Ex Parte Kasravi et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

May 17, 2017

13327505 (P.T.A.B. May. 17, 2017)

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.
13/327,505 12/15/2011 Kas Kasravi 82834835 6278
56436 7590 05/19/2017
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
3404 E. Harmony Road
Mail Stop 79
Fort Collins, CO 80528
EXAMINER
PEACH, POLINA G
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2165
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/19/2017 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):
hpe.ip.mail@hpe.com
chris. mania @ hpe. com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte KAS KASRAVI, MEHMET KIVANC OZONAT, and
CLAUDIO BARTOLINI
Appeal 2017-002899
Application 13/327,5051
Technology Center 2100
Before JEAN R. HOMERE, JON M. JURGOVAN, and
PHILLIP A. BENNETT, Administrative Patent Judges.
JURGOVAN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
1 Appellants identify Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP as the
real party in interest. (Appeal Brief 1.)
Appeal 2017-002899
Application 13/327,505
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from a final rejection of
claims 1—4, 6—10, and 12—14. (App. Br. 1.) Claims 5, 11, and 15 have been
canceled. (Claims App’x.) We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
CLAIMED INVENTION
The claims are directed to identifying a collection of documents that
have concepts matching a target document. (Spec. 112.) Claim 1,
reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter:
1. A computer-implemented method for combinatorial
document matching comprising:
receiving, at a system having a processor, a target
document and a plurality of source documents;
constructing, via the system, consolidated source
document information associated with the plurality of source
documents;
creating, via the system, permutated concept data affiliated
with the target document; and
determining, via the system, a set of relevant documents
from the plurality of source documents based on a comparison of
the permutated concept data and the consolidated source
document information;
analyzing, via the system, text of each of the plurality of
source documents so as to extract associative source information
therefrom,
combinatorially matching the associative source
information relating to the plurality of source documents against
the permutated concept data associated with the target document;
and
compiling a set of matching documents based on
substantial similarity between at least one instantiation within the
permutated concept data set and a combination of at least two
source documents.
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Application 13/327,505
REJECTIONS
Claims 1—4, 7—10, and 13—14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
based on Aggarwal (US 6,542,889 Bl, Apr. 1, 2003). (Final Act. 2—10.)2
Claims 6 and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on
Aggarwal and Zwol (US 2009/0240729 Al, Sept. 24, 2009). (Final Act. 10-
11.)
ANALYSIS
Appellants argue that Aggarwal uses an inverted index to find a single
document that most closely matches a target document. (App. Br. 8—9,
Reply Br. 4—6.) Appellants contend, therefore, that Aggarwal fails to teach
or suggest the claimed limitation reciting the compiling of matching
documents based on “substantial similarity between at least one instantiation
within the permutated concept data set and a combination of at least two
source documents.” This limitation appears in independent claims 1, 7, and
13. {Id.)
The Examiner finds that Aggarwal teaches the argued claim
limitation. (Final Act. 4, Ans. 2-4.) Specifically, the Examiner’s rejection
cites to the following excerpt from Aggarwal:
In one embodiment, the finding step may comprise the steps of:
finding one or more concepts in the target document; [and]
evaluating an inverted list associated with the indexed
documents to find the one or more documents which have at least
one concept in common with the target document.
(Aggarwal, 3:33—37 (emphasis added).)
2 The statement of the rejection inadvertently includes canceled claims 5, 11,
and 15.
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Appeal 2017-002899
Application 13/327,505
We agree with the Examiner that Aggarwal’s plurality of documents having
concepts common to the target document may be construed as the claimed
“combination of at least two source documents,” and thus that Aggarwal
teaches the argued limitation of the independent claims.
In so finding, we note that claims are interpreted according to their
broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification. In re
Am. Acad. ofSci. Tech. Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2004). The
Specification in this case provides no special definition for the term
“combination” and Appellants offer none in their Briefs. Thus, we apply the
plain meaning of the term as one of ordinary skill in the art would
understand it. In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321 (Fed. Cir. 1989).
The Examiner finds that a “combination” is “a joining or merging of
different parts.” (Final Act. 6.) Appellants do not contest this definition,
which we find consistent with the plain meaning of the term based on our
online search.3
Aggarwal’s word chains and inverted index are generated from a
document collection (see, e.g., 9:51—56, Fig. 3 [310], [320]). Aggarwal’s
document collection may be viewed as a “combination of two or more
source documents” as recited in the claims because it is the result of the
joining or merging of different documents, which are parts of the collection.
As noted, Aggarwal’s inverted list or index may be used to find a plurality of
documents having at least one concept in common with the target document
3 Combination definition,
https://www.google.com/search?q=combination+defmition&sourceid=ie7&r
ls=com.microsoft:en-US:IE-Address&ie=&oe=&gws_rd=ssl#spf=l (last
viewed 5/10/2017).
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Appeal 2017-002899
Application 13/327,505
from the document collection. (Aggarwal 3:33—37.) Because the documents
so found are a subset of the document collection, they too constitute a
“combination of two or more source documents” according to the claims in
at least in those instances in which Aggarwal’s search returns a plurality of
documents. Thus, we agree with the Examiner that under the broadest
reasonable interpretation of the term “combination,” Aggarwal teaches or
suggests the argued claim limitation.
In the Reply Brief, Appellants cite to an example in the Specification
in which a target document containing concepts ABXY is matched with
source document 1 containing concepts AB and source document 2
containing concepts XY. (Reply Br. 4—6). In other words, the target
document contains concepts that are not all found in any one document, but
only are found in a combination of documents. However, given the broadest
reasonable interpretation of the claim language, this distinction is not
supported in the claims. In this regard, we note that limitations that are not
present in the claims cannot be relied upon for patentability. In re Self, 671
F.2d 1344, 1348 (CCPA 1982).
In conclusion, the argued claim limitation is sufficiently broad to
cover the circumstance of finding a plurality of documents sharing at least
one concept in common with the target document, as taught by Aggarwal.
Accordingly, we find Appellants’ argument unpersuasive to show error in
the Examiner’s rejection.
For the foregoing reasons, we sustain the rejection of independent
claims 1, 7, and 13 and their dependent claims for which no separate
arguments are presented. 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv).
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Application 13/327,505
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1—4, 6—10, and
12-14 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
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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