Ex Parte Ozzie et al

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jun 13, 2019

13897889 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Jun. 13, 2019)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE
13/897,889 05/20/2013
69316 7590 06/17/2019
MICROSOFT CORPORATION
ONE MICROSOFT WAY
REDMOND, WA 98052
FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
Raymond E. Ozzie
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.
3 l 8263-US-CNT[2] 4878
EXAMINER
JIANG, HAIMEI
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2145
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/17/2019 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):
usdocket@microsoft.com
chriochs@microsoft.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte RAYMOND E. OZZIE, JACK E. OZZIE,
P ARESH S. SUTHAR, RAMAN NARAYANAN,
and MATTHEWS. AUGUSTINE
Appeal2018-006267
Application 13/897 ,889 1
Technology Center 2100
Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, MICHAEL J. STRAUSS, and
PHILLIP A. BENNETT, Administrative Patent Judges.
BENNETT, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner's final
rejection of claims 21--40. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We reverse.
1 Appellants' Brief ("App. Br.") identifies Microsoft Technology Licensing,
LLC as the real party in interest. App. Br. 4.
Appeal2018-006267
Application 13/897,889
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to clipboard augmentation with references.
More specifically, the claims recite a system that allows a uniform resource
indicator (URI) to be copied from a first application to a clipboard and when
pasted to a second application, the underlying referenced data is placed into
the second application. Claim 21, reproduced below, is illustrative of the
claimed subject matter:
21. A system comprising:
at least one processing unit; and
at least one memory comprising:
a clipboard for enabling information exchange between a
first application and a second application,
instructions that when executed by the at least one
processing unit perform a method comprising:
in response to a copy operation initiated by a user
while using the first application,
generating structured clipboard data comprising: (a)
a content type attribute representing a type of at least one
data item and (b) a uniform resource attribute containing a
reference to a location of the at least one data item; and
in response to a paste operation initiated by the user
while using the second application, processing the
structured clipboard data, including:
( 1) determining the type of the at least one data item
based on any content type attribute representing the type
of the at least one data item, and
(2) executing the paste operation by retrieving a
data value for the at least one data item based on the
uniform resource attribute containing the reference to the
location and pasting the data value, wherein the retrieving
the data value for the at least one data item comprises
resolving the uniform resource attribute to identify the at
least one item.
App. Br. 33 (Claims Appendix).
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Appeal2018-006267
Application 13/897,889
REFERENCES 2
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner in rejecting the claims on
appeal is:
Jones
Olsen
Aarts
Chen
US 2004/0172584 Al Sept. 2, 2004
US 2004/0210846 Al Oct. 21, 2004
US 2005/0066335 Al Mar. 24, 2005
US 2005/0154993 Al July 14, 2005
REJECTIONS
Claims 21-24, 29-32, and 36-39 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ I03(a) as being unpatentable over Jones and Chen. Final Act. 3-6.
Claims 25, 28, 33, and 35 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § I03(a) as
being unpatentable over Jones, Chen, and Olsen. Final Act. 7-8.
Claims 26, 27, 34, and 40 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § I03(a) as
being unpatentable over Jones, Chen, and Aarts. Final Act. 9-10.
ISSUE
Has the Examiner erred in finding Jones and Chen teach or suggest a
"paste operation" which is executed by:
retrieving a data value for the at least one data item based on the
uniform resource attribute containing the reference to the
location and pasting the data value, wherein the retrieving the
data value for the at least one data item comprises resolving the
uniform resource attribute to identify the at least one item,
as recited in claim 21?
2 All citations herein to these references are by reference to the first named
inventor only.
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Appeal2018-006267
Application 13/897,889
ANALYSIS
In rejecting claim 21, the Examiner generally cites Jones as teaching
most of the recited limitations. Final Act. 3-5. With respect to the disputed
"paste operation," the Examiner finds:
Although [0041] of Jones, XML namespaces provide a method
for qualifying elements and attribute names used in XML
documents by associating those elements and attribute names
with namespaces identified by uniform resources identifier
(URI) references and [0043] of Jones, executing the paste
operation by processing XML data copied into another data value
of XML document or other type of document such as HTML
document, but Jones does not specifically disclose [the disputed
"paste operation"].
Final Act. 4--5. The Examiner notes that while Jones generally teaches
resolving URL's to obtain data values, Chen cures the deficiencies of Jones
because it teaches the disputed "paste operation." Final Act. 5---6 (citing
Chen claim 2, ,r,r 12-16, 87, and 101); Ans. 4--5.
Appellants argue the Examiner has erred because "Chen ... fails to
teach or suggest the claimed paste operation." App. Br. 13. More
specifically, Appellants argue ,r,r 12-16 of Chen merely describe addressing
"formatting issues associated with the text copied from a web page that
includes HTML formatted information." App. Br 13-14 (addressing Chen
,r,r 12-16). Appellants further argue paragraph 87, also cited by the
Examiner, does not relate to paste operations at all, and instead "describes a
process of collecting and recording source information, such as a file name,
path name, URL or address in a database." App. Br. 14 (emphasis omitted).
Appellants assert that Chen relates to a reference note generator in which the
source information for text pasted into an application is used to generate a
footnote or endnote for a document. App. Br. 15. Appellants also address
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Appeal2018-006267
Application 13/897,889
the Examiner's reliance on paragraph 101 of Chen, asserting that it does not
mention any paste operation, and instead describes a refreshing operation by
which source reference information stored in a database is accessed to
provide updated information. App. Br. 16-18.
We agree with Appellants. Chen describes the invention as providing
a clipboard functionality wherein "[ e Jach time source content is selected, a
number of source reference data items such as author, publication date, and
source file name or network address are captured and stored." Chen,
Abstract. Chen further describes that "[t]he stored source reference
identifie[ r] s may then be used to automatically generate footnotes, end notes,
and bibliographical entries." Id. Thus, Chen generally relates to a system
which automatically collects source information so that when material is
pasted into a document, the underlying source reference information can be
used to generate a footnote or end note indicative of the source of the
information.
Chen's copy and paste clipboard operation calls for a text string from
a web page to be copied into a transfer buffer and then inserted from the
transfer buffer into a destination document. Chen ,r 14. However, the
material in Chen that is transferred into the destination document is the same
material that is copied into the transfer buffer ( e.g., a text string from the site
copy of a web page), and Chen does not discuss retrieving the text string
from the web page by resolving the URL as part of the paste operation. In
fact, Chen's system would have no reason to resolve the URL to retrieve a
data value because the data value itself is copied to the transfer buff er as part
of the initial copying operation. See, e.g., Chen ,r 14 ("select the text (19) in
the source content, operate a copy command in the web browser UI which
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Appeal2018-006267
Application 13/897,889
copies (101) the content into a buffer (100) such as a 'clipboard'"); Chen
,r 87 ("the information element is a text string ( 19), which is being
transferred from a web browser window").
The Examiner's conclusion is based on an interpretation of the
disputed limitation that requires only that "the data can be tracked back to
the source location via an URI." Ans. 5. This interpretation is unreasonably
broad because the disputed limitation is more specific. The claim requires
that disputed limitation requires that the paste operation not only retrieve a
data value, but that it do so by resolving the URI that references the location
of the data item having the retrieved data value. In Chen, the data value is
already on the clipboard, so there is no need to retrieve the data value as part
of the paste operation. The Examiner suggests that Jones provides the
necessary URI resolution. Ans. 4. However, the cited portions of Jones
merely teach the use of transformation files to achieve "optimum
consumption" of a data copied from an XML document to another
application. Jones ,r 43. Accordingly, we are persuaded that the Examiner
erred in determining the prior art teaches the disputed "paste operation"
recited in claim 21, and we do not sustain the rejection of claim 21 under
35 U.S.C. § 103. Independent claims 29 and 36 also recite the disputed
"paste operation" and we also do not sustain their rejections for the same
reasons, nor of dependent claims 22-28, 30-35, and 37--40 which stand with
their respective independent claims.
DECISION
We reverse the Examiner's rejections of claims 21--40.
REVERSED
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