Ex Parte Fletcher et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardApr 4, 201411959448 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 4, 2014) Copy Citation 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. 11/959,448 12/18/2007 James C. Fletcher RSW920070337US1/40403-001 2747 75949 7590 04/04/2014 IBM CORPORATION C/O: VanCott Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy 36 South State Street Suite 1900 Salt Lake City, UT 84111 EXAMINER BURKE, JEFF A ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2159 MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE 04/04/2014 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 JAMES C. FLETCHER, KIMBERLY D. KENNA, and WAYNE B. RILEY ____________________ Appeal 2011-012248 Application 11/959,448 Technology Center 2100 ____________________ Before HUBERT C. LORIN, MICHAEL W. KIM, and NINA L. MEDLOCK, Administrative Patent Judges. MEDLOCK, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal 2011-012248 Application 11/959,448 2 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1-21. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). STATEMENT OF THE DECISION We REVERSE.1 THE CLAIMED INVENTION Appellants’ claimed invention is directed to a system and method for discovering and distributing relevant business information contained in a mashup by extracting elements, relationships, and dependencies from a mashup page; assembling the information into a data structure; and making the data structure available to other entities (Spec., paras. [0002] and [0003]). Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal: 1. A computer program product for discovering and distributing relevant business information contained in a mashup, the computer program product comprising: a computer usable storage medium having computer usable program code embodied therewith, the computer usable program code comprising: computer usable program code configured to interrogate a mashup maker to discover the elements, relationships, and dependencies embodied by a mashup page; 1 Our decision will refer to Appellants’ Appeal Brief (“App. Br.,” filed March 21, 2011) and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed July 18, 2011), and the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed May 31, 2011). Appeal 2011-012248 Application 11/959,448 3 computer usable program code configured to assemble information representing said elements, relationships, and dependencies to a data structure, and computer usable program code configured to make said data structure accessible to other entities. THE REJECTION The following rejection is before us for review: Claims 1-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as anticipated by Hite (US 2007/0094256 A1, pub. Apr. 26, 2007). ANALYSIS Independent claim 1 and dependent claims 2-12 Appellants argue that the Examiner erred in interpreting the term “mashup,” and, therefore, erred in rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) because Hite has nothing to do with mashups, and does not disclose “computer usable program code configured to interrogate a mashup maker to discover the elements, relationships, and dependencies embodied by a mashup page,” as recited in claim 1 (App. Br. 10-15 and Reply Br. 4-9). Appellants assert that the term “mashup” is defined in paragraph [0022] of the Specification, and that this definition “is consistent with the ordinary meaning of the term ‘mashup’ in the art” (App. Br. 11). Appellants also cite paragraph [0023] of the Specification as providing a further definition of “mashup.” Appellant’s specification further defines a “mashup” as follows. “In a very simple example, a website creates a mashup when it pulls a map from a map database on another web site or server and then adds additional data such as store or outlet location and contact information to that map for presentation to a user.” (Appellant’s specification, paragraph 0023). A defining feature Appeal 2011-012248 Application 11/959,448 4 of mashups is the flexibility they provide to the end user to customize the sources and presentation of data within the mashup, (Appellant’s specification, paragraph 0024). (App. Br. 11). The Examiner maintains that Appellants have not provided a definition of the term mashup, and that the cited paragraphs of the Specification are merely examples of what the term may generally refer to or what a mashup may be (Ans. 15). Nonetheless, directing our attention to paragraph [0038] of Hite, the Examiner concludes, “[i]n any case, a packaged application [as disclosed in Hite] is an integration of application component[s], i.e.