Ex Parte Su et al

Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences

Dec 13, 2011

11267985 (B.P.A.I. Dec. 13, 2011)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE BOARD OF PATENT APPEALS
AND INTERFERENCES
____________

Ex parte ZHONG SU, LI ZHANG, YUE PAN,
LI BAI, and LI PING YANG
____________

Appeal 2009-012637
Application 11/267,985
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before KRISTEN L. DROESCH, JEFFREY S. SMITH, and
ERIC B. CHEN, Administrative Patent Judges.

SMITH, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appeal 2009-012637
Application 11/267,985

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final
rejection of claims 1-6, 8, and 10, which are all the claims remaining in the
application. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

Invention
Appellants’ invention relates to a method for organizing a plurality of
documents and an apparatus for displaying a plurality of documents. The
plurality of documents are clustered, and the resulted clusters of different
levels are displayed as virtual directories, thus helping the user to navigate to
the target document quickly. The navigation may be performed with the aid
of topics and abstracts. Furthermore, the user’s operations may be reduced
through controlling the displayed contents to be within the size of the screen.
Abstract.

Representative Claim
1. A computer-implemented method for organizing a
document collection for display on a display screen of a user
interface, the method comprising the steps of:

determining an upper bound for a number of clusters
representing a set of selected documents that can be
simultaneously presented as a page on the display screen;

performing feature extraction for each document in the
document collection, wherein each document is assigned a
feature vector;

Appeal 2009-012637
Application 11/267,985

3
storing the feature vector for each document into a
feature repository;

setting the selected documents to be all documents in
document collection;

while the number of selected documents is greater than
the upper bound, then performing the steps (a) through (f):

(a). performing a clustering operation for the
selected documents, wherein the clustering operation
uses for each selected document the feature vector
corresponding to the each selected document from the
document repository to calculate a plurality of clusters
not greater than the upper bound;

(b). organizing the plurality of clusters into a
plurality of corresponding virtual directories for display
on the display screen;

(c). placing each selected document into a virtual
directory corresponding to the cluster containing the
selected document;

(d). displaying the plurality of virtual directories as
a page on the display screen;

(e). receiving an indication of a selected virtual
directory by the user from the plurality of virtual
directories; and

(f). setting the selected documents to be the
documents contained in the selected virtual directory;

presenting the selected documents as a page on the
display.

Appeal 2009-012637
Application 11/267,985

4
Examiner’s Rejections
Claims 1-6 and 8 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) as being
unpatentable over Vaithyanathan et al. (US 5,819,258), Hart (US 6,510,436
B1), Mori (US 5,418,946), and Cutting (“Scatter-Gather: A Cluster-based
Approach to Browsing Large Document Collections,” 15th Ann. Int’l. SIGIR
’92/ Denmark ACM 1992 pp. 318-329).
Claim 10 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 1 03(a) as being
unpatentable over Vaithyanathan, Hart, Mori, Cutting, Fein (US 6,349,316
B2), Klavans (WO 2004/025490 A1), and Abu-Hakima (US 2003/0020749
A1).

Claim Groupings
Based on Appellants’ arguments in the Appeal Brief, we will decide
the appeal on the basis of claims 1 and 10. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).

FINDINGS OF FACT
We adopt as our own the findings of fact set forth by the Examiner in
the Final Rejection and Examiner’s Answer.

ANALYSIS
Section 103 rejection of claims 1-6 and 8
Appellants contend that Cutting does not “calculate a plurality of
clusters not greater than the upper bound,” as recited in step (a) of claim 1.
App. Br. 12; Reply Br. 11. The Examiner finds that the combination of
Vaithyanathan and Hart, not Cutting alone, teaches calculating a plurality of
Appeal 2009-012637
Application 11/267,985

5
clusters not greater than the upper bound. Ans. 5-6, 14-15. We agree with
the Examiner.
Appellants contend that Cutting does not teach clustering using
feature vectors. App. Br. 12; Reply Br. 11-12. The Examiner finds that
Cutting teaches clustering using feature vectors. Ans. 7, 15-19. We agree
with the Examiner. In addition, we also find that Figures 2 and 3 and the
corresponding portions of the detailed description of Vaithyanathan teach
clustering using feature vectors.
Appellants contend that the Examiner is unable to cite a single
reference in the prior art that teaches steps (a) and (b) as recited in claim 1,
and conclude that combining steps (a) through (f) as recited in claim 1 is not
obvious. App. Br. 14-15. Appellants further contend that the prior art
applied by the Examiner does not teach step (e). Reply Br. 12-13. The
Examiner finds that the prior art teaches steps (a) through (f) as recited in
claim 1. Ans. 7-9, 20-23. We agree with the Examiner.
We concur with the conclusion reached by the Examiner and sustain
the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Appellants have
not provided arguments for separate patentability of claims 2-6 and 8, which
thus fall with claim 1.

Section 103 rejection of claim 10
Appellants contend that the cited art does not teach an abstract
composed of a predetermined number of sentences having the largest
weights. App. Br. 16-20; Reply Br. 14. Appellants further contend that the
Examiner did not provide a reason to combine the prior art to include the
limitations recited in claim 10. Reply Br. 14-18. The Examiner finds that
Appeal 2009-012637
Application 11/267,985

6
the cited art teaches the limitations recited in claim 10. The Examiner also
provides a reason to combine the prior art in the manner claimed. Ans. 11-
13, 24-25. We agree with the Examiner.
We concur with the conclusion reached by the Examiner and sustain
the Examiner’s rejection of claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

DECISION
The Examiner’s rejection of claims 1-6 and 8 under 35 U.S.C. §103(a)
as being unpatentable over Vaithyanathan, Hart, Mori, and Cutting is
affirmed.
The Examiner’s rejection of claim 10 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Vaithyanathan, Hart, Mori, Cutting, Fein, Klavans,
and Abu-Hakima is affirmed.
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

msc