Ex Parte Schirmer et alDownload PDFPatent Trial and Appeal BoardJun 22, 201611028576 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 22, 2016) Copy Citation UNITED STA TES p A TENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR 111028,576 0110512005 Andrew Lewis Schirmer 52796 7590 06/24/2016 Cuenot, Forsythe & Kim, LLC 20283 State Road 7 Suite 300 Boca Raton, FL 33498 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. LOT920040097US1_8150-0260 1634 EXAMINER GOFMAN,ALEXN ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2163 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 06/24/2016 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): IBMPTOMAIL@iplawpro.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte ANDREW LEWIS SCHIRMER and VAUGHN THEODORE ROKOSZ Appeal2015-000711 Application 11/028,57 6 Technology Center 2100 Before MAHSHID D. SAADAT, ROBERT E. NAPPI, and HUNG H. BUI, Administrative Patent Judges. BUI, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellants 1 seek our review under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) of the Examiner's Final Rejection of claims 21--40. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We AFFIRM. 2 1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is IBM Corporation. App. Br. 1. 2 Our Decision refers to Appellants' Appeal Brief, filed July 7, 2014 ("Br."); Reply Brief, filed October 13, 2014 ("Reply Br."); the Examiner's Answer, mailed August 13, 2014 ("Ans."); the Final Office Action, mailed February 7, 2014 ("Final Act."); and the original Specification, filed January 5, 2005 ("Spec."). Appeal2015-000711 Application 11/028,576 STATEMENT OF THE CASE Appellants 'Invention Appellants' invention relates broadly to a system and method of tracking a degree of interaction between two or more objects and deriving an affinity relationship between two or more objects based on their interaction with each other. Spec. i-f 2. According to Appellants, the term "objects" may vary depending on the type of organization. For example, in a retail store, objects may include items of clothing such as shirts and pants, point of service objects such as a cash register and a scanner, and/or any other objects commonly used in retail establishments. For a corporate office, objects may include, for example, printers, computers, scanners, copiers, documents, and/or other office related objects. Id. i-f 20 (emphasis added). Similarly, the term "interaction" may also vary depending on the type of objects used. For example, if objects database 206 stores objects related to a typical office environment, such as printer and document objects, interactions may include printing, viewing, editing, creating, and/or other interactions. Id. i-f 26 (emphasis added). When two or more of these objects interact, an entry is created in a database defining the interaction. A counter is then incremented each time an interaction occurs between a pair of objects. If the counter exceeds a predefined threshold, the objects in the interacting object pair may be classified as having an affinity for each other. Id. i-f 8; Abstract. Claims 21 and 31 are independent. Claim 21 is illustrative of Appellants' invention and is reproduced with disputed limitations emphasized below: 2 Appeal2015-000711 Application 11/028,576 21. A computer-implemented method, comprising: monitoring a plurality of data objects to identifj; an interaction between two of the plurality of data objects; and incrementing, based upon the interaction, an affinity counter in an entry, within a relationship database, associated with the two of the plurality of data objects; providing, responsive to the affinity counter exceeding a predefined threshold, an indicia to the entry, wherein the indicia indicates that the two of the plurality of data objects have an affinity relationship. App. Br. 18 (Claims App.). Goodwin Schirmer Mukherjee Evidence Considered US 2003/0135818 Al US 2003/0154212 Al US 2005/0198068 Al Examiner's Rejections July 17, 2003 Aug. 14, 2003 Sept. 8, 2005 (1) Claims 21, 22, 24--32, and 34--40 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Schirmer and l\1ukherjee (Final Act. 5-9); and (2) Claims 23 and 33 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Schirmer, Mukherjee, and Goodwin (Final Act. 9- 10). ISSUE Based on Appellants' arguments, the dispositive issue on appeal is whether the combination of Schirmer and Mukherjee teaches or suggests several limitations of independent claims 21 and 31. App. Br. 9-16; Reply Br. 2--4. 3 Appeal2015-000711 Application 11/028,576 ANALYSIS With respect to independent claims 21 and 31, the Examiner finds Schirmer discloses an aggregation system for determining object attributes and affinities among objects, including: "monitoring a plurality of data objects to identify an interaction between two of the plurality of data objects." Final Act. 5-9 (citing Schirmer i-fi-f 103, 106). The Examiner then relies on Mukherjee for teaching the remaining limitations to support the conclusion of obviousness, including: b. incrementing, based upon the interaction, an affinity counter in an entry, within a relationship database, associated with the two of the plurality of data objects [0043, 0048]. [Mukherjee discloses "determining an affinity ... based upon the number of occurrences" of "data objects" such as search terms.] c. providing, responsive to the affinity counter exceeding a predefined threshold, an indicia to the entry[,] wherein the indicia indicates that the two of the plurality of data objects have an affinity relationship [0043]. [Mukherjee discloses "a measure of affinity between the keyword must surpass some prescribed minimum threshold level, to qualify for inclusion in the affinity database 13 0. "] Id. at 6. Appellants dispute the Examiner's factual findings regarding Schirmer and Mukherjee. In particular, Appellants argue Schirmer does not disclose "monitoring a plurality of data objects to identify an interaction between two of the plurality of data objects" as recited in independent claim 23 [sic, claim 21] and similarly, independent claim 3 1. App. Br. 9-11. According to Appellants, the cited portion of Schirmer only "teaches crawling a plurality of documents and inferring an interaction from extracted 4 Appeal2015-000711 Application 11/028,576 meta-data" and "[n]either crawling nor inferring, as taught by Schirmer, corresponds to the claimed monitoring." Id. at 10 (emphasis in original). In addition, Appellants argue Mukherjee does not teach "incrementing, based upon the interaction, an affinity counter in an entry, within a relationship database, associated with the two of the plurality of data objects" as recited in independent claim 23 [sic, claim 21] and similarly, independent claim 31. Id. at 11-13. According to Appellants, the cited portion of Mukherjee only teaches determining an affinity between two search terms. Id. at 12. However, these search terms (i.e., alleged "data objects") are not interacting with each other, but simply represent "paired associations." Id. Appellants argue there is a distinction between Appellants' term "interaction" and the term "association" as disclosed by Mukherjee. Id. According to Appellants, [a Jn interaction requires "mutual or reciprocal action."[] An association, however, requires no action between the objects - mutual/reciprocal or even just a one-\~1ay action. Id. at 13. Lastly, Appellants acknowledge Mukherjee teaches the creation of an entry in an affinity database, but does not teach "providing an indicia to the entry based upon the affinity counter exceeding a predefined threshold" as recited in in independent claim 23 [sic, claim 21] and similarly, independent claim 31. Id. at 14. We do not find Appellants' arguments persuasive. Rather, we find the Examiner has provided a comprehensive response to Appellants' arguments supported by a preponderance of evidence. Ans. 2-5. As such, we adopt the Examiner's findings and explanations provided therein. Id. For additional 5 Appeal2015-000711 Application 11/028,576 emphasis, we note claim terms are given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification. In re Am. A cad. of Sci. Tech Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1369 (Fed. Cir. 2004). According to Appellants' Specification, the term "objects" recited in Appellants' claims is described as having various meanings depending on the environment, the application, and the type of organization. Spec. i-f 20. For example, in a retail store, objects may include items of clothing such as shirts and pants, point of service objects such as a cash register and a scanner, and/or any other objects commonly used in retail establishments. For a corporate office, objects may include, for example, printers, computers, scanners, copiers, documents, and/or other office related objects. Id. i-f 20 (emphasis added). Similarly, the term "interaction" recited in Appellants' claims is described as varying depending on the type of "objects" used in that environment. For example, if objects database 206 stores objects related to a typical office environment, such as printer and document objects, interactions may include printing, viewing, editing, creating, and/or other interactions. Id. i-f 26 (emphasis added). Likewise, the term "affinity relationship" recited in Appellants' claims is described generally as "a numerical representation of how often an object interacts with another object." Id. i-f 28. If the term "objects" refers to "documents" in the context of an office environment, then ( 1) Appellants' claimed "interaction" can describe any action involving "printing, viewing, editing, creating, and/or other interactions" relating to these documents, and (2) Appellants' claimed "affinity relationship" can simply describe how often these documents are printed, viewed, edited, or created. Spec. i-fi-120, 26, 28. 6 Appeal2015-000711 Application 11/028,576 Turning now to the question of obviousness, Schirmer teaches an affinity aggregation system 970 including a discovery server 1220, shown in Figures 17 and 18, for aggregating information about properties of individual objects. See Schirmer's Figs. 17-18, Abstract. As recognized by the Examiner, metrics subsystem 1266 included in the discovery server 1220, is used to (1) track and analyze usage patterns (of these objects), and (2) calculate affinities of system entities for storage in database 1267, i.e., information about the relationship or interactions between system entities, such as people, documents, and categories. Ans. 3 (citing Schirmer i-fi-f l 03- 04 ); also see i-fi-f l 05---06 ("interactions between people and documents provide the raw data from which Metrics system 1266 calculates affinity values," including different types of interactions). As such, Schirmer's tracking of usage patterns not only refers to the "interactions" of the objects being monitored but also the objects being monitored themselves. Separately, we note Appellants' claims 21 and 31 do not distinguish over Schirmer alone. For example, Schirmer also teaches: [ w ]hen the affinity value for a person in a category exceeds a threshold, the [affinity aggregation] system adds the category to the person's expertise profile. The system may notify the person about the update via e-mail, so that the person can manually update their expertise profile, if the suggested category is not appropriate or should be kept private. Under normal usage the Discovery Server 1220 may run continuously, collecting and analyzing data over a long period of time, potentially years. The affinity values, for example, slowly build up as people work with documents, taking, possibly, months for a person's activity to accumulate to the point where an affinity was detected. Schirmer i-fi-f l 08---09 (emphasis added). 7 Appeal2015-000711 Application 11/028,576 According to Schirmer, an affinity value is kept, accumulated, and compared relative to a threshold, an entry is created in database 1265, and then an indicia of such an entry or update is provided in the form of an email in the context of "interactions" between people and documents. Schirmer i-fi-1 108---09. Such a disclosure can also support a finding of Appellants' claimed "incrementing, based upon the interaction, an affinity counter in an entry, within a relationship database, associated with the two of the plurality of data objects" and "providing, responsive to the affinity counter exceeding a predefined threshold, an indicia to the entry" as recited in Appellants' claims 21 and 31. Therefore, on this record, Appellants have not persuaded us of Examiner error. Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner's rejection of claims 21 and 31. With respect to dependent claims 22-30 and 32--40, Appellants present no separate patentability arguments. App. Br. 15-16. As such, claims 22-30 and 32--40 fall together with independent claims 21 and 31. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(vii) (stating that "the failure of appellant to separately argue claims which appellant has grouped together shall constitute a waiver of any argument that the Board must consider the patentability of any grouped claim separately"). Therefore, we also sustain the Examiner's rejection of claims 22-30 and 32--40. CONCLUSION On the record before us, we conclude Appellants have not demonstrated the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 21--40 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). 8 Appeal2015-000711 Application 11/028,576 DECISION We AFFIRM the Examiner's final rejections of claims 21--40 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. § 1.136(a)(l )(iv). AFFIRMED 9 Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation