Facebook, Inc.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Apr 9, 2021

2020005545 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 9, 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.
14/662,222 03/18/2015 Feng Yan 2006.038US1 8488
160546 7590 04/09/2021
Mannava & Kang, P. C.
3201 Jermantown Road
Suite 525
Fairfax, VA 22030
EXAMINER
VANDERHORST, MARIA VICTORIA
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3688
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
04/09/2021 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):
docketing@mannavakang.com
fb-pdoc@fb.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte FENG YAN, SHYAMSUNDAR RAJARAM, HAO ZHANG,
LU ZHENG, TIANSHI GAO, and DAVID MICHAEL VINER
____________

Appeal 2020-005545
Application 14/662,222
Technology Center 3600
____________

Before JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, BRUCE T. WIEDER, and
AMEE A. SHAH, Administrative Patent Judges.

SHAH, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), the Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s final decision to reject claims 1–14, 16–18, and 20–22. We have
jurisdiction 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. The Appellant identifies the real party in interest as
Facebook, Inc. Appeal Br. 2. We note that the Appeal Brief does not
include page numbers. We refer to the page containing the heading
“APPEAL BRIEF” as page 1 with the remaining pages consecutively
numbered.
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CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The Appellant’s invention “relates generally to online systems, and
more specifically to selecting content for presentation to users of an online
system.” Spec. ¶ 1.
Independent claims 1, 16, and 21 are the independent claims on
appeal. Claim 1 is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal and is
reproduced below (with added lettered bracketing for reference):
1. A method comprising:
[(a)] providing, by an online system, a tracking pixel to one or
more third party systems, the tracking pixel comprising code for
embedding in internet-hosted content of the one or more third party
systems, wherein the code is executable by a processor of a client
device upon the client device accessing the internet-hosted content of
the one or more third party systems;
[(b)] for each of a plurality of users of the online system,
receiving tracking pixel information describing each of a plurality of
web pages provided by the one or more third party systems accessed by
users of the plurality of users;
[(c)] for each of the plurality of users, logging information
describing interactions with each of a plurality of advertisements;
[(d)] identifying an opportunity to present an advertisement to a
viewing user of the plurality of users;
[(e)] responsive to identifying the opportunity to present an
advertisement to the viewing user,
[(e1)] retrieving information from the received tracking
pixel information describing a first set of web pages accessed by
the viewing user on the one or more third party systems;
[(e2)] determining a correlation between the first set of
web pages accessed by the viewing user and a second set of web
pages from the received tracking pixel information accessed by
additional users of the online system who interacted with at least
one advertisement of the plurality of advertisements;
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[(e3)] selecting a set of candidate advertisement requests
each including an advertisement from the at least one
advertisement of the plurality of advertisements for display to the
viewing user based at least in part on the determined correlation;
and
[(e4)] including the set of candidate advertisement
requests in a selection process for selecting an advertisement for
display to the viewing user.
Appeal Br., Claims App.

REFERENCES
The prior art references relied upon by the Examiner are:
Name Reference Date
Wang et al. (“Wang”) US 2009/0216616 A1 Aug. 27, 2009
Henkin et al. (“Henkin”) US 2011/0213655 A1 Sept. 1, 2011
Montgomery et al.
(“Montgomery”)
US 2013/0282817 A1 Oct. 24, 2013

THE REJECTION
Claims 1–14, 16–18, and 20–22 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as unpatentable over Henkin, Wang, and Montgomery.

OPINION
We agree with the Appellant’s contention that the Examiner’s
rejection of independent claims 1, 16, and 21 is in error because the
Examiner does not adequately show how one of ordinary skill in the art
would combine Henkin, Wang, and Montgomery to teach determining a
correlation between the first set and second set of web pages as recited in
limitation (e2) of claim 1 and similarly recited in claims 16 and 21. See
Appeal Br. 6–10; Reply Br. 5–6.
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The Examiner finds, in relevant part, that Henkin teaches
“determining a correlation between the first set of web pages accessed by the
viewing user and a second set of web pages from the historical information
containing information accessed by users who interacted with at least one
advertisement of the plurality of advertisements.” Final Act. 8; see also
Ans. 31–34. Finding that Henkin does not teach “tracking pixel and
received tracking pixel [logged] information accessed by additional users”
(Final Act. 11 (alteration in original)), the Examiner relies on Montgomery
for teaching a tracking pixel as claimed (id. at 12–13) and on Wang for
teaching the “functionality to log and correlate data” (id. at 11–12).
Henkin discloses, in relevant part, “[d]ifferent types of Hybrid
contextual advertising and related content analysis and display techniques
. . . for facilitating on-line contextual advertising operations and related
content delivery operations implemented in a computer network.” Henkin,
Abstr. The advertising/promotional content may be “based upon real-time
analysis of web page content which may be served to an end-user’s
computer system.” Id. For example, for a web page downloaded by a user,
i.e., a source page, “[t]he statistical distribution of words and phrases on the
web page may be determined and scored against a taxonomy of topics stored
in a database on a server,” the score “indicating how related the web page is
to each topic in the taxonomy” and “compared to the scores for other web
pages that are candidates for being matched or linked” based on “[t]he
similarity in scores between two web pages.” Id. ¶ 52; see also id. ¶¶ 53, 60,
61. “This ‘related score’ can then be used as a factor in selecting web pages
or other items of content to be matched or linked for various purposes,” such
as inserting hyperlinks for advertisements. Id. ¶¶ 53, 54; see also id. ¶¶ 61,
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66. “The web page and the candidate advertisements may be scored against
the taxonomy and the resulting vectors may be compared to determine a
‘related score’ between the web page and the advertisement.” Id. ¶ 54. “An
advertisement may be scored against the taxonomy by analyzing and scoring
the text (words and phrases) in the ad copy itself and/or in meta data
associated with the ad and/or based on the text of a landing page associated
with the ad. . . .” Id. “An advertisement to be displayed or linked on a web
page may be selected based, at least in part, on how related the web page is
to the ad.” Id. “When processing a source page for ad placement or linking
to related content, the occurrence of keywords/keyphrases on the source
page and the historical correlation of those keywords/keyphrases to each
topic can be used to generate the score of the source page against each topic
in the taxonomy.” Id. ¶ 64. “In at least one embodiment, a data analysis
engine may be utilized which is operable to analyze historical information
including user behavior information and advertising-related information.”
Id. ¶ 65.
The Examiner interprets Henkin’s source page as the claimed “first set
of web pages accessed by the viewing user” and Henkin’s “historical
information including user behavior information and advertising-related
information” as the claimed “second set of web pages from . . . information
accessed by additional users of the online system who interacted with at
least one advertisement of the plurality of advertisements.” Ans. 31–32
(emphasis and alterations omitted); see also Final Act. 8–9. Thus, the
Examiner interprets Henkin’s processing of a source page for ad placement
by using the occurrence of keywords on the page and historical correlation
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of those keywords to each topic based on historical data the as the claimed
correlation between the first and second sets of web pages. Id.
The Examiner relies on Wang to cure any deficiencies of Henkin
regarding “information accessed by additional users” who interacted by
viewing advertisements. Final Act. 11–12; Ans. 34. Wang discloses a
method and system for “selecting correlated advertisements for displaying to
users by utilizing the advertisement-viewing data collected on users of a web
site.” Wang, Abstr. Data regarding advertisements viewed by all users of a
web site are correlated with data regarding advertisements viewed by a
particular user to select advertisements “to display to users in real-time
based on users’ latest ad-viewing data.” Wang ¶¶ 8, 30. For example, when
User-1 views ads having URL-Ad-1, URL-Ad-5, and URL-Ad-9, within a
time period such as the last few seconds or minutes, the URLs and cookie
identifying User-1 are sent to a website. Id. ¶ 50. The User Profile Server
analyzes the cookie to identify the user being User-1, and the Instant Ad
Suggestion Server uses the sent URLs as inputs to make computations to
generate URLs of correlated ads to display to User-1 by using a table in
which the correlation of URLs with ads viewed by users of the web site is
stored. Id. ¶¶ 50, 51.
The Examiner relies on Wang’s correlation table as the information
accessed by one or more additional users who viewed the at least one
advertisement of the plurality of advertisements from the logged
information. Further, the Examiner concludes that it would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate Wang’s teaching
with Henkin, determining “[o]ne would have been motivated to provide
functionality to log and correlate data in order to facilitate displaying of
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correlated advertisements to user’s interest (see Wang paragraphs 2 and
49).” Final Act. 12.
The Examiner relies on Montgomery to teach the web pages being
received from tracking pixel information. Final Act. 12. Montgomery
discloses “methods and systems for targeting delivery of content to
viewers.” Montgomery ¶ 2. A tracking pixel may be placed at an advertiser
or other web site. Id. ¶ 38. “Data collected as a result of the tracking pixel
504 (e.g., tracking data 208) is stored at an enterprise data warehouse,” i.e.,
storage. Id. “Profiling algorithms 508 are applied to the tracking data 208
to generate viewer profiles 510,” and “viewer profiles 510 are mapped to
various different elements to generate targeting data 520, which includes
element-of-interest,” such as product, brand, or culture elements viewers like
or patronize or geographic or demographic elements correlated to the user.
Id. The Examiner concludes that it would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art to incorporate Montgomery’s teaching with Henkin,
determining “[o]ne would have been motivated to provide functionality to
add tracking pixel capability in order to map and track data elements (see
Montgomery, paragraph 38 and Abstract).” Final Act. 12.
Thus, the Examiner combines Henkin’s processing of a source page
(the first set of web pages) for ad placement by using the occurrence of
keywords on the page and historical correlation of those keywords to each
topic based on historical data (the correlating between the first set and
second set of web pages) with Wang’s correlation table (the second set of
web pages accessed by one or more additional users of the online system
who interacted with at least one advertisement of the plurality of
advertisements) and Montgomery’s tracking pixel information (the received
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tracking pixel information) to meet the claimed limitation (e2) of
“determining a correlation between the first set of web pages accessed by the
viewing user and a second set of web pages from the received tracking pixel
information accessed by additional users of the online system who interacted
with at least one advertisement of the plurality of advertisements.”
However, we do not see, and the Examiner has not adequately
explained, how the combination of the prior art teaches the limitation as a
whole. It is not clear if or how Henkin’s correlation between keywords from
the source page and particular topics to generate a score (see Henkin ¶ 64)
includes the data analysis of historical information (see id. ¶ 65) such that
Henkin teaches a correlation between the processed source page (first set)
and the user behavior information (second set). See Appeal Br. 7. Further,
the Examiner does not adequately show how Wang’s correlation between
data regarding advertisements viewed by all users of a web site and data
regarding advertisements viewed by a particular user (see Wang ¶¶ 8, 30, 50,
51) would be combined with Henkin’s correlation of the keywords to topics.
Based on the record before us, we are persuaded of Examiner error.
Thus, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 of independent claims 1, 16, and 21 and of dependent claims 2–14, 17,
18, 20, and 22.
CONCLUSION
The Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1–14, 16–18, and 20–22 is
not sustained.
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In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/
Basis
Affirmed Reversed
1–14, 16–18,
20–22
103 Henkin, Wang.
Montgomery
1–14, 16–18,
20–22

REVERSED