[,] data from one or more sources, which the end-user has primary control over,” and, therefore, meets “what the application describes as a mashup” (id. at 15-16). We begin our analysis by considering the scope and meaning of the term “mashup.” There is a heavy presumption that claim terms take on their “plain, ordinary, and accustomed meaning to one of ordinary skill in the relevant art.” See, e.g., Prima Tek II, L.L.C. v. Polypap, S.A.R.L. 318 F.3d 1143, 1148 (Fed. Cir. 2003). Appellants may overcome that presumption by acting as their own lexicographer so as to assign a special definition to each claim term, but such a definition must be “clearly set forth” and “explicit.” Id. Paragraph [0022] of the Specification, reproduced below, makes a number of statements regarding “mashups:” [0022] One potentially rich source for discovering and updating relationships between configuration items can be found in mashups. The term “mashup” refers generally to an integration of integrating data from one or more sources by an end-user who has primary control over the integration and Appeal 2011-012248 Application 11/959,448 5 presentation of that data. In principal, mashups can be done anywhere using any kind of programming language. Mashups can involve both internal and external data sources and can be web or client based. We find that the second statement, i.e., that “[t]he term ‘mashup’ refers generally to an integration of integrating data from one or more sources by an end-user who has primary control over the integration and presentation of that data” is a lexicographic definition, which must be given effect in interpreting the claim language. However, even if that were not so, we agree with Appellants that this definition is consistent with the ordinary and customary meaning of “mashup,” which is a term of art (App. Br. 11 and Reply Br. 5).2 With this definition in mind, we cannot agree with the Examiner that a packaged application, as disclosed in Hite, is a “mashup page,” as called for in claim 1. The Examiner maintains that a packaged application is a “mashup page” because it contains a plurality of application service components (Ans. 15, citing Hite, para. [0038]). However, we agree with Appellants that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not consider that an application and its subcomponents constitute a “mashup,” within the ordinary and customary meaning of that term (see Reply Br. 6). Hite is directed to a system of cataloging applications and providing a search function for the services available from the cataloged applications. 2 “A creative combination or mixing of content from different sources: movie mash-ups; a web mash-up that overlays digital maps with crime statistics” (http://dictionary.reference.comlbrowse/mashup); “a website or piece of software making use of information from more than one website, for example using photographs from one website and text from another” (http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/american/mashup). Appeal 2011-012248 Application 11/959,448 6 More specifically, Hite teaches an application discovery and semantic analysis software tool including a discovery engine that discovers application services, an application resource catalog that stores the discovered application services as software constructs in an application services ontology, and a semantic inference engine that semantically analyzes the software constructs in the application services ontology to determine relationships between the application services and enable more efficient searching of the discovered application services (Hite, Abstract). We agree with Appellants that Hite has nothing to do with mashups, and does not disclose “a mashup maker” or a “mashup page,” let alone “computer usable program code configured to interrogate a mashup maker to discover the elements, relationships, and dependencies embodied by a mashup page,” as recited in claim 1 (App. Br. 10-15 and Reply Br. 4-9). As such, Hite cannot be found to be anticipatory. See Kloster Speedsteel AB v. Crucible, Inc., 793 F.2d 1565, 1571 (Fed. Cir. 1986) (The “absence from the reference of any claimed element negates anticipation”). In view of the foregoing, we will not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e). For the same reasons, we also will not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 2-12, which depend from claim 1. Independent claims 13 and 21, and dependent claims 14-20 Independent claims 13 and 21 include language substantially similar to the language of claim 1. For example, claim 13 recites a method comprising “extracting elements, relationships, and dependencies from a mashup page” and “creating a data structure representing said elements, relationships, and dependencies embodied in said mashup page.” Claim 21 is directed to a corresponding system comprising “a computer for executing Appeal 2011-012248 Application 11/959,448 7 a mashup maker for producing mashups,” and recites that the mashup maker “is configured to extract elements, relationships, and dependencies from said mashup page and create a data structure representing said elements, relationships, and dependencies embodied in said mashup page.” The Examiner applied the same rationale in rejecting claims 13 and 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as applied with respect to claim 1. Therefore, we will not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 13 and 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) for the same reasons as set forth above with respect to claim 1. For the same reasons, we also will not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 14-20, which depend from claim 13. DECISION The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-21 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) is reversed. REVERSED Klh Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation