13399496 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 13, 2017)

Ex Parte Qian et al

Patent Trial and Appeal BoardDec 13, 2017

13399496 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 13, 2017)

United States Patent and Trademark Office 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. 13/399,496 02/17/2012 Yao Qian 334371.01 1202 69316 7590 12/15/2017 MICROSOFT CORPORATION ONE MICROSOFT WAY REDMOND, WA 98052 EXAMINER LE, THUYKHANH ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2658 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 12/15/2017 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): u sdocket @ micro soft .com chriochs @microsoft.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte YAO QIAN, FRANK KAO-PING SOONG, and BIN BENJAMIN ZHU Appeal 2017-008053 Application 13/399,4961 Technology Center 2600 Before JOSEPH L. DIXON, JAMES R. HUGHES, and MATTHEW J. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judges. McNEILL, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s rejection of claims 1, 3-12, 14, 15, 19, 21, and 23-27, which are all the claims pending in this application.2 We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm. 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC. App. Br. 2. 2 Claims 2, 13, 16-18, 20, and 22 were canceled by amendments on February 28, 2014 and June 30, 2014. Appeal 2017-008053 Application 13/399,496 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Introduction Appellants’ application relates to a Human Interactive Proof (HIP), also known as a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), that uses a text-to-speech technique to present an audio challenge to a user. Spec. 1, 19. In one embodiment, the audio challenge requires semantic knowledge of the presented text in order to provide a correct response. Spec. ^ 36. For example, the challenge may include a sentence and a question relating to the sentence: “Simon ate three apples yesterday and has eaten two bananas today. What is the total number of fruits Simon has eaten since yesterday?” Id. Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter: 1. A computer-implemented process for providing an automatic human interactive proof, comprising: selecting a single text sentence from a plurality of text sentences, and a question, wherein the selected text sentence provides information that is employed by an unknown user to formulate an answer to the question; creating an audio challenge comprising the selected text sentence and the question, the audio challenge requiring semantic knowledge of the question to respond; sending an oral rendition of the audio challenge to the unknown user; receiving audio data representing a response to the audio challenge from the unknown user; and analyzing the audio data to determine whether the unknown user is a human or a bot. 2 Appeal 2017-008053 Application 13/399,496 The Examiner’s Rejections Claims 1, 3, 14, 15, and 23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Gross (US 2009/0319271 Al; Dec. 24, 2009) and Kuo (US 2012/0192252 Al; July 26, 2012). Final Act. 3-7. Claims 4-6, 8, 9, 19, 21, 24, and 26 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Gross, Kuo, and Herley (US 2004/0254793 Al; Dec. 16, 2004). Final Act. 7-13. Claims 10-12, and 25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Gross, Kuo, Herley, and Bohr (Bohr, et al., ISR Technical Report 2008-31, (“Improving Auditory CAPTCHA Security,” Nov. 5, 2008), 1-16. Final Act. 13-16. Claims 7 and 27 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Gross, Kuo, Herley, and Miki (US 2012/0271630 Al; Oct. 25, 2012). Final Act. 16-18. ANALYSIS Claim 1 Regarding independent claim 1, Appellants contend Gross fails to teach “selecting a single text sentence from a plurality of text sentences, and a question, wherein the selected text sentence provides information that is employed by an unknown user to formulate an answer to the question; creating an audio challenge comprising the selected text sentence and the question.” App. Br. 11-14. In response, the Examiner cites to Gross’s Figure 4C as teaching an audio challenge comprising a single text sentence and a question. Ans. 18. Appellants in turn argue the following with respect to Gross’s Figure 4C: 3 Appeal 2017-008053 Application 13/399,496 In the picture-based embodiment shown in FIG. 4C of Gross it is the aforementioned ‘set of pictures/images/cartoons’ as exemplified in FIG 4C which provides the information that is employed by the unknown user to formulate an answer to the question—it is not the single text sentence as defined above by the Examiner. If the ‘set of pictures/images/cartoons’ as exemplified in FIG 4C were not provided to the unknown user they would be unable to answer the question. Reply Br. 5. We are not persuaded by Appellants’ arguments. Figure 4C of Gross shows a cartoon with two characters, where one of the characters is captioned as saying “I used to be able to lift that much,” and the other character has an associated blank dialogue bubble for a potential response to the first character’s caption. Along with the cartoon, Figure 4C shows the following prompt: “Please look at the picture below and using your normal voice speak only one of the responses below that you would give for the other person into the microphone.” Figure 4C lists a number of potential responses without punctuation as follows: “Yeah right old man You don’t look like a spinach eater now I’m just warming up ... I can really do twice this much My cellphone is ringing.” We agree with the Examiner (Ans. 18) that Gross’s Figure 4C teaches the claim 1 feature of an audio challenge comprising a single text sentence and a question. Specifically, we find the prompt “Please look at the picture below and . . . speak only one of the responses . . .” is the claimed question, and the list of responses is the claimed single sentence. We are not persuaded by Appellants’ argument that Gross’s cartoon, rather than a single text sentence, is used to formulate an answer to the question shown in Gross’s Figure 4C. See Reply Br. 5. Gross’s user does 4 Appeal 2017-008053 Application 13/399,496 use the string of potential responses—the “single text sentence”—shown in Figure 4C to formulate an answer. Moreover, claim 1 does not preclude using a cartoon in addition to the single text sentence to formulate an answer to the challenge. We are, therefore, not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claim 1, and dependent claims 3-12, 14, and 15 not specifically argued separately. Although independent claim 19 is separately argued, the arguments presented are similar to those discussed above regarding claim 1. See App. Br. 15-19; Reply Br. 6-8. Thus, for the same reasons discussed above, we are not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting claim 19, and claim 21 which depends therefrom and is not separately argued. Claim 23 Regarding independent claim 23, Appellants contend Gross’s Figure 4B fails to teach “creating an audio challenge comprising a single text sentence and an instruction concerning the text sentence.” as recited in claim 23. See App. Br. 20-21; Reply Br. 8-12. We are not persuaded by Appellants’ arguments. Gross describes a challenge that includes a visual cue to induce a prosodic response from a user. Gross, ^151. For example, Figure 4B of Gross shows a cartoon of a batter swinging a bat at a baseball along with the prompt: “Please look at the picture below and using your normal voice speak into the microphone and tell me what the person is doing.” Gross further provides that textual cues can be combined with visual cues in creating challenges. Gross, 151-152. One such textual cue is “He’s hitting a ball.” Gross, ^ 153. We find the prompt “Please look . . . and tell me what the person is doing” 5 Appeal 2017-008053 Application 13/399,496 and the textual cue “He’s hitting a ball” teach the respective claim 23 limitations of “an instruction” and “a single text sentence.” Appellants’ argument that “the text cues of Gross are still potential answers to the question, not the Appellants’ claimed ‘single text sentence’” (Reply Br. 10) is not persuasive for two reasons. First, although Gross lists a number of textual cues (see Gross, 153-157), Gross does not describe necessarily providing all of the textual cues for a given visual cue. In fact, only the cue “He’s hitting a ball” (Gross, ^ 153) would make sense alongside the cartoon in Figure 4B. The other cues (Gross, ^ 154-157) appear to reference other possible visual cues not shown in Gross’s figures. Accordingly, one of ordinary skill in the art would have understood Gross as suggesting a challenge that included the cartoon shown in Figure 4B as a visual cue along with the single textual cue “He’s hitting a ball.” Id. at 153 Second, claim 23 does not preclude the “single text sentence” from being an answer to the audio challenge. Claim 23 recites “said response being an answer to the audio challenge that a human with semantic knowledge provides and is not a repeat of the audio challenge itself.’ '’ However, the claimed audio challenge includes both the single text sentence and the instruction. Accordingly, claim 23 encompasses an answer to an audio challenge that is a repeat of only a portion of the audio challenge— i.e., a repeat of the single text sentence, but not a repeat of the whole audio challenge. Thus, a user that provides “He’s hitting a ball” as an answer to the challenge in Gross’s Figure 4B is not providing “a repeat of the audio challenge itself’ because the answer is only part of the challenge presented in Figure 4B, and not a repeat of the whole challenge that also includes the instruction “Please look . . . and tell me what the person is doing.” 6 Appeal 2017-008053 Application 13/399,496 We are also not persuaded by Appellants’ argument that Gross’s use of a cartoon as part of a challenge fails to teach an “audio challenge requiring semantic knowledge thereof to respond,” as recited in claim 23. See Reply Br. 11. As discussed above, Gross teaches presenting a prompt, a visual cue, and a textual cue as a challenge to a user. In order to properly answer the question posed by the prompt “Please look . . . and tell me what the person is doing,” the user must understand the meaning of the prompt, i.e., the user must have semantic knowledge of the prompt, which is part of the challenge. We are, therefore, not persuaded the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claim 23, and dependent claims 24-27 not specifically argued separately. DECISION We affirm the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 3-12, 14, 15, 19, 21, and 23-27. No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R. § 41.50(f). AFFIRMED 7