the spoken word.” Id. Appellants argue that the Examiner has failed to express a rational reason for combining Li and Hakkani and instead relies on improper hindsight. App. Br. 13-16; Reply Br. 7-10. We are unpersuaded by Appellants’ arguments. Appellants contend that “[n]othing in the cited references suggests that the confidence score that indicates reliability of voice-to-text translation can be used in classifying calls.” App. Br. 15. “[H]owever, the analysis need not seek out precise teachings directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for a court can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of Appeal 2011-003246 Application 10/901,556 5 ordinary skill in the art would employ.” KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007). We agree with the Examiner that a skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine Li and Hakkani “to obtain correct translation/transcription results of the spoken utterance to enable effective routing of the user to the correct destination.” Ans. 17-18. The Examinerfurther notes that both Li and Hakkani are in the same field of endeavor as Appellants’ invention (i.e., call routing). Ans. 17-18. Thus, the Examiner concludes that the skilled artisan would have found it obvious to combine the references to substitute the degree of certainty (i.e., “confidence score”) represented in Li as the Information Gain (“IG”) with the confidence score of Hakkani represented as a degree of confidence of the recognition of a term/word in speech recognition in order to enable effective routing of calls by considering certainty of term/word recognition. Id. We agree. Appellants further contend that the fact that improved voice-to-text performance “was not evident at the time when the invention was made” evidences that the Examiner used impermissible hindsight. App. Br. 15. Appellants contend that an identified publication describing their invention in a peer-reviewed IEEE publication evidences that the invention was not evident at the time of invention. App. Br. 15. We are unpersuaded. We find that the mere fact that the invention was published (whether peer-reviewed or not) absent additional supporting evidence, is insufficient factual evidence in support of their contention. In view of the above discussion, we find that the Examiner has articulated a reason based on rational underpinnings for the combination of Li and Hakkani and Appellants have notpersuaded us the Examiner erred in concluding it would have been obvious to combine the teachings of Li and Appeal 2011-003246 Application 10/901,556 6 Hakkani. We therefore sustain the rejection under § 103 of independent claim 1 and claims 2-20 not argued separately with particularity. App. Br. 16-19. 1 DECISION For the reasons discussed above, the rejection of claims 1-10 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is affirmed. 2 For the reasons discussed above, the rejection of claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) 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)(1)(iv) (2010). AFFIRMED kis 1 Appellants presented arguments for claim 10 (App. Br. 17) and claim 17 (App. Br. 18-19) but withdrew those arguments (Reply Br. 7). We therefore do not consider these withdrawn arguments. 2 Should this application proceed in further prosecution, we direct the Examiner’s attention to claims 18-20, which recite a “machine recordable medium.” The Specification specifically recites “recordable medium” and “transmission medium” as examples of “computer readable medium” but does not specifically exclude transitory signals from “machine recordable medium.” See David J. Kappos, Subject Matter Eligibility of Computer Readable Media, 1351 Off. Gaz. Pat. Office 212 (Feb. 23, 2010). See also In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2007) and Manual of Patent Examining Procedures (“MPEP”) § 2106(I).