Ex Parte JIN et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 22, 2016

12699122 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 22, 2016)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
12/699, 122 02/03/2010
89980 7590 02/24/2016
NSIPLAW
P.O. Box 65745
Washington, DC 20035
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Hee GyuJIN
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.
012052.0354 5308
EXAMINER
CONYERS, DAW AUNE A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2159
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/24/2016 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):
pto@nsiplaw.com
pto.nsip@gmail.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte HEE GYU JIN, KYOUNG GU WOO, KYU SEOK SHIM,
HYOUNGMIN PARK, and YOUNGHOON KIM
Appeal2014-004528
Application 12/699, 122
Technology Center 2100
Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, MIRIAM L. QUINN, and
SCOTT B. HOWARD, Administrative Patent Judges.
HOW ARD, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants 1 appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a Final Rejection of
claims 1-18, which constitute all of the claims pending in this application.
We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We affirm.
1 Appellants identify Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. as the real party in
interest. App. Br. 3.
Appeal2014-004528
Application 12/699, 122
THE INVENTION
The claimed invention is directed to a method and apparatus for query
processing using a portion of then-grams with respect to a search key where
the selection of the portion is based on processing cost. Spec. 2, 11. 11-16.
Claim 1, reproduced below with the disputed limitation highlighted, is
illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A method of processing a search key, the method
compnsmg:
selecting a portion of n-grams from all n-grams with
respect to the search key, based on a query processing cost;
extracting a candidate set of documents comprising the
search key, based on a posting list with respect to the portion of
n-grams; and
determining a document where the search key exists,
based on the candidate set.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Rangarajan us 5,706,365 Jan. 6, 1998
Damerau US 7,177,796 Bl Feb. 13,2007
Hans Argenton & Anke Feldhaus, The Treegram Index-An Efficient
Technique for Retrieval in Linguistic Treebanks, Proceedings ofEACL
'99, 267-68 (1999) (hereinafter "Argenton").
Yasushi Ogawa & Tom Matsuda, An Efficient Document Retrieval
Method Using n-gram Indexing, 33 Systems and Computers in Japan,
54---63 (2002) (hereinafter "Ogawa").
REJECTIONS
Claims 1-3, 6-12, and 15-18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as being unpatentable over Ogawa in view ofRangarajan. Final Act. 2-14.
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Application 12/699, 122
Claims 4 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Ogawa in view of Rangarajan and Argenton. Final Act.
14--15.
Claims 5 and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Ogawa in view of Rangarajan and Damerau. Final Act.
15-16.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner's rejection in light of Appellants'
contentions that the Examiner erred. In reaching this decision, we consider
all evidence presented and all arguments made by Appellants. We disagree
with Appellants' arguments with respect to claims 1-18, and we incorporate
herein and adopt as our own: ( 1) the findings and reasons set forth by the
Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken (Final Act. 2-16),
and (2) the reasons and rebuttals set forth in the Examiner's Answer in
response to Appellants' arguments (Ans. 2---6). We incorporate such
findings, reasons, and rebuttals herein by reference unless otherwise noted.
However, we highlight and address specific findings and arguments
regarding claim 1 for emphasis as follows.
The Examiner finds that Ogawa teaches a method of processing a
search using only a portion of n-grams of the search term, with the portion of
n-grams selected based on the query processing cost. Final Act. 3. The
Examiner further finds that Rangarajan teaches a method for processing
queries to generate a candidate set of documents and then determining which
of those candidate documents contain the search key. Final Act. 4. The
Examiner finds that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been
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Application 12/699, 122
motivated to modify Ogawa-with its teaching of using only a portion of n-
grams-with the search method of Rangarajan in order to improve the
teachings of Ogawa and improve query performance. Id.; Ans. 5---6.
Appellants argue Rangarajan does not teach the extracting feature of
claim 1 which uses only a portion of n-grams. App. Br. 11-13. Appellants
argue that instead of using a portion of then-grams, Rangarajan teaches
using all of then-grams. Id.
Nonobviousness cannot be established by attacking the references
individually when the rejection is predicated upon a combination of prior art
disclosures. In re Merck & Co. Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
The test for obviousness is not whether the claimed invention is expressly
suggested in any one or all of the references, but whether the claimed subject
matter would have been obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art in light
of the combined teachings of those references. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413,
425 (CCPA 1981). The Examiner's rejection is based on the combined
teachings of Ogawa---only a portion of n-grams-and the teachings of
Rangarajan-a specific method of searching using n-grams. Final Act. 3--4.
Appellants' argument-which focuses on the teaching ofRangarajan
without accounting for Ogawa's teaching of using only a portion of n-
grams-has not persuaded us that the Examiner erred.
Appellants also argue that Rangarajan teaches away from the claimed
invention because there "is no portion of n-grams selected in Rangarajan to
then extract the candidate set of documents as in independent claim 1."
App. Br. 13.
We find Appellants have not established that the prior art teaches
away from the claimed invention because Appellants have not demonstrated
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that "a person of ordinary skill, upon reading the reference, would be
discouraged from following the path set out in the reference, or would be led
in a direction divergent from the path that was taken by the applicant." In re
Gurley, 27 F.3d 551, 553 (Fed Cir. 1994). "'A reference may be said to
teach away when a person of ordinary skill, upon reading the reference,
would be discouraged from following the path set out in the reference, or
would be led in a direction divergent from the path that was taken by the
applicant."' Ricoh Co., Ltd. v. Quanta Computer, Inc., 550 F.3d 1325, 1332
(Fed. Cir. 2008) (quoting Optivus Tech., Inc. v. Ion Beam Appl 'ns S.A., 469
F.3d 978, 989 (Fed. Cir. 2006)). Although Rangarajan only discloses using
all n-grams, Appellants have not pointed to any teaching suggesting that one
could not use a portion of n-grams.
Finally, Appellants also argue that there is no motivation to combine
Ogawa and Rangarajan. App. Br. 14--15. Appellants argue that a person of
ordinary skill in the art would not combine the references because one is
directed to minimizing processing costs, but the other is directed to
allocating sufficient memory. App. Br. 14. Appellants also argue that the
Examiner does not "demonstrate where [] Ogawa indicate[ s] or suggest[ s] a
need to incorporate the description of Rangarajan into Ogawa's description,
when Ogawa is directed to a retrieval method that avoids the processing as
done in Rangarajan." App. Br. 14--15.
We are not persuaded by Appellants' s argument that the Examiner
erred in finding a motivation to combine the references. Appellants rely on
an incorrect statement of law. In KSR, the Supreme Court rejected the rigid
use of teaching, suggestion, or motivation ("TSM") test. KSR Int 'l Co. v.
Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415 (2007). Instead, "the analysis need not seek
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Application 12/699, 122
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 ordinary skill in the art would employ." Id. at 418. Thus, to the
extent Appellants' argument is premised on applying the TSM test, it is not
persuasive of Examiner error.
The Supreme Court also held that "if a technique has been used to
improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize
that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is
obvious unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill." KSR, 550
U.S. at 417. "The combination of familiar elements according to known
methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable
results." Id. at 416; see also id. at 417 ("If a person of ordinary skill in the
art can implement a predictable variation, and would see the benefit of doing
so,§ 103 likely bars its patentability."). Applying the KSR standard, the
Examiner finds that a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been
motivated to combine the references in order to take advantage of the
predictable results:
In this case, the skilled artisan would have been motivated to
improve the teachings of Ogawa with the teachings of
Rangarajan for processing queries and deriving the index that
reduce the size of n-gram index and improves the query
performance by eliminating the redundancy of the position
information that exists in then-gram index.
Ans. 5---6. We agree with and adopt the Examiner's finding.
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner's rejection of claim 1, along
with the rejections of claims 10 and 11, which are argued on the same
grounds (App. Br. 18-20), and claims 2, 3, 6-9, 12, and 15-18, which are
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not argued separately (App. Br. 17-18, 20-21). With respect to dependent
claims 4, 5, 13, and 14, Appellants merely contend that because the
additional references used in the rejections of these claims (Argenton and
Damerau) do not cure the deficiencies in claim 1, the claims should be
allowed. App. Br. 21-27. Because we determine there are no deficiencies
associated with claim 1 for the reasons discussed above, we sustain the
rejections of these claims.
DECISION
For the above reasons, we affirm the Examiner's rejections of claims
1-18.
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
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