Ex Parte Johnson et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jul 5, 2018

14521039 (P.T.A.B. Jul. 5, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO.
14/521,039
82509 7590
Kunzler, PC.
50 W. Broadway
10th Floor
FILING DATE
10/22/2014
07/09/2018
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Sandra K. Johnson
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.
AUS920140166US2 1091
EXAMINER
BERTRAM, RYAN
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2137
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
07 /09/2018 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):
docket@kunzlerlaw.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte SANDRA K. JOHNSON and GRANT D. MILLER
Appeal2018-000222
Application 14/521,039
Technology Center 2100
Before: ELENI MANTIS MERCADER, JOYCE CRAIG, and
MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges.
MANTIS MERCADER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from a rejection of claims 1-
14. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
Appeal2018-000222
Application 14/521,039
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to caching methodology for dynamic semantic
tables. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject
matter:
1. A method comprising:
determining a degree of relatedness for a database entry stored in
a concept table, the concept table being stored in cache, wherein
the degree of relatedness is based on a comparison between a
concept of data of the database entry and a concept of the concept
table;
determining an amount of data usage for the database entry, the
data usage comprising an amount of usage of the database entry
while in cache;
determining a cache flushing rating for the database entry, the
cache flushing rating determined from the degree of relatedness
of the database entry and the amount of data usage of the
database entry; and
flushing the database entry from the cache in response to the
cache flushing rating of the database entry being below a cache
flush threshold.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Johnson
Hsu
US 2012/0054185 Al Mar. 1, 2012
US 2014/0032698 Al Jan. 30, 2014
REJECTIONS
Claims 1-14 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Johnson in view of Hsu.
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OPINION
We adopt the Examiner's findings in the Answer and Final Office
Action and we add the following primarily for emphasis. We note that if
Appellants failed to present arguments on a particular rejection, we will not
unilaterally review those uncontested aspects of the rejection. See Ex parte
Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential); Hyatt v. Dudas,
551F.3d1307, 1313-14 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (the Board may treat arguments
Appellants failed to make for a given ground of rejection as waived).
Appellants argue that claim 1 requires storing concept tables in cache.
App. Br. 5. Appellants argue that Johnson never states that any portion of
the text, the tables, or the database is stored in cache. Id.
Appellants further argue that Hsu does not make up the deficiencies of
Johnson. App. Br. 5. According to Appellants, Hsu discusses caching, but
only in the context of caching video clips, and does not discuss any type of
data structure stored in cache. Id. Appellants concede that Hsu mentions
receiving semantic data about video clips (paras. 9, 18), but contend Hsu
never states where the semantic data would reside. Id.
We do not agree. We agree with the Examiner's finding that
Johnson's database entries may be selectively stored into concept tables
based on a degree of relatedness (Ans. 10 citing paras. 30-32). In particular,
paragraph 32 recites that a semantic analysis is performed to generate a
degree of relatedness between the information from a request and each of the
tables in a database (para. 32). A request may be a request to store new
content into the database, or a request to compare against content stored in
the database. Id. The degree of relatedness is a numeric value that
represents how closely the information in the request is related to the
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Application 14/521,039
particular concept. Id. For example, "orange" has a higher degree of
relatedness to "color" than "door." Id. The Examiner's finding of the
degree of relatedness being taught by Johnson is consistent with Appellants'
own Specification, which states: "[f]or example, a concept may be 'doctor'
and data entries with the term 'doctor' may be included as well as data
entries with other related concepts or terms, such as 'physician,' 'MD,'
'clinician'." Spec. para. 34.
We further agree with the Examiner that Hsu teaches caching data
content to conserve network bandwidth and take advantage of the inherent
speed benefits of caching over disk storage (Ans. 10 citing Hsu, paras. 9-
10). The Examiner further finds, and we agree, that Hsu notes that "the
content may comprise any type of data" (Id. citing para.15).
We agree with the Examiner that when combined, the data content
stored in the cache of Hsu may comprise database entries as taught by
Johnson. Ans. 11. We agree with the Examiner that the structure in the
cache that comprises the plurality of database entries is broadly but
reasonably interpreted to be a concept table. Id.
Appellants further argue that Hsu does not teach "determining a cache
flushing rating for the database entry" where the cache flushing rating is
"determined from the degree of relatedness of the database entry and the
amount of data usage of the database entry," as recited in Claim 1. App. Br.
