Facebook, Inc.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 12, 2021

2020004627 (P.T.A.B. Mar. 12, 2021)

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.
14/581,562 12/23/2014 Erick Tseng 26295-27524/US 5269
87851 7590 03/12/2021
Facebook/Fenwick
Silicon Valley Center
801 California Street
Mountain View, CA 94041
EXAMINER
LONG, MEREDITH A
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3688
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/12/2021 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 ERICK TSENG
Appeal 2020-004627
Application 14/581,562
Technology Center 3600
Before JOHNNY A. KUMAR, BETH Z. SHAW, and
SCOTT B. HOWARD, Administrative Patent Judges.
SHAW, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1, 3–5, 7–9, 21, 22, 24–27, and 29–33.
See Final Act. 1. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in 37
C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Facebook, Inc.
Appeal Br. 2.
Appeal 2020-004627
Application 14/581,562
2
CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to presentation of content items associated
with entities having physical locations. Spec. ¶ 1.
Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject
matter, with disputed limitations italicized:
1. A method comprising:
selecting advertisement content for presentation to a user of a
social networking system, wherein the selection is based
on whether a user profile of the user on the social
networking system has one or more characteristics that
satisfy targeting criteria of an advertisement request that
includes the advertisement content, the one or more
characteristics including at least one characteristic
selected from a group consisting of: biographic
information, demographic information, connections to
other users, and actions performed by the user in the
social networking system;
responsive to selecting the advertisement content for
presentation to the user, determining whether the selected
advertisement content is associated with an entity having
one or more physical locations;
generating an advertisement (“ad”) unit including the selected
advertisement content for presentation to the user;
responsive to determining that the selected advertisement
content is associated with an entity having one or more
physical locations:
selecting a physical location of the entity for identification
by the advertisement content based on proximities
of a physical location of a client device associated
with the user to the one or more physical locations
of the entity associated with the advertisement
content; and
appending the ad unit including the selected advertisement
content with a first actionable link and instructions
that, when executed by the client device in response
to receiving a first user input via the first actionable
link, cause the client device to:
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Application 14/581,562
3
expand one or more dimensions of the ad unit, and present
a map in the expanded ad unit identifying the
physical location of the client device and the
selected physical location of the entity in the map
while simultaneously presenting the advertisement
content in the expanded ad unit; and
communicating the ad unit to the client device for presentation
to the user.
REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:
Name Reference Date
Celik US 2007/0100867 A1 May 3, 2007
Busch US 2008/0248815 A1 Oct. 9, 2008
Oldham US 2009/0307188 A1 Dec. 10, 2009
Maertens US 2016/0062955 A1 Mar. 3, 2016

REJECTION
Claims Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis
1, 3–5, 7–9, 21, 22, 24–
27, 29–33
103 Celik, Oldham,
Maertens, Busch

OPINION
Appellant argues the rejection of the pending claims under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 based on independent claim 1. Therefore, based on Appellant’s
arguments, we decide the appeal of the pending claims based on claim 1
alone. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv).
First, Appellant argues the Examiner erred in combining Busch and
Celik because such a combination would “change the principle of operation
Appeal 2020-004627
Application 14/581,562
4
of Celik.” Appeal Br. 7.2 Appellant argues that because Busch describes
targeting content, “the proposed combination, after substituting the selection
process of Celik with that of Busch, would result in a system that would
serve advertisements based on user characteristics in a user profile rather
than based on search terms by the user.” Id.
We are not persuaded by this argument for the following reasons and
for the reasons stated in the Final Office Action and Answer. See Ans. 3–4.
An explicit teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the references is not
necessary to support a conclusion of obviousness. KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex
Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415–16 (2007); In re Ethicon, 844 F.3d 1344, 1350 (Fed.
Cir. 2017). The Supreme Court has instructed that “a court must ask whether
the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements
according to their established functions” (KSR, 550 U.S. at 417), and apply
“an expansive and flexible approach” to obviousness (id. at 415).
As the Examiner explains:
Celik teaches selecting an advertisement based on information
known about the user including their location and their computer
profile. This provides the user with a targeted advertisement. Celik
does not involve a social network and thus does not teach selecting an
advertisement based on a profile of the user on a social networking
system as claimed. However, Busch teaches selecting targeted content
based on both location and social networking information known
about the user. In the art it is common for an advertiser to use any
information available to them to provide a user with targeted content.
Providing the advertiser in Celik with additional information about the
user (i.e., Busch's social networking information) only enhances the
advertiser's ability to select targeted content for the user. The social
networking information utilized in the content selection process of

2 We note that the Appeal Brief does not include page numbers. For
reference, we designate the cover page of the Brief as page 1 and number the
pages consecutively therefrom, including the Appendices.
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Application 14/581,562
5
Busch is able to be used in combination with the location information
utilized in the content selection process of Celik. The selection
process of Celik is not replaced by the selection process of Busch as
suggested by Appellant (Brief at 7) - the selection process of Celik is
enriched through use of additional user information found in Busch.
Ans. 3–4.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine
Busch and Celik to have Celik’s advertiser obtain additional information
about a user because Busch, directed to user advertising, also, like Celik,
explicitly teaches advertising for business locations (Busch ¶ 422, Fig. 16).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to the ordinarily-skilled artisan at the
time of the invention to combine Celik’s disclosure of a user interface for
displaying advertising (Celik, Fig. 9, Abstr.) with Busch’s teachings of a
user interface showing advertising targeting (see Busch ¶ 422), where the
selection process of Celik is enriched through use of additional user
information found in Busch. Because both references are directed to
enhancing features of user interfaces and advertising, the ordinarily-skilled
artisan would have reasonably used Busch’s additional information, even if
Celik does not explicitly teach using a social networking system.
Moreover, such a combination is an obvious predictable variation of
known elements. “The 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. “If a person of ordinary skill can implement a
predictable variation, § 103 likely bars its patentability.” Id. at 417. Because
Appellant has not demonstrated that the proposed combination would have
been “uniquely challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art,”
the proposed modification would have been well within the purview of the
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ordinarily skilled artisan. Leapfrog Enters., Inc. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485
F.3d 1157, 1162 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (citing KSR, 550 U.S. at 418).
Appellant also argues “Celik does not determine whether the
advertisement is associated with an entity having one or more locations in
response to selecting the advertisement for presentation to a user, as recited
in claim 1.” Appeal Br. 9. Appellant argues “the system determines that the
feature listings are associated with locations before the feature listings are
selected for presentation to the user.” Id. “As such, it would be redundant for
Celik to determine whether the selected ad content is associated with an
entity having one or more physical locations in response to selecting the ad
content as the selection process would have already accounted for the
location.” Id.
We are not persuaded by this argument because, as the Examiner
explains, and we agree, when an entity has multiple locations, considering
location both before and after the initial selection process is not redundant.
Ans. 4. Celik utilizes the example of a user searching for “fast food” in
“Macon, GA.” Kentucky Fried Chicken (“KFC”) is available as a featured
(i.e., sponsored) listing. Ans. 3 (citing Celik ¶ 72). Within Macon, GA, there
may be multiple KFC stores. Celik teaches that
if an exact geographic location of the user is known, such as a
street address, then the featured listing that is shown may be the
closest location to the user. In the KENTUCKY FRIED
CHICKEN example, the store with the closest address to the
user may be shown. However, if the exact address or
geographic location is not known, such as a search within a zip
code when there are multiple KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN
store's in the zip code, then the featured listings may rotate the
stores in that zip code that are shown as a featured listing.
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Id. at 4–5. Thus, once KFC is selected as a featured listing and it is
determined there are multiple KFC stores (i.e., physical locations), a
particular physical location is chosen to be displayed. Accordingly, Celik
teaches that in response to selecting advertisement content (i.e., KFC), it is
still necessary to determine if KFC has one or more physical locations as
claimed. Id.
Appellant also argues that Celik does not teach or suggest
responsive to determining that the selected advertisement
content is associated with an entity having one or more physical
locations: selecting a physical location of the entity for
identification by the advertisement content based on proximities
of a physical location of a client device associated with the user
to the one or more physical locations of the entity associated
with the advertisement content.
Appeal Br. 11.
Appellant argues:
At best, Celik discloses that “if an exact geographic location of
the user is known, such as a street address, then the featured listing
that is shown may be the closest location to the user.” Celik ¶ 72.
However, the determination of which location is closest to the user is
not done in response to determining that the featured listing is
associated with an entity having one or more physical locations.
Instead, at best, this is performed in response to determining that the
entity has multiple locations.
Id.; Reply Br. 6–7.
We are not persuaded by this argument because we agree with the
Examiner’s finding that Celik’s teaching of the “closest location to the user”
is a physical location of an entity. Ans. 5; Celik ¶ 72. We also agree with the
Examiner’s finding that this determination of the closet location is done in
response to determining that the entity has one or more physical locations.
Id. Thus, we agree with the Examiner’s finding that Celik teaches selecting a
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physical location of an entity responsive to determining that the selected
advertisement content is associated with an entity having one or more
physical locations as claimed.
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1, and for
the same reasons, the rejection of the other pending claims, which are not
argued separately.

CONCLUSION
The Examiner’s rejection is affirmed.
DECISION SUMMARY
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 3–5, 7–9,
21, 22, 24–
27, 29–33
103 Celik, Oldham,
Maertens, Busch
1, 3–5, 7–9,
21, 22, 24–
27, 29–33

TIME PERIOD FOR RESPONSE
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.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(iv).
AFFIRMED