Ex Parte Van Slembrouck et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jan 18, 2017

13113238 (P.T.A.B. Jan. 18, 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.
13/113,238 05/23/2011 Justin Van Slembrouck B1330 9246
108982 7590
Wolfe-SBMC
116 W. Pacific Avenue
Suite 300
Spokane, WA 99201
EXAMINER
COBB, MICHAEL J
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2613
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
01/20/2017 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):
docket@sbmc-law.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte JUSTIN VAN SLEMBROUCK and BRUCE C. BELL
Appeal 2016-001618
Application 13/113,23s1
Technology Center 2600
Before ROBERT E. NAPPI, JOHN P. PINKERTON, and
NORMAN H. BEAMER, Administrative Patent Judges.
BEAMER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellants appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 1—20. We have jurisdiction over the pending
rejected claims under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.
1 Appellants identify Adobe Systems Incorporated as the real party in
interest. (Br. 3.)
Appeal 2016-001618
Application 13/113,238
THE INVENTION
Appellants’ disclosed and claimed invention is directed to adaptive
content display. (Abstract.)
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the subject matter on
appeal:
1. A computer-implemented method, comprising:
receiving a graphical content data structure including a
plurality of frames for displaying content in a display area, each
frame of the plurality of frames comprising:
one or more content elements including content
and arranged for display within the frame; and
dimensions indicating a display area of the frame;
receiving an indication of a value of a current dimension
of the display area;
based on the value of the current dimension of the
display area, determining a display frame from the plurality of
frames to display in the display area; and
displaying the display frame in the display area.
REJECTIONS
The Examiner rejected claims 1—20 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Bargeron et al. (US 2005/0055635 Al, pub. Mar. 10,
2005) (“Bargeron”), Purvis (US 2004/0205472 Al, pub. Oct. 14, 2004),
Schrier et al. (US 2007/0079236 Al, pub. Apr. 5, 2007) (“Schrier”), Cooper
et al. (US 2007/0174291 Al, pub. July 26, 2007) (“Cooper”), and Suarez
(US 2008/0215966 Al, pub. Sept. 4, 2008). (Final Act. 3-13.)
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Application 13/113,238
ISSUES ON APPEAL
Appellants’ arguments in the Briefs present the following issues:2
Issue One: Whether the Examiner erred in finding the combination of
Bargeron, Purvis, Schrier, Cooper, and Suarez teaches or suggests the
independent claim 1 limitation, “receiving a graphical content data structure
including a plurality of frames for displaying content in a display area, each
frame of the plurality of frames comprising: one or more content elements
including content,” and the similar limitation recited in independent claims 8
and 15. (Br. 12—28.)
Issue Two: Whether the Examiner erred in finding the combination of
Bargeron, Purvis, Schrier, Cooper, and Suarez teaches or suggests the
claim 5 limitation, “wherein generating the display frame further comprises
integrating into the display frame a content item that is not present in the
first frame.” (Br. 29—33.)
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellants’
arguments the Examiner erred. We disagree with Appellants’ arguments,
and we adopt as our own (1) the pertinent findings and reasons set forth by
the Examiner in the Action from which this appeal is taken (Final Act. 3—13)
and (2) the corresponding findings and reasons set forth by the Examiner in
the Examiner’s Answer in response to Appellants’ Appeal Brief (Ans. 15—
2 Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellants and the findings of the
Examiner, we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed June 8, 2015); the Final Office
Action (mailed Jan. 5, 2015); and the Examiner’s Answer (mailed Sept. 16,
2015) for the respective details.
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Appeal 2016-001618
Application 13/113,238
26). We concur with the applicable conclusions reached by the Examiner,
and emphasize the following.
Issue One
In finding Bargeron, Purvis, Schrier, Cooper, and Suarez teach or
suggest the independent claim limitation at issue, the Examiner first finds:
Bargeron teaches receiving a graphical content data structure
including a plurality of frames for displaying content in a
display area (see for instance, abstract and paragraphs 12, 68,
75 and 88), each frame of the plurality of frames comprising:
one or more content elements arranged for display within the
frame and dimensions indicating a display area of the frame
(see for instance, paragraphs 9, 12, 29, 34, 35, 50, 68, 75 and
88).
Bargeron further teaches that templates can comprise layout
elements, constraint-based relationships and preconditions, see
page 6, paragraph 51.
(Final Act. 3.) The Examiner further finds:
However, Bargeron in view of Purvis in view of Schrier further
in view of Cooper do not appear to explicitly state that the
content elements include content.
In the same art of adaptive document layout, Suarez teaches
that the graphical content data structures contains content
elements which include content, see for instance, paragraphs
23,24, 27,29, 33, 42 and 43.
(Final Act. 8.) As summarized by Appellants, “Bargeron, Purvis, Schrier,
and Cooper each describe content-independent templates or document
constraint rules,” whereas “Suarez describes a server that pre-computes and
stores different layouts of online documents that are populated with
content.” (Br. 14, 17.) In other words, the Examiner relies on Suarez as
teaching or suggesting including “content” in the frames as required by the
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Application 13/113,238
claims, as opposed to the template frames disclosed in the other cited
references.
Appellants do not dispute the Examiner’s findings as to the
disclosures in the references, except Appellants contend the Examiner’s
combining the references is in error: because Bargeron, Purvis, Schrier, and
Cooper disclose templates or rules, which are “content independent,”
whereas Suarez teaches “layouts of online documents that are populated
with content,” Appellants argue the combination of Suarez with the other
references would “frustrate the intended purpose of each reference.” (App.
Br. 17.)
We are unpersuaded by this argument. “The test for obviousness is
not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily
incorporated into the structure of the primary reference.” In re Keller, 642
F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981). Instead, the relevant issue is “what the
combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of
ordinary skill in the art.” Id. “Combining the teachings of references does
not involve an ability to combine their specific structures.” In re Nievelt,
482 F.2d 965, 968 (CCPA 1973). Here, the Examiner has reasonably
articulated support for the combination of the cited references:
[E]ach of Bargeron, Purvis, Schrier, Cooper and Suarez relate
to document layout. . . . [T]he combination does not require the
modification nor would the modification leave the original
reference unsatisfactory for its intended purpose of providing a
display template that are applicable to a range of content. . . .
Suarez extends the technique as taught by Bargeron, Purvis,
Schrier and Cooper to store a prescribed number of different
page layouts of an online document for different screen sizes,
the different page layouts computed using the templates and
rules set forth in Bargeron, Purvis, Schrier and Cooper.
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Application 13/113,238
(Ans. 21-22.)
Appellants provide no rebuttal to this rationale, and do not point to
any evidence of record that the combinations would be “uniquely
challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art” or “represented an
unobvious step over the prior art.” Leapfrog Enters. Inc. v. Fisher-Price,
Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citing KSR Int 7 Co. v. Teleflex
Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418—19 (2007)). Nor have Appellants provided objective
evidence of secondary considerations which our reviewing court guides
“operates as a beneficial check on hindsight.” Cheese Sys., Inc. v. Tetra Pak
Cheese and Powder Sys., 725 F.3d 1341, 1352 (Fed. Cir. 2013). (See also
Br. 42, “Appendix: Evidence . . . None.”). The Examiner’s findings are
reasonable because the skilled artisan would “be able to fit the teachings of
multiple patents together like pieces of a puzzle” because the skilled artisan
is “a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton.” KSR, 550 U.S. at
420-21. We are persuaded the claimed subject matter exemplifies the
principle that “[t]he combination of familiar elements according to known
methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable
results.” KSR, 550 U.S. at 416.
Issue Two
In finding Bargeron, Purvis, Schrier, Cooper, and Suarez teach or
suggest the subject matter of dependent claim 5, which includes the
limitations of dependent claim 3, the Examiner relies on extensive portions
of the references describing template and rule-based methods that
dynamically modify displayed content in response to the size and other
properties of the display. (Final Act. 11; Ans. 24—26.) The Examiner also
broadly, but reasonably, construes the claim such that:
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[T]he limitation “wherein generating the display frame further
comprises integrating into the display frame a content item that
is not present in the first frame,” includes changing (integrating
into) a content item currently being displayed in the first frame,
(such as for example changing the image/advertisement if the
content element was resized to have a width larger than a
predetermined size, such as 350 pixels).
(Ans. 26.)
Appellants argue the Examiner errs because “no reasoning is provided
explaining why the above-reproduced paragraphs of Cooper and Purvis are
believed to disclose the subject matter of claim 5, the rejection is improper
under the provisions of the MPEP.” (Br. 32.) However, the Examiner’s
extensive analysis in the Answer is unrebutted, and Appellants unsupported
assertions are unpersuasive as conclusory — merely reciting the language of
a particular claim and asserting the cited prior art reference does not teach or
suggest the claim limitation, without more, fails to constitute a separate issue
of patentability. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(l)(iv); In re Lovin, 652 F.3d 1349,
1357 (Fed. Cir. 2011). Thus, we find no error in the Examiner’s finding that
Bargeron, Purvis, Schrier, Cooper, and Suarez teach or suggest the
additional limitations of dependent claim 5.
CONCLUSION
For the reasons stated above, we sustain the obviousness rejections of
claims 1, 5, 8, and 15. We also sustain the obviousness rejections of claims
2—4, 6, 7, 9-14, and 16—20, which rejections are not argued separately with
particularity. (Br. 18, 23, 28.)
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Application 13/113,238
DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1—20.
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
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