Ex Parte Skomoroch et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Dec 26, 2017

14072955 (P.T.A.B. Dec. 26, 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.
14/072,955 11/06/2013 Peter N. Skomoroch 3080.009US4 8237
45839 7590 12/28/2017
SrTiweaman T linHhera Rr Wnesisiner / T inkeHTn/Miornsinft
EXAMINER
PO BOX 2938
MINNEAPOLIS, MN 55402
BULLOCK, JOSHUA
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2153
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
12/28/2017 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):
USPTO@slwip.com
slw@blackhillsip.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte PETER N. SKOMOROCH, MATTHEW T. HAYES,
ABHISHEK GUPTA, and DHANURJAY A.S. PATIL
Appeal 2017-007410
Application 14/072,9551
Technology Center 2100
Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, THU A. DANG, and
JOHN D. HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judges.
HAMANN, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants file this appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the
Examiner’s Final Rejection of claims 28, 30-37, 39, 42-46, and 48—56. We
have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
1 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Linkedln Corporation.
App. Br. 2.
Appeal 2017-007410
Application 14/072,955
THE CLAIMED INVENTION
Appellants’ claimed invention relates to identifying a set of skills,
which can include extracting skill seed phrases from member profiles of a
social networking site, disambiguating the skill seed phrases, and de­
duplicating the disambiguated skill seed phrases to create de-duplicated skill
seed phrases. Abstract. Claim 28 is illustrative of subject matter on appeal
and is reproduced below.
28. A computer-implemented method comprising:
causing one or more computer processors to execute
instructions, the instructions causing the one or more computer
processors to perform operations of:
extracting a plurality of skill seed phrases from a
skills section of a plurality of member profiles of a social
networking service by at least:
tokenizing data in the skills section of each of
the plurality of member profiles into a plurality of
tokens; and
selecting, as the plurality of skill seed
phrases, tokens from the plurality of tokens that
have a frequency of occurrence that is above a
predetermined threshold frequency;
disambiguating the plurality of skill seed phrases
to create a plurality of disambiguated skill seed phrases
by at least clustering the plurality of skill seed phrases
based on a count of a number of times both skills of
respective pairs of the plurality of skill seed phrases are
present in a same member profile of the plurality of
member profiles;
de-duplicating the plurality of disambiguated skill
seed phrases to create a plurality of de-duplicated skill
seed phrases, the de-duplicated skill seed phrases
identifying a plurality of skills.
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Appeal 2017-007410
Application 14/072,955
REJECTIONS ON APPEAL
(1) The Examiner rejected claims 28, 30—37, 39, 42 46, and 48—56
for non-statutory double patenting over claims 1—7, 9-16, 18—25, and 27 of
Skomoroch (US 8,650,177 B2; issued Feb. 11, 2014).
(2) The Examiner rejected claims 28, 30—34, 37, 39, 42, 43, 46,
48—51, and 54—56 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the
combination of Degeratu (US 2008/0313000 Al; published Dec. 18, 2008)
and Kerr (US 2011/0238591 Al; published Sept. 29, 2011). The Examiner
objected to claims 35, 36, 44, 45, 52, and 53 as being dependent upon a
rejected base claim, but found they would be allowable if rewritten in
independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any
intervening claims.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’
contentions that the Examiner erred. We address specific findings and
arguments below.
(1) Double patenting rejection
The Examiner rejected claims 28, 30-37, 39, 42 46, and 48—56 for
non-statutory double patenting over claims of issued U.S. Patent No.
8,650,177. See Final Act. 3^4. Appellants submit that they are “not
appealing this issue and request[] the PTAB hold this rejection in abeyance.”
App. Br. 26. We are unaware of any entered amendment addressing this
rejection, and, thus, the rejection is before us. 37 C.F.R. § 41.31(c); cf. In re
Moncla, 95 USPQ2d 1884, 1885 (BPAI2010) (precedential) (addressing
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Appeal 2017-007410
Application 14/072,955
provisional double patenting rejection). Accordingly, we summarily affirm
this rejection.
(2) § 103(a) rejection
Appellants argue the combination of Degeratu and Kerr fails to teach
or suggest “disambiguating . . . skill seed phrases to create . . .
disambiguated skill seed phrases by . . . clustering the . . . skill seed phrases
based on a count of a number of times both skills of respective pairs of
the . . . skill seed phrases are present in a same member profile,” as recited in
independent claims 28, 37, and 46. App. Br. 16—21; Reply Br. 6. More
specifically, Appellants argue the disputed limitation requires that “the skill
seed phrases are clustered based on how many times two DIFFERENT skill
seed phrases appear in the SAME member profile.” App. Br. 17; see also id.
(citing Spec. 153). According to Appellants, Degeratu instead “only
mentions co-occurrence of tags to objects” and “only in the context of
filtering out incidences in which not enough users tagged an object.” App.
Br. 19 (citing Degeratu 156).
The Examiner finds that the combination of Degeratu and Kerr
teaches or suggests the disputed limitation. Ans. 3^4. More specifically, the
Examiner finds “Degeratu teaches ... a probabilistic clustering function for
disambiguating different senses of the tags. Degeratu goes further to teach
. . . that the disambiguation is according [to] the occurrence [o]f tag-objects,
wherein these tag-objects are indicative of skills . . . associated with a
member profile.” Ans. 4 (citing Degeratu ^fl[ 17, 55—56). According to the
Examiner, “Degeratu [thus] teaches . . . disambiguation of skills by
clustering based on tag-object occurrences, or the count of skills within a
member profile.” Id.
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Appeal 2017-007410
Application 14/072,955
We are persuaded by Appellants’ arguments. The portions of
Degeratu cited by the Examiner fail to teach or suggest that two different
skill seed phrases (the claimed “pairs of the plurality of skill seed phrases”)
appear in the same member profile, which the claims require. Rather, these
portions of Degeratu teach probabilistic clustering across multiple member
profiles and excluding co-occurrences that are too few. Degeratu ]Hf 55—56.
On this record, we do not sustain the Examiner’s § 103(a) rejection of
independent claims 28, 37, and 46, as well as claims 30-34, 39, 42, 43, 48—
51, and 54—56, as they depend from one of these independent claims.
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s non-statutory double patenting rejection of
claims 28, 30-37, 39, 42-46, and 48—56.
We reverse the Examiner’s § 103(a) rejection of claims 28, 30-34, 37,
39, 42, 43, 46, 48-51, and 5A-56.
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).
AFFIRMED2
2 Because we have affirmed at least one ground of rejection with respect to
each claim on appeal, the Examiner’s decision is affirmed. See 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.50(a)(1).
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