Ex Parte Fleischman et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 22, 201612838405 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 22, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 12/838,405 07/16/2010 11657 7590 Twitter/Fenwick Silicon Valley Center 801 California Street Mountain View, CA 94041 06/24/2016 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Michael Ben Fleischman 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 ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO. 25980-16997 6246 EXAMINER LIU, HEXING ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2167 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/24/2016 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): ptoc@fenwick.com fwtwitterpatents@fenwick.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte MICHAEL BEN FLEISCHMAN and DEB KUMAR ROY Appeal2014-006830 Application 12/838,405 Technology Center 2100 Before LINZY T. McCARTNEY, TERRENCE W. McMILLIN, and MONICA S. ULLAGADDI, Administrative Patent Judges. McCARTNEY, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a rejection of claims 1-25. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. Appeal2014-006830 Application 12/838,405 STATEMENT OF THE CASE The present application concerns "aggregating social media content items and references to the media events therein for estimating social interest in time-based media." Spec. i-f 2. Claim 1 illustrates the claimed subject matter: 1. A computer-executed method for associating social media content items with a time-based media event, the method compnsmg: accessing from a social networking system a plurality of candidate social media content items authored by users of the social networking system; for each of the candidate social media content items, determining a confidence score indicative of a probability that the candidate social media content item is relevant to the event; aligning with the event, based on their respective confidence scores, a subset of the plurality of the social media content items; and collecting in a data store the alignments between the event and the subset of the plurality of the social media content items. REJECTION Claims 1-25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Covell et al. (US 2007/0130580 Al; June 7, 2007) ("Covell"), Baluja et al. (US 7,853,622 Bl; Dec. 14, 2010) ("Baluja"), and Li et al. (US 2011/0179385 Al; July 21, 2011) ("Li"). ANALYSIS Claim 1 recites in relevant part "accessing from a social networking system a plurality of candidate social media content items authored by users 2 Appeal2014-006830 Application 12/838,405 of the social networking system" and "for each of the candidate social media content items, determining a confidence score indicative of a probability that the candidate social media content item is relevant to the event." The Examiner found Covell' s method of matching descriptors representing recorded audio snippets teaches or suggests these limitations, except for "accessing from a social networking system ... content items authored by users." See Final Act. 3-5. The Examiner found Li's "explicit annotation, reaction, comments from social networking site[ s] ... relating to a viewing content or event" teaches this part of the disputed limitations. Id. at 5. The Examiner concluded a combination of Covell's and Li's teachings would have suggested the disputed limitations. 1 Id. Appellants argue, among other things, that the Examiner has not adequately explained why one of skill in the art would have been motivated to replace Covell's audio descriptors with Li's "explicit annotation, reaction, comments from social networking site[s]." See App. Br. 13-15; Reply Br. 8-9. Appellants also contend that "[ r ]eplacing one or more of the ambient audio or the reference audio in Covell with [Li's] social media content items would render Covell inoperable for the ambient audio identifying function that it is intended to perform." App. Br. 14. We find Appellants' arguments persuasive. The Examiner found one of skill in the art would have been motivated to modify Covell' s invention to include Li's "explicit annotation, reaction, comments from social networking site[ s] ... relating to a viewing content or event" because it would "allow efficient and accurate extraction, analyzing and compilation of 1 The Examiner relied on Baluja for certain aspects of the "aligning" and "collecting" limitations recited in claim 1. See Final Act. 4. 3 Appeal2014-006830 Application 12/838,405 content relating to current viewing content based on accessing of user activity from social networking sites." Final Act. 5 (citing Li. i-fi-16-10). But the Examiner has not explained (nor is it readily apparent) why this would be so. The cited portions of Li disclose the advantages provided by Li's system as a whole. The Examiner has not adequately explained why incorporating only Li's social network content into Covell' s system would result in these advantages. Moreover, the cited portions of Covell disclose determining the similarity of audio descriptors. See, e.g., Covell i1 60. The Examiner has not provided sufficient evidence or reasoning to establish that replacing Covell's audio descriptors with Li's "explicit annotation, reaction, comments from social networking site[ s] ... relating to a viewing content or event" would result in a functioning system, much less have a system that has the advantages found by the Examiner. Although the Examiner also finds the Covell and Li are in the same field of endeavor, see Ans. 7-8, this finding does not address the deficiencies discussed above. Accordingly, based on the record before us, we do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of independent claim 1 or its dependent claims. Because independent claims 6, 9, 13, 16, 20, 21, and 25 each include similar limitations, we also do not sustain the Examiner's rejection of these claims or their respective dependent claims. DECISION For the above reasons, we reverse the rejection of claims 1-25. 4 Appeal2014-006830 Application 12/838,405 REVERSED 5 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation