Ex Parte Kolar et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Sep 20, 2011

10432316 (B.P.A.I. Sep. 20, 2011)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARKOFFICE
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.
10/432,316 05/21/2003 Jennifer Lynn Kolar 10587.0148-00000 6434
22852 7590 09/21/2011
FINNEGAN, HENDERSON, FARABOW, GARRETT & DUNNER
LLP
901 NEW YORK AVENUE, NW
WASHINGTON, DC 20001-4413
EXAMINER
IBRAHIM, MOHAMED
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2444
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/21/2011 PAPER
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.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

Ex parte JENNIFER LYNN KOLAR, BRAD STEVEN MILLER,
and SCOTT CHAO-CHUEH LEE
___________

Appeal 2010-002965
Application 10/432,316
Technology Center 2400
____________

Before ALLEN R. MACDONALD, KALYAN K. DESHPANDE, and
ERIC B. CHEN, Administrative Patent Judges.

CHEN, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appeal 2010-002965
Application 10/432,316

2
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the final rejection of
claims 1-21, all the claims pending in the application. We have jurisdiction
under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm.
Appellants’ invention relates to a system and method for extracting
information (i.e., metadata) from a media object (i.e., multimedia object or
streaming media object). A single device extracts the information from a
plurality of media objects having different formats and the media object is
examined to determine its format. The media object is provided to a multi-
format extractor and information is extracted from the media object in
accordance with the appropriate format. The extracted information is
compiled into a universal data structure, such that the format of the universal
data structure is compatible with a plurality of media object formats. (Spec.
Abstract.)
Claim 1 is exemplary, with disputed limitation in italics:
1. A method in a computer system for extracting
information from media objects, said method comprising the steps of:
determining a format of a media, wherein determining a format
of said media object comprises recognizing patterns in a URI for said
media object, including patterns not specifying a filename extension;
selecting a format compliant extractor compatible with said
determined format;
extracting information from said media object with said format
compliant extractor; and
compiling said extracted information in accordance with a
universal data structure, wherein a format of said universal data
structure is compatible with a plurality of media object formats.
Appeal 2010-002965
Application 10/432,316

3
Claims 1-21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious
over Srivastava (U.S. Patent No. 6,549,922), Chatterjee (U.S. Patent
No. 7,162,691) and Nelson (U.S. Patent No. 6,498,897).1
We are not persuaded by Appellants’ arguments (Br. 8-10) that the
combination of Srivastava, Chatterjee and Nelson would not have rendered
obvious independent claim 1, including the disputed limitation “wherein
determining a format of said media object comprises recognizing patterns in
a URI for said media object, including patterns not specifying a filename
extension.”
The Examiner acknowledged that Srivastava does not disclose the
disputed limitation and cited Chatterjee. (Ans. 4.) In particular, the
Examiner found that “the URL of [the] referenced media may serve three
separate purposes . . . [including] the URL itself constitutes metadata which
may be useful for indexing and searching functions” and thus, “Chatterjee
teaches other mechanism to recognize patterns in [the] URL as well as [a]
filename extension.” (Ans. 8-9.) We agree with the Examiner.
Chatterjee describes “electronic data storage, management and
retrieval systems and more particularly to methods and apparatus for storing,
indexing and searching data stored in and referenced by Web pages.”

1 The Examiner cited Chatterjee for the disclosure of the limitation
“wherein determining a format of said media object comprises recognizing
patterns in a URI for said media object, including patterns not specifying a
filename extension” (Ans. 4) which is recited in claim 1, but not claim 6.
Similarly, the Examiner cited Nelson for the disclosure of the limitation
“wherein determining a format of said media object comprises analyzing a
metafile that comprises said media object and a meta type corresponding to
the structure of said metafile” (Ans. 4) which is recited in claim 6, but not
claim 1. Accordingly, we provide a separate analysis for independent
claims 1 and 6.
Appeal 2010-002965
Application 10/432,316

4
(Col. 1, ll. 7-10.) The text content of the Web page can be scanned for
multimedia tags (e.g., “