Facebook, Inc.Download PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardOct 19, 20212020005733 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 19, 2021) Copy Citation 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. 15/793,893 10/25/2017 Salahuddin Choudhary 26295-37882/US 9832 87851 7590 10/19/2021 Facebook/Fenwick Silicon Valley Center 801 California Street Mountain View, CA 94041 EXAMINER FAN, HUA ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2449 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 10/19/2021 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): fwfacebookpatents@fenwick.com ptoc@fenwick.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE ____________ BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD ____________ Ex parte SALAHUDDIN CHOUDHARY, YI XIAO, and MIKHAIL LARIONOV Appeal 2020-005733 Application 15/793,893 Technology Center 2400 ____________ Before JAMES R. HUGHES, NORMAN H. BEAMER, and SCOTT B. HOWARD, Administrative Patent Judges. BEAMER, Administrative Patent Judge. DECISION ON APPEAL Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s final rejection of claims 1–6, 8–13, 15–19.1 Claims 7, 14, and 20 are cancelled.2 We have jurisdiction over the pending rejected claims under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We REVERSE. 1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies Facebook, Inc. as the real party in interest. (Appeal Br. 2.) 2 The Final Office Action incorrectly also lists cancelled claim 14 as rejected. (Appeal Br. 6, n.1.) Appeal 2020-005733 Application 15/793,893 2 THE INVENTION Appellant’s disclosed and claimed invention is directed to a messaging system that applies a filtering policy to a message, which has an associated message tag describing the content of the message, the filtering policy selectively blocking messages, and allowing a message having an associated tag to pass through the filter even though the message might otherwise violate the filtering policy. (Abstr.) Independent claim 1 is representative: 1. A method comprising: receiving a message sent by a sender to a recipient using an electronic messaging system; identifying a tag associated with the message, the tag describing content in a body of the message; analyzing the message using a trained tag model, the trained tag model operative to receive the message and determine, based at least in part on one or more features associated with the message, whether the content of the message conforms with requirements associated with the tag; applying a tag-based filtering policy, the tag-based filtering policy indicating an action for the messaging system to perform on the message based on the tag and a result of the analysis; and performing the action indicated by the filtering policy on the message. (Appeal Br. 13 (Claim App.)) REJECTIONS The Examiner rejected claims 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, and 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Wexelblat (US 7,222,158 B2, iss. May 22, 2007) and Gobburu, et al. (US 2007/0117552 A1, pub. May 24, 2007). (Final Act. 3–5.) Appeal 2020-005733 Application 15/793,893 3 The Examiner rejected claims 2, 9, and 16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Wexelblat, Gobburu, and in view of official notice. (Final Act. 5–6; Ans. 6.) The Examiner rejected claims 4, 11, and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Wexelblat, Gobburu, and Kamma (US 2014/0337413 A1, pub. Nov. 13, 2014. (Final Act. 6; Ans. 6.) The Examiner rejected claims 4, 5, 11, 12, and 18 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Wexelblat, Gobburu, and Gannu, et al. (US 8,166,161 B1, iss. Apr. 24, 2012). (Final Act. 7–8; Ans. 7.) The Examiner rejected claims 6, 13, and 19 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Wexelblat, Gobburu, Gannu, and in view of official notice. (Final Act. 7–8; Ans. 9.) ISSUE ON APPEAL Appellant’s arguments present the following dispositive issue:3 Whether the Examiner erred in finding that the combination of Wexelblat and Gobburu taught or suggested the independent claim 1 limitation, “analyzing the message using a trained tag model, the trained tag model operative to receive the message and determine, based at least in part on one or more features associated with the message, whether the content of the message conforms with requirements associated with the tag,” and the 3 Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellant and the legal conclusions and findings of the Examiner, we refer to the Appeal Brief, filed Apr. 8, 2020 (“Appeal. Br.”); the Reply Brief, filed Aug. 4, 2020 (“Reply Br.”); the Final Office Action, mailed Sept. 17, 2019 (“Final Act.”); and the Examiner’s Answer, mailed June 9, 2020 (“Ans.”) for the respective details. Appeal 2020-005733 Application 15/793,893 4 commensurate limitations in independent claims 8 and 15. (Appeal Br. 4– 7.) ANALYSIS In rejecting the independent claims over the combination of Wexelblat and Gobburu, the Examiner relies solely on Wexelblat, determining that, “checking black-list and/or white-list and updating blacklist and white-list using sender’s identify is equivalent to a trained tag model.” (Final Act. 4.) The Examiner’s Answer elaborates: [C]hecking of black-list and/or white-list and then updating the black-list and white-list using sender’s identify [sic] accordingly is equivalent to training a tag model wherein the sender ID is considered a tag. This is because an ordinary skilled in the art [sic] would understand that a black-list and/or white-list containing sender IDs (tag) is equivalent to a tag model, used, e.g., for filtering messages, and that updating such a black-list/white list (tag model) based on newly processed sender IDs is equivalent to training such a tag model. (Ans. 11.) Appellant argues that the handling of black-lists and white-lists disclosed in Wexelblat is not related to training a tag model. (Appeal Br. 6.) Appellant relies on the ordinary meaning of “training,” and on the explanation in the Specification of training a tag model involving “using ‘supervised learning’ in which a ‘messaging learning module 330 uses the results of the analyses conducted by the analysis module 320 to build training sets containing examples of correctly and incorrectly tagged messages and associated information about the messages.’” (Reply Br. 3 (citing Spec. ¶ 52).) We agree with Appellant. The portions of Wexelblat relied on by the Examiner do not relate to training a tag model. Moreover, the sender ID of a Appeal 2020-005733 Application 15/793,893 5 message is not related to the tag of a message, which the claims define as “describing content in a body of the message.” In addition, nothing in the cited portions of Wexelblat discloses an analysis of “whether the content of the message conforms with requirements associated with the tag,” as required by the claims. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1, 8, and 15 as obvious over Wexelblat and Gobburu. In rejecting the dependent claims, the Examiner relied only on Wexelblat for the claim limitation at issue (Final Act. 6–8), and therefore those rejections are not sustained for the same reasons as set forth above. DECISION SUMMARY In summary: Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, 17 103 Wexelblat, Gobburu 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, 17 2, 9, 16 103 Wexelblat, Gobburu, 2, 9, 16 4, 11, 18 103 Wexelblat, Gobburu, Kamma 4, 11, 18 4, 5, 11, 12, 18 103 Wexelblat, Gobburu, Gannu 4, 5, 11, 12, 18 6, 13, 19 103 Wexelblat, Gobburu, Gannu 6, 13, 19 Overall Outcome 1–6, 8– 13, 15–19 REVERSED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation