Ex Parte Reitter et al

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Jun 4, 2019

13495840 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Jun. 4, 2019)

UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR
13/495,840 06/13/2012 Alec Reitter
150601 7590 06/06/2019
Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P.
(eBay Inc.)
2555 Grand Blvd.
KANSAS CITY, MO 64108-2613
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.
2043.393US2 1036
EXAMINER
KHOSHNOODI, FARIBORZ
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2157
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
06/06/2019 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):
IPDOCKET@SHB.COM
IPRCDKT@SHB.COM
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte ALEC REITTER, BARB CHANG, KEN SUN,
RAGHA V GUPTA, ALVARO BO LIV AR, and ALAN LEWIS
Appeal2018-007320
Application 13/495,840
Technology Center 2100
Before ERIC B. CHEN, IRVINE. BRANCH, and
JOSEPH P. LENTIVECH, Administrative Patent Judges.
LENTIVECH, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellants1 appeal from the
Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-5, 7-19, and 21-27. Claims 6 and 20
have been canceled. App. Br. 13, 15 (Claims Appendix). We have
jurisdiction over the pending claims under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b ).
We affirm-in-part.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is eBay Inc. App. Br. 3.
Appeal2018-007320
Application 13/495,840
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellants' Invention
Appellants' invention relates to "a keyword extraction component to
extract relevant keywords from content of a web page, to identify items
relevant to the extracted keywords, and to rank the relevant items." Abst.
Claim 1, which is illustrative of the claimed invention, reads as follows:
1. A method comprising:
placing an object in a web page, the web page displayed
to a user on a client device with a processor having access to a
network, the web page is an affiliate web page, the object is an
executable code component configured to execute a network
communication when the web page is accessed;
invoking a keyword extraction service at a host site via a
network access in response to activation of the object in the
web page, the activation of the objects being in response to the
web page being accessed by the user;
using the keyword extraction service to extract relevant
keywords from content of the web page, product category
information being used to determine relevancy of the extracted
keywords;
identifying items relevant to the extracted keywords; and
ranking the relevant items.
Rejections
Claims 1-3, 5, 8, 10, 12-17, 19, 22, and 24 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Jha et al.
(US 2005/0033641 Al; published Feb. 10, 2005) ("Jha") and Gomes et al.
(US 6,615,209 Bl; issued Sept. 2, 2003) ("Gomes"). Final Act. 3-6.
Claims 4 and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Jha, Gomes, and Alain (US 2003/0110131 A 1; published
June 12, 2003). Final Act. 6-7.
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Application 13/495,840
Claims 7 and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Jha, Gomes, and Ellis et al. (US 7,167,863 B2; issued
Jan. 23, 2007). Final Act. 7-8.
Claims 9, 23, 26, and 27 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Jha, Gomes, Tsuda (US 2005/0004903 Al;
published Jan. 6, 2005), and Davulcu (US 2007/0043583 Al; published
Feb. 22, 2007). Final Act. 8-12.
Claims 11 and 25 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Jha, Gomes, and Kraft (US 2006/0026013 Al; published
Feb. 2, 2006). Final Act. 12-14.
CLAIMS 1-5, 7-10, 12-19, 21-24, 26, AND 27
The only issue for the rejection of claims 1-5, 7-10, 12-19, 21-24,
26, and 27 is whether the Examiner errs in addressing the claimed "extract
relevant keywords from content of the web page, product category
information being used to determine relevancy of the extracted keywords"
(herein "claimed extraction"), as recited by each of independent claims 1,
12, and 15 (and incorporated by their dependent claims 2-5, 7-10, 13, 14,
16-19, 21-24, 26, and 27). App. Br. 6-9. For the reasons that follow, we
are not persuaded the Examiner erred.
The Examiner finds the claimed extraction is obvious over Jha and
Gomes. Final Act. 4-5, 14-15; Ans. 4-5. Specifically, the Examiner finds
Jha's "ad script" selects an advertisement of a webpage by generating an "ad
request" that includes terms and product categories of the webpage and
queries a database for the advertisement. Final Act. 4, 10-15; Ans. 4-5; see
also Jha, abst., ,-J,-J 96-114, 133-36; e.g., id. ,-i,-i 107, 112 ("[D]eciding what
type of web pages to display that advertisement on ... may include"
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Application 13/495,840
(id. ,i 107) "term collection, corresponding to the terms appearing the
content, as well as manual and auto-categorization of the content"
(id. ,i 112).). The Examiner finds Gomes' search terms are ascribed a
relevance other than their frequencies within searched documents.
Final Act. 4; Ans. 5; see also Gomes col. 8, 11. 31-36 (using "query-relevant
information [to find] portion(s) of documents"); col. 12, 11. 42-47 ("[R]ather
than simply looking for keyword occurrences, the sentences or paragraphs
that have meanings similar to those of the query may be sought."); col. 10,
11. 56-62 ("query-relevant information ... similar to keyword-in-context.").
The Examiner concluded it would have been obvious for Jha' s ad request to
extract terms and product categories from the respective webpage and also
ascribe a relevance to the terms based on the product categories (which serve
as context of the terms). Final Act. 4-5, 15; Ans. 4-5.
Appellants contend the Examiner misinterprets Jha and
Gomes. App. Br. 6-8; Reply Br. 2-4. As to Jha, Appellants contend:
At best, Jha discusses extracting words from a web page and
weighting the words based on the frequency and/or location of
the words ....
[T]he inputs used in the ad selection algorithm in Jha include a
category of the web page[.] However, these are not product
categories, nor are they used to determine relevance of
keywords extracted from the web page.
Reply Br. 3. As to Gomes, Appellants contend: "Even if Gomes teaches
determining 'relevance of extracted keywords' as stated by the Examiner,
there is still nothing in Gomes or Jha about determining relevance of
extracted keywords based [on] a product category." Id.
We are unpersuaded because Appellants do not persuasively rebut the
Examiner's finding that Jha and Gomes show it would have been obvious to
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Application 13/495,840
designate Jha's extracted categories as a contextual relevance of Jha's
extracted terms. For example, though acknowledging Jha determines a
weight ( e.g., frequency) and context ( e.g., location) for the terms of a
webpage, Appellants do not provide arguments or evidence persuasive to
rebut that the terms could be predictably ascribed a weight based on other
disclosed contexts-such as Jha's categorizations of the same webpage. Nor
do Appellants persuasively explain why, though their Specification discloses
a "keyword + category" search to improve the relevance of keywords
(Spec. ,-J,-J 46-47, 50, 55, 70, 90-99), the claimed extraction is not reached by
any search combining a term and category of a webpage-such as Jha' s
ad request combining "terms ... and auto-categorization of the content"
(Jha ,-J 112). See also e.g., Spec. ,-J 50 (The invention's "[b]asic
[f]unctionality ... extract[s] searches (keyword+ category constraint)
... that are relevant to the content.").
Appellants instead argue (supra) that Jha's above "auto-categorization
of the content" (Jha ,-J 112) is not a product category, which is a cursory
argument lacking an asserted scope of "product category" and neglecting
that Jha's "automated categorization of web pages into categories" (id. ,-i 3)
is for product websites such as "www.weight-loss-diet-i.com" (id. ,-i 60).
Appellants also instead argue (supra) that neither Jha nor Gomes
individually teaches a weighting of terms based on product categories, which
neglects the above considerations ( concerning Jha and Appellants'
Specification) and the combined teachings of Jha and Gomes. See In re
Keller, 642 F.2d 413,426 (CCPA 1981) ("[T]he test is not whether a
suggestion ... is found in [ either reference], but rather what [ the
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Application 13/495,840
combination of references] would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in
the art.").
For the foregoing reasons, we are unpersuaded the Examiner erred in
rejecting claims 1-5, 7-10, 12-19, 21-24, 26, and 27 and, accordingly,
sustain their rejections.
CLAIMS 11 AND 25
A dispositive issue for the rejection of claims 11 and 25 is whether the
Examiner errs in addressing the claimed "us[ e of] the extracted keywords to
automatically initiate a re-fetch ... based on observed changes in the
keywords extracted" (herein "claimed re-fetch"), as recited by each of
dependent claims 11 and 25 (depending from claims 1 and 15,
respectively). For the reasons provided below, we are persuaded the
Examiner erred.
The Examiner finds the claimed re-fetch is obvious over the
Jha-Gomes combination (supra) in view of Kraft. Final Act. 12-14, 16;
Ans. 7-9. Specifically, the Examiner finds Jha's ad request is similar to
Kraft's contextual search because both include search terms and contextual
information; the latter parameter being Jha' s auto-categorizations and
Kraft's context vector. Final Act. 12-14, 16; Ans. 8-9; see also Kraft
abst. ("[S]earches using ... [a] context vector representing content of the
[ web ]page. When the user submits a search ... , the query and the context
vector are both provided."). The Examiner further finds Kraft, by teaching
the "context vector is automatically updated when page content is updated"
(Kraft ,-J 74), suggests to automatically update Jha's ad request if a change
occurs to the respective webpage's terms. Final Act. 12-14, 16; Ans. 8-9.
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Appellants contend Kraft, though automatically updating the
contextual search based on changes to the source content (i.e., to the
webpage corresponding to the context vector), does not automatically
initiate the updated search (e.g., re-fetch the content of the web page) based
on changes to the context vector (e.g., extracted keywords). App.
Br. 10. Specifically, Appellants argue:
Id.
Kraft ... perform[ s] a search using a context vector based on
... the content [ of] a web page[, and]. .. automatically
updat[ es] the context vector when the web page content is
updated. . . . However, ... [ t ]he claims ... ini tiat[ e] a re-fetch
of content of a web page based on observed changes to
extracted keywords. . . . In other words, while the claims
[initiate] re-fetching [of] web page content based on changes to
extracted keywords, Kraft is extracting new keywords based on
changes to the web page content.
We are persuaded because, as Appellants argue, the Examiner does
not bridge the gap between Kraft's automatic updating of the context vector
and the claimed automatic initiating of a re-fetch of content of the web page
based on changes to extracted keywords, as required by claims 11 and
25. As discussed, Kraft automatically updates the context vector in response
to a change of the source content. See e.g., Kraft ,-J 7 4 ( discussed
supra). The Examiner does not explain why it would have been obvious for
this automatic response, as incorporated by Jha, to also initiate the resulting
re-fetching of content of the web page based on observed changes in the
context vector (e.g., keywords for the web page).2
2 By contrast, Jha seems to initiate the ad request every time a webpage is
opened. See Jha Figs. 1 (steps 110-14), 19 (steps 1902-06).
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For the foregoing reasons, we are persuaded the Examiner erred in
rejecting claims 11 and 25 and, accordingly, do not sustain their rejection.
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 1-5, 7-10, 12-19,
21-24, 26, and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
We reverse the Examiner's decision rejecting claims 11 and 25 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § l .136(a)(l )(iv).
AFFIRMED-IN-PART
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