Ex Parte Kiddle et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardMay 12, 201612644225 (P.T.A.B. May. 12, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 12/644,225 12/22/2009 61947 7590 05/16/2016 Apple - Blank Rome c/o Blank Rome LLP 717 Texas Avenue, Suite 1400 HOUSTON, TX 77002 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Graham R. Kiddle 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. P20611US1 (l 19-0659US1) 5995 EXAMINER LIAO, JASON G ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2156 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 05/16/2016 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): mbrininger@blankrome.com houstonpatents@blankrome.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte GRAHAM R. KIDDLE and JOSEPH A. MANICO Appeal2015-000857 Application 12/644,225 1 Technology Center 2100 Before CAROLYN D. THOMAS, JEFFREYS. SMITH, and TERRENCE W. MCMILLIN, Administrative Patent Judges. MCMILLIN, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL This is a decision on appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the final rejection of claims 19, 24--29, and 34--38. Final Act. 6, 10.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Apple Inc. (App. Br. 3). 2 Claims 20-23 and 30-33 stand objected to for being dependent upon a rejected base claim but are otherwise allowable. Final Act. 10. Thus, claims 20-23 and 30-33 are not before us in this appeal. Appeal2015-000857 Application 12/644,225 REJECTIONS ON APPEAL Claims 19, 24--29, and 34--383 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Aguera y Areas et al. (US 2008/0025646 Al, published Jan. 31, 2008) ("Aguera") and Kleinberger et al. (US 4,972,349, published Nov. 20, 1990) ("Kleinberger"). THE CLAIMED INVENTION The present invention generally relates to "the field of browsing collections of multimedia assets and more particular to a method for adaptively updating an interest criteria used to create a ranked display." Spec. 1. Independent claim 19 is directed to a non-transitory computer readable medium; independent claim 29 is directed to a method; and independent claim 38 is directed to a system. App. Br. 12, 16, 19 (Claims App'x 1, 5, 8). Claim 19 recites: 19. A non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with a computer program, the program comprising instructions that when executed by a data processing device cause the data processing device to: identify a collection of multimedia assets, each multimedia asset having metadata descriptive of the multimedia asset's content; receive a user-defined interest criterion that corresponds to, at least in part, one or more factors relating to the metadata; 3 The Examiner's statement of rejection includes claims 20-23. However, claims 20-23 and 30-33 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim but would otherwise be allowable. See Final Act. 10. There is no corresponding rejection for claims 20-23. As such, the statement of rejection should not include claims 20-23, as written above. 2 Appeal2015-000857 Application 12/644,225 identify a first portion of multimedia assets from the collection of multimedia assets based, at least in part, on the interest criterion; identify a second portion of multimedia assets from the collection of multimedia assets, the second portion comprising multimedia assets that are not related to the interest criterion; rank, using a processor, the media assets in the first portion of multimedia assets based at least in part on the interest criterion; display, in ranking order, at least some of the first portion of multimedia assets in a first region of a display; and display at least some of the second portion of multimedia assets in a second region of the display, wherein the first and second regions are disjoint. ANALYSIS \Ve have reviewed the Examiner's rejections in light of Appellants' arguments that the Examiner erred. \Ve are not persuaded that Appellants identifv reversible error. Upon consideration of the arguments presented in J ~ the Appeal Brief and Reply Brief, we agree with the Examiner that all the pending claims are unpatentable over the cited combination of references. \Ve adopt as our O\Vn the findings and reasons set fmih in the rejection from which this appeal is taken and in the Examiner's Answer. vVe provide the following explanation to highlight and address specific arguments and findings primarily for emphasis. Appellants contend "Kleinberger does not teach identifying multimedia assets that are not related to an interest criterion." App. Br. 8. Reply Br. 7-8. Specifically, Appellants argue "Kleinberger's criterion key is merely a word that appears the greatest number of times within a text file's content" having "absolutely nothing to do with metadata," and Kleinberger' s identification of "the same group of assets because it is based 3 Appeal2015-000857 Application 12/644,225 on a fixed criterion" does not teach identifying "variable groups of assets because the logic is based on a variable criterion." Id. The Examiner finds Kleinberger's user-supplied criteria during analysis, and user-specified subcategories, teaches "that a user defines the criteria that reflects the user's interests." Ans. 6. The Examiner further finds Kleinberger' s distinguishing "a set of texts in the overarching collection of fruit-related documents" teaches "a characteristic of those documents." Ans. 8. We agree with the Examiner. Appellants' contentions fail to take into account what the collective teachings of Aguera and Kleinberger would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art and are therefore ineffective to rebut the Examiner's prima facie case of obviousness. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981) ("The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art." (citations omitted)). This reasoning is applicable here because the Examiner used the combined teachings of Aguera and Kleinberger in the rejection of claim 19. As cited by the Examiner, the prior art describes: User interface configurator (UIC) 116 can be used to transmit images to a client that will present the images to a user within a user interface (UI). UIC 116 can determine which images to present and the manner in which they will be presented depending on a request from a user and any determinations made by the keypoint analyzer 114. The UIC 116 can make its determination on how to present images through use of a layout algorithm ... 4 Appeal2015-000857 Application 12/644,225 At operation 302, a first selected image is identified ... At operation 308, a similarity metric can be determined for the selected image and each of the other images. A similarity metric can be used to determine a level of similarity between the selected image and each of the other images.. . the similarity metric may be determined using non-spatial distance components. Such non-spatial distance components may include, but is not limited to: image luminance, time-of-day, lighting direction, and metadata-related factors. Aguera i-fi-122, 25, 27 (emphasis added). The program analyzes the set of texts which has been found to match the initial search request .. . The set of texts is then divided into two subsets at 92; the "right-group" containing all texts which are described by the "criterion key," and the "downgroup" containing those texts which are not described by the criterion key. The "right-group" is thus a list of all the texts in the current set which include among their key-words the "criterion key"; all remaining texts from the current set are listed in the "down-group." Kleinberger col. 9, 1. 54 - col. 10, 1. 5 (emphasis added); See Kleinberger Figs. 7, 9. In other words, Aguera teaches selecting images based on user input, and analyzing images using selected images and their corresponding metadata-related factors; and Kleinberger teaches selecting texts that match a criterion key, including identifying a second group of texts that do not match the criterion key. Appellants have not provided persuasive evidence that multimedia assets "having metadata descriptive of the multimedia asset's content" and "user-defined interest criterion that corresponds to, at least in part, one or more factors related to the metadata," as recited in claim 19, is not taught or suggested by Aguera's selection of an image and analysis using metadata- related factors for that image and other images. Appellants have also not 5 Appeal2015-000857 Application 12/644,225 provided persuasive evidence that the claimed "identify a second portion of multimedia assets from the collection of multimedia assets, the second portion comprising multimedia assets that are not related to the interest criterion," as recited in claim 19, is not taught or suggested by Aguera's multimedia assets (images) and user-defined interest criterion (user selection and metadata-related factors) and Kleinberger's multimedia assets (texts) that are identified as not related to the interest criterion (not described by the criterion key). Appellants further argue Kleinberger does not teach displaying groups that are identified based on interest criterion in "disjoint" display regions. See App. Br. 9. Specifically, Appellants argue "Kleinberger's two groups are displayed as part of one hierarchical 'tree"' and "Kleinberger' s 'right group' and 'down group' are therefore not displayed in the claimed disjoint regions." App. Br. 9. The Examiner finds there is no definition for "disjoint" in the written description, and rather that the written description "declines to place limits on how unrelated assets can be displayed." Ans. 12. The Examiner further finds Kleinberger' s Figure 9, showing "the display region for subcategory A. APPLES, and all subparts thereof, are not mixed with subcategory B. ORANGES" and having "no display region overlap for B. ORANGES," teaches disjointed display regions. Ans. 18-19. We agree with the Examiner. Appellants' argument is not commensurate with the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim. We conclude the claimed disjoint display regions includes Kleinberger' s hierarchical display where the results do not overlap and are shown as different results. During examination of a 6 Appeal2015-000857 Application 12/644,225 patent application, pending clams are given their broadest reasonable construction consistent with the specification. In re Am. A cad. of Sci. Tech Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1364 (Fed. Cir. 2004). Here, Appellants argue the claimed disjoint display regions require "regions that have no element in common" and do not include Kleinberger' s hierarchical tree. App. Br. 10. However, our interpretation is consistent with Appellants' Specification that states "the unrelated multimedia assets are included in the user interface in such a way that they can be clearly identified as being unrelated." Spec. 13, 11. 26-28. Appellants do not otherwise define display regions that are "disjoint." Appellants have not provided persuasive evidence that the claimed disjoint display regions do any more than merely show information is unrelated. As cited by the Examiner, Kleinberger describes: The program analyzes the set of texts which has been found to match the initial search request .. . The set of texts is then divided into two subsets at 92; the "right-group" containing all texts which are described by the "criterion key, " and the "downgroup" containing those texts which are not described by the criterion key. The "right-group" is thus a list of all the texts in the current set which include among their key-words the "criterion key"; all remaining texts from the current set are listed in the "down-group." Kleinberger col. 9, 1. 54- col. 10, 1. 5 (emphasis added). Illustrated in FIG. 9 is an example of such a screen display. The first line is a heading indicating the search request which created this analysis. The remainder of the display represents, by showing the successive criterion keys as headings, the results of the analysis in the form of an organized "table of contents" of the section of the textbase under analysis. In this "table of contents," lines ending with an arrow, such as line I.B.2, represent the presence of a text which includes only the keywords shown in that line and in the headings above it ... Lines in the 7 Appeal2015-000857 Application 12/644,225 table of contents with a number shown in brackets, such as line I.A.I, indicate that there are that number of texts including the keywords shown in that line and in the headings above, as well as other keywords, and those texts are not shown individually in this analysis (i.e., analysis "right" has been terminated at this level). Line l. C. above shows that there are other categories of texts not included in this table of contents (i.e., analysis "down" has been terminated at this point). Kleinberger col. 13 11. 30-55 (emphasis added). In other words, Kleinberger teaches providing two groups of texts: one group for texts that are described by the criterion key, and the other group for texts not described by the criterion key. See Kleinberger Figs. 7, 9. Kleinberger also teaches a display showing all results, with sections I.A. and LB. showing results for the group of texts described by the criterion key, separately from section LC. showing results for the group of texts not described by the criterion key. See Kleinberger Fig. 9. Appellants have not provided persuasive evidence that the claimed "display ... of the first portion of multimedia assets in a first region of a display; and display [of] at least some of the second portion of multimedia assets in a second region of the display," wherein "the second portion comprising multimedia assets that are not related to the interest criterion," and "wherein the first and second regions are disjoint," as recited in claim 19, does not include Kleinberger's display that shows a first and a second portion of data represented as different lines on the display that are separate and without any overlap or commonalities, wherein the second portion represents data that does not match the criteria. Accordingly, we sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of independent claim 19, as well as the rejection of dependent claims 24--28, not separately argued. App. Br. 10. 8 Appeal2015-000857 Application 12/644,225 With regard to independent claims 29 and 38, Appellants argue that these claims are patentable for the same reasons as claim 19. App. Br. 7, 10. Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of claims 29 and 38, as well as the rejection of dependent claims 34--37, not separately argued. App. Br. 10. DECISION The rejection of claims 19, 24--29, and 34--38 is affirmed. 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 9 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation