HU, Yuheng et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Nov 30, 2020

2019002930 (P.T.A.B. Nov. 30, 2020)

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.
13/370,488 02/10/2012 Yuheng HU 4366-915 7592
48500 7590 11/30/2020
SHERIDAN ROSS P.C.
1560 BROADWAY, SUITE 1200
DENVER, CO 80202
EXAMINER
HOANG, PHUONG N
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2194
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
11/30/2020 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):
cjacquet@sheridanross.com
edocket@sheridanross.com
pair_Avaya@firsttofile.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte YUHENG HU, AJITA JOHN,
and DOREE DUNCAN SELIGMANN
____________

Appeal 2019-002930
Application 13/370,488
Technology Center 2100
____________

Before ALLEN R. MacDONALD, CAROLYN D. THOMAS, and
DAVID J. CUTITTA II, Administrative Patent Judges.

THOMAS, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant1 appeals from the
Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1–20. We have jurisdiction over the
appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM IN PART.

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 Avaya Inc.
Appeal Br. 2.
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The present invention relates generally to segmenting a document,
associated with an event based on a plurality of inferred topics, to yield a
plurality of segments. See Spec., Abstract.
Claims 1 and 5 are illustrative:
1. A method comprising:
segmenting, via a processor, a text document associated
with an event based on a plurality of inferred topics to yield a plurality
of text segments, wherein the plurality of inferred topics is obtained
by applying a statistical model to the text document;
assigning each message in a corpus of messages
associated with the event to one of the inferred topics to yield
assigned topics, wherein the corpus of messages originates from
sources other than the event and other than the text document, and
wherein the corpus of messages is generated during the event; and
based on the assigned topics, associating the each
message in the corpus of messages with at least one of the text
document, a text segment from the plurality of text segments, or a
segment of the event.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:
ranking the plurality of text segments based on how
many messages in the corpus of messages are associated with each of
the plurality of text segments.

Appellant appeals the following rejection:2
Claims 1–20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Shamma (US 2011/0207482 A1, pub. Aug. 25, 2011) and
AbdAlmageed (US 2011/0258188 A1, pub. Oct. 20, 2011).
We review the appealed rejection for error based upon the issues
identified by Appellant, and in light of the arguments and evidence produced
thereon. Ex parte Frye, 94 USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential).

2 The Examiner withdraws the rejection of claims 1–20 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 101. See Ans. 13.
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ANALYSIS
In the Appeal Brief, Appellant makes numerous arguments. The
following headings outline our grouping of the key aspects of Appellant’s
arguments:
Claims 1–20
Change Principle of Operation Argument
Appellant contends that “the entirety of Shamma is focused on the
concept of analyzing a sampling of short messages . . . and using the results
of that analysis to segment the media event and identify the topics therein.”
Appeal Br. 12. Appellant further contends that AbdAlmageed teaches “[t]he
use of [Latent Dirichlet Allocation, (LDA),] . . . to segment and discern
topics within a document by analyzing the document itself, [] an entirely
different and duplicative approach as compared to the core teachings of
Shamma.” Id. As such, Appellant concludes that “to modify Shamma in
light of AbdAlmageed . . . (i.e. to use LDA, rather than short message
sample, to discern topic) would essentially be to discard Shamma
altogether.” Id.
It is our understanding that Appellant is contending that the
combination of Shamma and AbdAlmageed would render Shamma
inoperable for its intended purpose. This argument is another form of a
teaching away argument. “If references taken in combination would
produce a ‘seemingly inoperative device,’ . . . such references teach away
from the combination and thus cannot serve as predicates for a prima facie
case of obviousness.” McGinley v. Franklin Sports, Inc., 262 F.3d 1339,
1354 (Fed. Cir. 2001) (citation omitted); see also In re ICON Health &
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Fitness, Inc., 496 F.3d 1374, 1382 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (“a reference teaches
away from a combination when using it in that combination would produce
an inoperative result,” but the obviousness analysis must account for
“modifications that one skilled in the art would make to a device borrowed
from the prior art”).
We disagree with Appellant that the relied upon teachings in
AbdAlmageed would render Shamma’s device inoperable for its intended
purpose. Instead, we find that both Shamma and AbdAlmageed teaches
segmenting media and discovering topics. See Shamma ¶ 19 (“The
collection of short messages is sampled, and the sampled of short messages
is used to segment and annotate the media event . . . e.g., . . . topics
associated with one or more portions or segments.”); and AbdAlmageed ¶ 6
(“The media may be segmented and topical tags may be intelligently
assigned to the segments based on the likelihood that a certain semantic is
related to a certain media segment.”). Also, AbdAlmageed teaches,
consistent with Appellant’s Specification (see Spec. ¶ 29), using LDA
probabilistic models to infer the set of topics covered in the text documents.
See AbdAlmageed ¶ 7.
In other words, AbdAlmageed merely discloses an alternative method
for segmenting media, i.e., semantically segmenting, and an alternative
method for topic detection, i.e., LDA. We do not find, and Appellant does
not establish, that Shamma criticizes, discredits, or otherwise discourages
the use of AbdAlmageed’s aforementioned methods. “[T]he prior art’s mere
disclosure of more than one alternative does not constitute a teaching away
from any of these alternative because such disclosure does not criticize,
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discredit, or otherwise discourage the solution claimed . . . .” In re Fulton,
391 F.3d 1195, 1201 (Fed. Cir. 2004).
As such, we find unavailing Appellant’s contention that “to modify
Shamma in light of AbdAlmageed . . . would essentially be to discard
Shamma altogether” (see Appeal Br. 12), given that the aforementioned
teachings are merely illustrating alternative ways of segmenting media and
topic detection within said media.
Additional Steps/Resources Needed Argument
Appellant contends that “modifying Shamma in view of
AbdAlmageed would require the addition of a textual extraction step
(requiring additional resources).” Appeal Br. 13.
Shamma’s claim 1 recites “[a] method . . . comprising: . . . .” The use
of “comprising” in the preamble renders Shamma’s claim 1 open to the use
of additional steps and components, such as an extraction step. Moleculon
Research Corp. v. CBS, Inc., 793 F.2d 1261, 1271 (Fed. Cir. 1986). As
such, we find unavailing Appellant’s aforementioned “additional steps”
argument, given that Shamma’s claimed invention is not limited to the
recited steps.
Shamma fails to teach segmenting a text document
Appellant contends that “[w]hile Shamma does discuss short
messages, nowhere does Shamma describe segmenting a short message, or
anything else that could remotely be considered to be a text document.
Shamma, then fails to teach segmenting a text document.” Appeal Br. 13.
Although Shamma may not explicitly disclose segmenting a text
document, as argued by Appellant, Shamma discloses that “[b]y way of a
non-limiting example, the media event is a live media event.” See Shamma
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¶ 19. In other words, although Shamma’s exemplary example illustrates a
“live media event,” as opposed to a text document, Shamma explicitly states
that this example is non-limiting, i.e., is not excluding other content, i.e., like
