Ex Parte HauserDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 11, 201612435754 (P.T.A.B. May. 11, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 12/435,754 67208 7590 RGIPLLC 1103 TWIN CREEKS STE. 120 ALLEN, TX 75013 0510512009 05/13/2016 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Robert R. Hauser 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. Hauser007 4048 EXAMINER HUANG, MIRANDA M ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2157 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/13/2016 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): michele.zarinelli@gmail.com patentpatent@gmail.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte ROBERT R. HAUSER Appeal2014-007941 Application 12/435,754 Technology Center 2100 Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, NABEEL U. KHAN, and MICHAEL M. BARRY, Administrative Patent Judges. MacDONALD, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appeal2014-007941 Application 12/435,754 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of claims 1-20. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). Exemplary Claims Exemplary claims 1, 6, and 8 under appeal read as follows (emphasis added): 1. A method for preserving information associated with an online content submission comprising: receiving an event stream created during authoring of content; storing the event stream in a data store; receiving data at least partially indicative of the content; creating an association between the data and the event stream; and storing the association. 6. The method according to claim 5 wherein deriving the bind code comprises hashing at least one event of the event stream. 8. The method according to claim 1 compnsmg determining at least one work metric for the content from the event stream. 2 Appeal2014-007941 Application 12/435,754 Rejection on Appeal The Examiner rejected claims 1-20 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Goodman et al. (US 2005/0257148 Al; publ. Nov. 17, 2005) ("Goodman"). 1 Appellant's Contentions 1. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because "Goodman does not teach creating an association between the data and the event stream." App. Br. 10. Particularly: [T]he Office is construing the data of Goodman as the event stream of present claim 1. The Office states that the association is between the data and a form field. Therefore, the Office must be construing the form field of Goodman as the data at least partially indicative of the content of present claim 1. However, the form field cannot be construed as being data at least partially indicative of the content because claim 1 also requires that the event stream is created during authoring of content. Under the Office's construction of Goodman, the content is the form field. However, the data is not created during the authoring of the form field. Therefore, the Office's construction of Goodman is not consistent and Goodman does not teach all of the limitations of claim 1. Claim 1 and its dependent claims are allowable over Goodman for at least these reasons. As has been consistently argued throughout the prosecution of the present application, the only association taught by Goodman is an association between data entered by a user and a form field into which that data is entered. 1 Separate patentability is not argued for claims 2-5, 7, 9, and 13-18. Except for our ultimate decision, the Examiner's rejection of these claims is not discussed further herein. 3 Appeal2014-007941 Application 12/435,754 App. Br. 12 (emphasis omitted). 2. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because: At page 4, lines 14-18 of the Office Action of 13 August 2013, the Office, in regard to the machine learning process, states Therefore the observed events (location of entries, order of entries, temporal proximity of entries) are captured and used in conjunction with the database, illustrating the event stream is stored for further processing with database information. Therefore, Goodman teaches recording of event stream separate from data elements, and meets the limitation of claim 1. This statement is factually incorrect. App. Br. 14. 3. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because: In the Office Action of 13 August 2013; the Office rejects claim 12 by citing the machine learning component and the selective autofill component of Goodman as providing the authored content module (Office Action, page 11, lines 17-21). The Office has cited the user-based input recording component of the training scheme 200 of Goodman as providing the event observer module. However, there is no teaching or suggestion by Goodman that these components are incorporated into a web page and provided with the web page to the client browser. In the Office Action of 13 August 2013, the Office refers to the method steps described in paragraph [0088] of Goodman as including recording of data into a form field by an instrumented tool bar. The Office's comments do not take into account the difference between recording "content" and recording "events generated when content is added to the at least one user entry element". The toolbar of Goodman does not meet the limitations of the event observer module because it does not 4 Appeal2014-007941 Application 12/435,754 record the events generated when content is added to the user entry element. App. Br. 17-18. 4. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because: "Hashing" is a term of art and that refers generally to an algorithmic process that produces data of a fixed length from original data, typically of a longer length. The probabilistic determination referred to by the Office would not be considered by a person skilled in the art to meet the limitations of claim 6. App. Br. 15. 5. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 8 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because: Work metrics are parameters that describe the amount of work that has been performed to produce the content. . . . In particular, because the auto-fill process relies on stored content, there is no suggestion of calculating the amount of work performed to produce the original content (the authored content) as required by claim 8. App. Br. 15-16. 6. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because: The Office argues (Office Action, page 11, lines 4-5) that paragraph [0044] of Goodman demonstrates that the recency of a file can be evaluated to produce the autofill content. However, this does not meet the claimed limitation. Claim 10 requires a determining of the amount of time to produce the content, not the amount of time since the content was last used. App. Br. 16. 5 Appeal2014-007941 Application 12/435,754 7. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 11 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because: In the Office Action of 13 August 2013, the Office rejects claim 11 citing Goodman but provides no substantiation of the rejection nor any evidence of where Goodman teaches the claimed limitations. App. Br. 17. 8. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because: Determining data to auto-fill into a form of a web page does not meet the definition of determining a work metric, i.e. determining the amount of work performed, to produce the event stream. App. Br. 18. [T]he calculation of a best guess is not a calculation of a work metric for producing the event stream. Claim 19 thus defines limitations not taught by Goodman. App. Br. 20. 9. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 20 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because: Goodman only teaches detecting when a field has been selected or interacted with by a user. The inference that the interaction is by a human user is an inference made by the Office only and is not supported by the teachings of Goodman. It is just as conceivable that a web bot could select a form field and invoke the auto-fill process of Goodman. Goodman provides no teaching or suggestion of determining whether or not the user is a human user. App. Br. 22. 6 Appeal2014-007941 Application 12/435,754 10. Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because: The Office's arguments ... support the Applicant's argument that Goodman teaches mapping data to form fields. This mapping or association does not meet the claimed limitation of an association between the data and the events. A form field is neither the data, as defined in claim 1, nor an event. Reply Br. 2. Issue on Appeal Did the Examiner err in rejecting claims 1, 6, 8, 10-12, 19, and 20 as being anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) because Goodman fails to describe the argued limitations? ANALYSIS We have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellant's arguments (Appeal Brief and Reply Brief) that the Examiner has erred. As to above contentions 1 and 2, we disagree. Although we find the Examiner's response (Ans. 2--4) unhelpful as it does not correspond clearly to the analysis of the Examiner's rejection (Final Act. 6-7), we are unpersuaded by Appellant's above contentions 1 and 2. As to above contention 1, Appellant's statement "[u]nder the Office's construction of Goodman, the content is the form field" (App. Br. 12) does not correspond to the rejection before us. We find no such construction in the Examiner's analysis. Rather, the content in the Examiner's rejection is the "mailing information" (Final Act. 6) entered into the form field by the data in the event stream. Appellant is raising and then knocking down a straw man 7 Appeal2014-007941 Application 12/435,754 rejection that was never made by the Examiner. This form of argument is unavailing to show Examiner error. As to above contention 2, we do not find the argued items, "location of entries, order of entries, temporal proximity of entries" (Final Act. 4), in the rejection of claim 1. Appellant's argument regarding the correctness of the Examiner's statement is not relevant to the rejection before us. As to above contention 10, we disagree. Contrary to Appellant's argument, a type or label of a form field can itself be data. We agree with the Examiner's examples of types of form fields (name, email address, billing address etc.). Final Act. 7. Appellant appears to be basing his argument the claimed "data" as having particular limitations, which particular limitations Appellant does not explain to this panel in any meaningful way. As to above contention 3, we disagree with Appellants' argument for the reasons above and set forth by the Examiner (Ans. 7). Further, Appellant provides no persuasive explanation for how the statement "[t]he Office's comments do not take into account the difference between recording 'content' and recording 'events generated when content is added to the at least one user entry element"' demonstrates error. App. Br. 18. As to above contentions 4, 5, 7, and 8, we agree with Appellant's arguments. As to above contentions 6 and 9, we do not reach these arguments. 8 Appeal2014-007941 Application 12/435,754 CONCLUSIONS (1) The Examiner has not erred in rejecting claims 1-5, 7, and 11-18 as being anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). (2) Appellant has established that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 6, 8-10, 19, and 20 as being anticipated by Goodman under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b). (3) On this record, claims 6, 8-10, 19, and 20 have not been shown to be unpatentable. (4) Claims 1-5, 7, and 11-18 are not patentable. DECISION The Examiner's rejection of claims 1-5, 7, and 11-18 as being anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) is affirmed. The Examiner's rejection of claim 6, 8-10, 19, and 20 as being anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) is reversed. 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-IN-PART 9 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation