14697449 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 14, 2018)

Ex Parte Musuluri

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardAug 14, 2018

14697449 (P.T.A.B. Aug. 14, 2018)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE 14/697,449 04/27/2015 15889 7590 08/16/2018 Aravind Musuluri 237 Paradise Lake Dr Birmingham, AL 35244 FIRST NAMED INVENTOR Aravind Musuluri 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. MU-SE-TL 7728 EXAMINER BROWN, SHEREE N ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 3649 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 08/16/2018 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): amusuluri@teemingmind.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte ARA VIND MUSULURI Appeal2017-008418 Application 14/697,449 1 Technology Center 3700 Before WILLIAM A. CAPP, RICHARD H. MARSCHALL, and ANTHONY KNIGHT, Administrative Patent Judges. MARSCHALL, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Aravind Musuluri (Appellant) seeks our review under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 134(a) of the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 11-18, which constitute all the claims pending in this application. Claims 1-10 have been cancelled. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 Appellant does not explicitly identify the real party in interest in his Brief, but he has signed the brief on behalf of himself, the sole inventor. Appeal Br. 11. We therefore treat Appellant as the real party in interest. Appeal2017-008418 Application 14/697,449 THE CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER Appellant's claimed subject matter "relates to search engine operations and [a] method to display the results of a search operation." Spec. ,r 2. Claims 11, 14, and 17 are independent. Claim 11, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter. 11. A method executable on a computing device comprising a processor, memory and a storage unit to display results of a search operation on at least one data source( s) comprising documents, said method comprising: (a) Accepting a search query comprising keyword( s) from a user; (b) Generating search results by identifying documents comprising the keyword( s) in response to the search query; ( c) Identifying search results comprising the keyword( s) in a timeline format in the documents; ( d) Constructing a search result snippet for the timeline comprising a relevant timeline item comprising said keyword(s); wherein the relevant timeline item comprises a first component selected from a date/time qualifier and a second component comprising of an event; and ( e) Returning the search results comprising the search result snippet and/or optionally a search result timeline property. Appeal Br. 12 (Claims App.). THE REJECTION Appellant seeks review of the Examiner's rejection of claim 11-18 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ I02(a)(l) as anticipated by Heinley (US 2008/0294663 Al, pub. Nov. 27, 2008). ANALYSIS In the Final Office Action, the Examiner found that Heinley discloses step 1 l(c) claim 11, "[i]dentifying search results comprising the keyword(s) in a time line format in the documents," because it discloses "time lines for 2 Appeal2017-008418 Application 14/697,449 search results." Final Act. 5 (citing Heinley ,r,r 83, 103, Figs. 3-7, 13, items 1300, 1302, 1304). Appellant argues that "Heinley merely associates timelines with search results page[ s ]" and "does not disclose identifying those search results among all the search results comprising of [sic] keyword( s) in a time line format in the document associated with the search result as recited in claim 11." Appeal Br. 7. According to Appellant, Heinley discloses timelines that "are created and associated with pages (search result pages) by the user," while the claimed invention "automatically identifies timelines in documents comprising of [sic] keyword(s) in a timeline format." Id. at 8 (citing Spec. ,r 59). In response, the Examiner further relied on Heinley' s Figure 2 and paragraph 69, and found that "Heinley's teaching of 'MID-1960s' within the search results document is interpreted by the examiner as a 'timeline format' of the Appellant." Ans. 5. In the Reply Brief, Appellant argues that this finding fails to satisfy step ( c) because "the search keyword( s) must be present in the document in a timeline format and not on the search results page" such as page 200 in Heinley's Figure 2. Reply Br. 4. Appellant also argues that "MID-1960s" is not a search keyword-Figure 2 identifies "British Invasion" as the search keywords. Id. We agree with Appellant that the Examiner has not supported adequately the finding that Heinley discloses step ( c) of claim 11. Step ( c) requires identifying search results, including the keywords, "in a timeline format in the documents." Appeal Br. 12 (Claims App.) ( emphasis added). Accordingly, the underlying documents that are searched using the keywords must contain a "timeline format" that includes the keywords used in the search. The specification discloses a Wikipedia page containing a 3 Appeal2017-008418 Application 14/697,449 timeline as an example of such a document. Spec. Fig. 3. The Examiner refers to Heinley's Figures 2 and 3, but Figure 2 discloses search results page 200, and Figure 3 discloses timeline page 300. Heinley ,r,r 69, Figs. 2, 3. Those figures do not disclose the underlying documents that are searched, and therefore do not disclose the claimed "documents" that contain search keywords in a "time line format." The Examiner also relies on the "MID- 1960s" term in Heinley's Figure 2 as a "timeline format," but the term appears on the search results page 200, not the original document. See Heinley Fig. 2. Moreover, even if "MID-1960s" appeared in the underlying document, and is in a "timeline format," the Examiner has not cited any evidence that Heinley' s keywords appear within that timeline format. See Ans. 5. Heinley discloses query 202 containing the keywords "British Invasion," but the Examiner did not find that either of those words, which correspond to the claimed keywords, appear in a timeline format in the searched document. See Ans. 5; Final Act. 5; Heinley ,r 66 (describing "query 202"), Fig. 2 (showing query 202 as "BRITISH INVASION"). Based on the foregoing, we do not sustain the rejection of independent claim 11 as anticipated by Heinley. 2 Independent claims 14 and 17 include the same step (c) as claim 11. Appeal Br. 12-13 (Claims App.). The Examiner rejected independent claims 14 and 17 on the same basis as claim 11. Final Act. 7; Ans. 7. We therefore do not sustain the rejections of 2 Although we have discretion to enter a new ground of rejection, we decline to exercise our discretion to do so in this appeal. We therefore limit our analysis to the Examiner's anticipation rejection, and do reach whether rejections under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 101 orÂ§ 103 may be appropriate. 4 Appeal2017-008418 Application 14/697,449 claims 14 and 17, as well as dependent claims 12, 13, 15, 16, and 18, for the same reasons discussed above with respect to claim 11. DECISION We reverse the decision of the Examiner to reject claims 11-18 under 35 U.S.C. Â§ 102(a)(l). REVERSED 5