text documents.
AbdAlmageed, the reference Shamma is combined with, teaches
receiving media, i.e., online video, and extracting textual information related
to the media’s content using closed captioning, thereby creating a textual
transcript/document of the media that is both segmented and mapped to
topics. See AbdAlmageed ¶¶ 6–7. Stated differently, we find that the
combined teachings of Shamma and AbdAlmegeed teaches segmenting
various media types, including a text document.
As such, we find unavailing Appellant’s contention that Shamma fails
to teach segmenting a text document, given the combined teachings of
Shamma and AbdAlmageed noted above.
No assigning each message to one of the inferred topics
Appellant contends that “Shamma teaches that based on the content of
short messages regarding an event, topics may be assigned to the event,
which is not the same as assigning messages to an inferred topic.” Appeal
Br. 14. Appellant further contends that AbdAlmageed also fails to disclose
this limitation. Id.
The Examiner finds that “Shamma analyzes and assigns topics for
each message in a corpus of messages by analyzing high frequency terms.”
Ans. 16 (citations omitted). The Examiner further finds that “AbdAlmageed
teaches inferring topics of messages using Latent Dirichlet Allocation
(LDA) model.” Id. Therefore, it is the combined teachings of Shamma and
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AbdAlmageed that the Examiner is relying on to teach the claimed
“assigning each message . . . to one of the inferred topics.” Id. at 17.
Appellant’s argument against Shamma separately from AbdAlmageed
(or AbdAlmageed separately from Shamma) does not persuasively rebut the
combination made by the Examiner. One cannot show non-obviousness by
attacking references individually, where the rejections are based on
combinations of references. In re Merck & Co., Inc., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097
(Fed. Cir. 1986); In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425–26 (CCPA 1981).
Here, Appellant’s arguments do not take into account what the
collective teachings of the prior art would have suggested to one of ordinary
skill in the art and is therefore ineffective to rebut the Examiner’s prima
facie case of obviousness. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA
1981)(“The test for obviousness is not whether . . . the claimed invention
must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the
test is what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested
to those of ordinary skill in the art.”) (citations omitted). This reasoning is
applicable here.
As such, we find unavailing Appellant’s argument that Shamma and
AbdAlmageed, separately, fails to teach assigning each message . . . to one
of the inferred topics, given that the Examiner is relying on the combined
teachings.
Shamma does not teach associating each message
Appellant contends that no passage of Shamma “discloses anything
about associating each message in a corpus of messages with at least one of
a text document associated with an event, a text segment, or a segment of the
event.” Appeal Br. 14. We disagree with Appellant.
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Contrary to Appellant’s contention, Shamma discloses that “analyzer
208 identifies terms used in the short messages of sampling 206 to identify
topics and/or context of the media event as a whole, and/or the identified
segments of the media event.” Shamma ¶ 25. In other words, Shamma
teaches associating terms in the short messages with both topics and
segments of the media event. Appellant fails to persuasively distinguish this
teaching from the claimed “associating the each message . . . with at least
. . . a segment of the event.”
As such, we find unavailing Appellant’s argument that Shamma fails
to teach the aforementioned limitation, given the teachings in Shamma.
Additional Argument for Claim 16
Appellant contends that “the Final Action contains no assertion that
Shamma or AbdAlmageed teaches the limitation of Claim 16 reciting
‘wherein a number of inferred topics in the plurality of inferred topics is
based on a tuning threshold.’” Appeal Br. 14.
Although Appellant is correct that in the Final Action the Examiner
fails to make a specific finding regarding claim 16’s “tuning threshold”
limitation, in the Answer, the Examiner relies on the combination of
Shamma and AbdAlmageed and finds that “Shamma teaches assigning
topics for short messages based on a tuning threshold (para. 0020 and
0023),” and AbdAlmageed teaches “wherein a number of inferred topics.”
Ans. 18.
Specifically, Shamma teaches selecting short messages “from users
identified as having at least a threshold audience level” (Shamma ¶ 20), or
determining followcasters “based on a threshold number of subscribers.”
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Shamma ¶ 23. As noted supra, AbdAlmageed teaches using LDA
probabilistic models to infer the set of topics covered in a text document.
In the Reply Brief, Appellant contends that Shamma’s “criterion is not
used as a basis for ‘a number of inferred topics in the plurality of inferred
topics’” (Reply Br. 5), and “AbdAlmageed’s Paragraph [0007] says nothing
about a number of inferred topics in the plurality of inferred topics.” Id. We
disagree with Appellant.
Firstly, we note that the Examiner is not relying on Shamma to teach
the plurality of inferred topics obtained by apply a statistical model to a text
document, but rather AbdAlmageed (see Final Act. 5 & Ans. 5, 14).
Specifically, as noted supra, AbdAlmageed discloses employing LDA
probabilistic models to infer the set of topics covered in the text document.
See AbdAlmageed ¶ 7. Therefore, Appellant’s argument against Shamma
separately from AbdAlmageed does not persuasively rebut the combination
made by the Examiner. One cannot show non-obviousness by attacking
references individually, where the rejections are based on combinations of
references. In re Merck & Co., Inc., 800 at 1097.
Secondly, Appellant’s aforementioned broad argument regarding
AbdAlmageed fails to persuasively distinguish the claimed “a number of
inferred topics in the plurality of inferred topics” from AbdAlmageed’s
inferred topics detection method, i.e., Appellant fails to explain why
AbdAlmageed does not teach the aforementioned limitation.
As a result, we find unavailing Appellant’s aforementioned argument.
Additional Argument for Claim 19
In addition to the arguments above regarding claim 1, Appellant also
contends that “[n]owhere, though, does AbdAlmageed disclose displaying
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an augmented version of the event that comprises at least part of the event
and a topically related message from the corpus of messages.” Appeal Br.
15. We disagree with Appellant.
As indicated by the Examiner, “it is [the] combination of Shamma and
AbdAlmageed, not any alone, [that] teaches the claimed limitation of claim
19.” Ans. 19. Specifically, the Examiner finds that “Shamma teaches event
message[s] from the corpus of message[s] [and] AbdAlmageed teaches
semantically tagged segments including the textual segments, location
information, and topical tags that is the augmented version of the event.” Id.
at 20; see also Shamma ¶ 36 and AbdAlmageed ¶ 48. Additionally, the
Examiner finds, and we agree, that AbdAlmageed teaches
“outputting/displaying the semantically tagged segments.” Ans. 20 (citing
AbdAlgameed Fig. 1 step 118).
Here, Appellant’s argument against AbdAlmageed separately from
AbdAlmageed does not persuasively rebut the combination made by the
Examiner. Again, one cannot show non-obviousness by attacking references
individually, where the rejections are based on combinations of references.
In re Merck & Co., Inc., 800 at 1097. As a result, we find unavailing
Appellant’s aforementioned argument.
Additional Argument for Claim 5
In addition to the arguments regarding claim 1, Appellant also
contends that Shamma’s “[r]anking terms in a short message collection is
not the same as ranking text segments of a text document, as claimed” in
claim 5. Appeal Br. 16. We agree with Appellant.
Although the Examiner finds that “[i]n Shamma, in order to assign
topic, each term in the short messages is ranked to weigh its peakiness score
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of the frequency or interest of term in the messages,” (see Ans. 21 (citing
Shamma ¶ 38)), Appellant is correct in that ranking individual terms is not
the same as ranking text segments of a text document based on how many
messages are associated with each text segment. As such, we reverse the
Examiner’s rejection of claim 5.
Additional Argument for Claim 8
In addition to the arguments above regarding claim 1, Appellant also
contends that “AbdAlmageed does not disclose ‘filtering out noisy terms
above a noise threshold from a respective message in the corpus of
messages,” as recited in claim 8. Appeal Br. 17.
Here, it is important to point out that the Examiner relies upon
Shamma, not AbdAlmageed, to teach a message in a corpus of messages
(see Final Act. 4; Ans. 23–24). Therefore, Appellant’s aforementioned
argument against AbdAlmageed, separately from Shamma, does not
persuasively rebut the combination made by the Examiner. Again, one
cannot show non-obviousness by attacking references individually, where
the rejections are based on combinations of references. In re Merck & Co.,
Inc., 800 at 1097. As a result, we find unavailing Appellant’s
aforementioned argument.
Additional Arguments for Claims 4, 7, 10, 12, 14, and 20
Contrary to Appellant’s “Additional Arguments” headings, we find
that Appellant has not presented separate patentability arguments for claims
4, 7, 10, 12, 14, and 20, but instead has reiterated substantially the same
arguments as those previously discussed for patentability of claim 1 above
(see Appeal Br. 16–18), which we find unavailing. As a result, claims 4, 7,
10, 12, 14, and 20 fall therewith. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).
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CONCLUSION
Appellant has demonstrated that the Examiner erred in rejecting
claim 5 as being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Shamma and
AbdAlmageed.
However, the Examiner’s rejections of claims 1–4 and 6–20 as being
unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Shamma and AbdAlmageed is
affirmed.

In summary:
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
1–4, 6–20 103 Shamma,
AbdAlmageed
1–4, 6–20
5 103 Shamma,
AbdAlmageed
5
Overall
Outcome
1–4, 6–20 5

No period for taking any subsequent action in connection with this
appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a).

AFFIRMED-IN-PART