Ex Parte Marski et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 8, 2017

13647371 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 8, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
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Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
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APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
13/647,371 10/08/2012 Dirk Marski GB920120086US1 (781) 1067
46320 7590
CRGO LAW
STEVEN M. GREENBERG
7900 Glades Road
SUITE 520
BOCA RATON, EL 33434
EXAMINER
GURMU, MULUEMEBET
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2163
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/10/2017 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):
docketing@crgolaw.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte DIRK MARSKI, RICHARD MARTINUS, TOM WATERTON,
and JAMES WITHERS
Appeal 2016-003759
Application 13/647,371
Technology Center 2100
Before CAROLYN D. THOMAS, JOSEPH P. LENTIVECH, and
MICHAEL J. ENGLE, Administrative Patent Judges.
LENTIVECH, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants1 seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the
Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1—20, the only claims pending in the
application on appeal. We have jurisdiction over the pending claims under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is International Business
Machines Corporation. App. Br. 2.
Appeal 2016-003759
Application 13/647,371
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants ’ Invention
Appellants’ invention generally relates to topic discovery through
structural knowledge in an associative document tree building system. Spec.
11. Claim 1, which is illustrative, reads as follows:
1. A method for topic discovery through structural
knowledge in an associative document tree building system, the
method comprising:
inserting a set of documents into nodes of a document tree
in memory of a host computing system;
extracting a tag set of tags from the set of documents and
inserting each tag into a different node of a tag tree in the memory
of the host computing system;
conducting a search engine query through the host
computing system using the tags of the extracted tag set to
produce a new set of documents;
inserting the new set of documents into nodes of the
document tree;
extracting a new tag set of tags from the new set of
documents and inserting each of2 tag of the new tag set into a
different node of the tag tree; and,
displaying at least a portion of each of the document tree
and tag tree in a user interface displayed by the host computing
system.
References
The Examiner relies on the following prior art in rejecting the claims:
2 For the purposes of this Decision, we consider the inclusion of the word
“of’ in the phrase “inserting each of tag of the new tag set” to be a
typographical error and interpret the phrase to mean “inserting each tag of
the new tag set.”
2
Appeal 2016-003759
Application 13/647,371
Blair
Wen et al.
Hersh
Kusumura et al.
US 2007/0244921 Al
US 2008/0046441 Al
US 7,539,988 B1
US 2010/0281030 Al
Rejections3
Oct. 18, 2007
Feb. 21,2008
May 26, 2009
Nov. 4, 2010
Claims 1, 4—6, 9-11, 19, and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Wen, Kusumura, and
Blair. Final Act. 4—9.
Claims 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Wen, Kusumura,
Blair, and Hersh. Final Act. 9—11.
ANALYSIS
Appellants contend the combination of Wen, Kusumura, and Blair,
and in particular Blair upon which the Examiner relies, does not teach or
suggest “extracting a tag set of tags from the set of documents and inserting
each tag into a different node of a tag tree in the memory of the host
computing system,” as recited in claim 1. App. Br. 8—11; Reply Br. 2—8. In
response to Appellants’ arguments, the Examiner finds:
Regarding the extraction of a ‘tag set of tags’ from a set of
documents, Wen teaches See Wen paragraph [0027], a wrapper
tree are referred to as ‘tag’ nodes, See Wen paragraph [0024], A
wrapper tree is a hierarchy of wrapper nodes that define
document trees that have a similar template and represents a
wrapper used to extract data from document trees that have that
template. Regarding the insertion of each tag into a different
node of a tag tree, See Wen paragraph [0027], a wrapper tree are
referred to as ‘tag’ nodes, See Wen paragraph [0037], The adjust
wrappers component merges two wrapper trees to effect the
3 The rejection of claims 16—20 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 has been withdrawn.
Ans. 2.
3
Appeal 2016-003759
Application 13/647,371
dynamic adjusting of the wrapper tree of a cluster when a new
document tree is added to the cluster. After the generate
wrappers component clusters the web pages, it stores the
dynamically generated wrapper tree for each cluster in the
wrapper store.
Ans. 3. We have reviewed Wen and concur with Appellants.
Wen teaches “[a] wrapper generation system is provided a collection
of hierarchically organized documents, such as web pages, that are each
represented by a tree structure of its hierarchy, referred to [as] a document
tree.” Wen 123. Wen teaches “if the web pages conform to the Document
Object Model (‘DOM’), then the document trees contain nodes
corresponding to the tags of the DOM document.” Wen 123. As such, we
agree with the Examiner in part that Wen teaches or suggests “extracting a
tag set of tags from the set of documents.” However, the Examiner’s
findings fail to explain how Wen’s reference to the nodes of a wrapper tree
as “tag nodes” or Wen’s teaching of merging two wrapper trees to effect the
dynamic adjustment of the wrapper tree of a cluster teaches or suggests
inserting each tag into a node of the wrapper tree, which the Examiner
identifies as corresponding to the claimed “tag tree.” Wen, instead, teaches
using data parsed from the web pages (e.g., tags) to generate the document
trees. Wen 126. As such, the Examiner’s findings are insufficient to show
the combination of Wen, Kusumura, and Blair teaches or suggests “inserting
each tag into a different node of a tag tree in the memory of the host
computer,” as recited in claim 1.
Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of
(1) independent claim 1; (2) independent claims 6, 11, and 16, each of which
recites a limitation requiring tags of a tag set to be inserted into nodes of a
tag tree, which are rejected on the same basis as claim 1 (Final Act. 7), and
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Appeal 2016-003759
Application 13/647,371
are argued together with claim 1 (see App. Br. 8—11; Reply Br. 2—8); and
(3) claims 2—5, 7—10, 12—15, and 17—20, which depend from independent
claims 1, 6, 11, and 16, respectively.
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1—20 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a).
REVERSED
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