5. Appellants assert that Johnson does not teach storing any data in cache
and therefore does not teach determining a cache flushing rating for the
database entry where the cache flushing rating is determined from the degree
of relatedness of the database entry and the amount of data usage of the
database entry. Id. Appellants argue that Hsu only discusses storing video
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Application 14/521,039
clips and related data in cache and choosing whether or not to eject a video
clip based on the sematic data. Id.
According to Appellants, Hsu teaches replacing traditional usage-
based ejection with rejection based on the semantic data (paras. 26 and 27).
Id. at 5---6. The equation depicted in paragraph 26 only has weighted
semantic data regarding popularity of a video clip and does not include
anything equivalent to a degree of relatedness based on a comparison
between a concept of data of a database entry and a concept table. Id.
We do not agree with Appellants' argument. We agree with the
Examiner that the construction of the term "usage" as argued by Appellants
is very narrow, equating the term with a number of reads or writes (Ans. 11).
However, we agree with the Examiner's broad but reasonable interpretation
of the term "usage," which may relate to other characteristics of the data as
described below. Id. In other words, "usage" may refer to current usage
(i.e., times data requested from cache) but also future usage (i.e., likelihood
that the data will be requested from cache or likelihood of popularity).
The Examiner finds, and we agree, that Hsu teaches a caching system
which "may leverage semantic data available (e.g. in
addition to just count of video clip access) to predict what contents may
become 'popular'" (Ans. 11 citing para. 25). This information may be used
to determine a semantic based popularity rank, which may then be utilized at
cache eviction time to determine which data should be cached or not. Ans.
11. The Examiner finds, and we agree, the equation used to determine the
rank is taught as:
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Semantic Based Popularity Rank=(Weight.sub.1 )*(times link
referred to in related content)+(Weight.sub.2)*(times a playlist
including the content has been
followed)+(Weight.sub.3)*(number of times content link
included in other means of sharing (e.g., email, social network,
etc.))+(weight.sub.4)*(other semantic data).
Ans. 12 and see par. 26.
The Examiner finds, and we agree, that as written, the number of
times a link to the content is shared, or playlist including the content is
followed, or times a link to the content is referred is interpreted to be the
"usage" of the data. Ans. 11. The Examiner further finds that when
Johnson's teaching of the use of a degree of relatedness for data (i.e.,
semantic data) (para. 30) is combined with Hsu to serve as "other semantic
data" used in the above equation, then the semantic based popularity rank
used to determine which data should be in the cache in Hsu, is based both of
an amount of "usage" (i.e., the parts of the equation including: times link
referred to in related content, times a playlist including the content has been
followed, and number of times content link included in other means of
sharing (e.g., email, social network, etc.)), and the degree of relatedness (i.e.,
other semantic data). Ans. 12.
Appellants further argue that Hsu exclusively teaches using semantic
data to determine cache ejection instead of whether or not the data in cache
is accessed. App. Br. 7 citing para. 27. According to Appellants, one of skill
in the art reading Hsu would be led away from "determining a cache
flushing rating for the database entry, the cache flushing rating determined
from the degree of relatedness of the database entry and the amount of data
usage of the database entry," as recited in Claim 1. App. Br. 7.
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We do not agree. "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 In re Kahn, 441F.3d977, 990 (Fed. Cir. 2006)). Paragraph 27,
cited by Appellants, states that "instead of the simple heuristic to replace the
least recently referenced item, some of the above web semantics can be
leveraged to distinguish the ones that are more likely to be popular in the
future (although the current hit count is low) and keep them in cache" (para.
27, emphasis added). Thus, it is clear that Hsu teaches that while the hit
count is determined, the popularity rank that includes the degree of
relatedness (i.e., semantic data) as taught by Johnson and the combination
with Hsu is also included in the determination of whether to flush data from
the cache. Thus, Hsu does not teach away as argued by Appellants because
the reference does not discourage determining cache ejection based on how
often the data in the cache is accessed (i.e., hit count), but rather also allows
for additional evaluation of whether data should be flushed based on other
factors as discussed supra.
Accordingly, we affirm the Examiner's rejection of claim 1 and, for
the same reasons, the Examiner's rejections of claims 2-14.
DECISION
The Examiner's rejection of claims 1-14 is affirmed.
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No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED
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