Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLCDownload PDFPatent Trials and Appeals BoardOct 26, 20212020005012 (P.T.A.B. Oct. 26, 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. 15/442,514 02/24/2017 Peter Richard Bailey 401241-US-NP/376766 6106 45809 7590 10/26/2021 SHOOK, HARDY & BACON L.L.P. (MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC) INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT 2555 GRAND BOULEVARD KANSAS CITY, MO 64108-2613 EXAMINER KIM, CHRISTY Y ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER 2169 NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE 10/26/2021 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): shbdocketing@shb.com usdocket@microsoft.com PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07) UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD Ex parte PETER RICHARD BAILEY, DAVID ANTHONY HAWKING, MARK BLELOCK ATHERTON, and NICHOLAS E. CRASWELL Appeal 2020-005012 Application 15/442,514 Technology Center 2100 Before LARRY J. HUME, CARL L. SILVERMAN, and MICHAEL T. CYGAN, Administrative Patent Judges. CYGAN, 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 1–20. Appeal Br. 6–9 (Claims App.). 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. Appellant identifies the real party in interest as Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC. Appeal Br. 2. Appeal 2020-005012 Application 15/442,514 2 CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER The claimed subject matter generally relates to query completion, including autosuggest and/or autocompletion technology. Spec. ¶ 1. The claimed subject matter addresses an “implied promise” that where a system suggests a search string, there will exist at least one document that will be retrieved by that search. Id. ¶ 17. Independent claim 1 is illustrative, with a below-discussed limitation emphasized in italics: 1. A method for completing a query comprising: receiving, from a user, a query prefix representing a portion of a query; creating a search string from the query prefix; searching a short text index using the search string to retrieve a plurality of text entries, each entry corresponding to an associated document; identifying a subset of the plurality of text entries retrieved from the short text index; creating a language model from the subset, the language model comprising a plurality of n-grams each with an n-gram probability; creating a plurality of query completion suggestions based on the language model and the query prefix; and causing presentation of the plurality of query completion suggestions to the user via a user interface. Appeal Br. 36 (Claims App.). Independent claims 10 and 17 recite, respectively, a system and a computer-readable medium having substantially similar limitations to those in claim 1. Id. at 37–39. Dependent claims 2–9, 11–16, and 18–20 each incorporate the limitations of their respective independent claims. Id. at 36–40. Appeal 2020-005012 Application 15/442,514 3 REFERENCES Name Reference Date Hsu et al. (“Hsu”) US 2012/0265779 A1 Oct. 18, 2012 Das et al. (“Das”) US 9,031,970 B1 May 12, 2015 REJECTIONS Claims 1–20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious over the combination of Hsu and Das.2 OPINION Appellant argues the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claims 1–20 is in error because the combination fails to teach, inter alia, “searching a short text index using the search string to retrieve a plurality of text entries, each entry corresponding to an associated document.” Appeal Br. 18. Examiner’s Findings The Examiner finds the disputed limitation met by the combined teachings of Hsu and Das. The Examiner finds Das to teach receiving a search query, but not creating a search string from that search query or performing the claimed searching. Final Act. 3. The Examiner relies on Hsu for those limitations missing from Das. Id. The Examiner finds the “searching . . .” limitation to be met by Hsu’s teaching of an entity store 206 that is searchable for items, and identifying semantic patterns associated with queries to identify key terms and phrases commonly associated with categories corresponding to particular entities. Id. (citing Hsu ¶¶ 36, 48). The Examiner finds “entity” to “apply to many things that are potentially 2 Despite inconsistencies in the Final Action, Appellant confirmed that appeal was taken from rejections based on the combination of Das and Hsu. Appeal Br. 14. Appeal 2020-005012 Application 15/442,514 4 capable of having associated hierarchical characteristics.” Id. (citing Hsu ¶ 33). The Examiner further finds the claims’ recitation of a short text index can be understood with respect to the Specification, pointing out that the claims do not recite limitations regarding the creation of a short text index. Ans. 4. The Examiner finds that the Specification describes the title of a document as metadata that is part of information regarding a document. Id. The Examiner further finds that Hsu’s attributes, such as the “model” of a particular camera, are characteristics of the entities. Id. at 4–5. Appellant’s Contentions Appellant argues, inter alia, that Hsu does not teach the “searching . . .” limitation because Hsu teaches neither the claimed short text index nor that each entry in the index corresponds with an associated document. Appeal Br. 18–19. Appellant characterizes the term “document” as “any type of electronic document, such as web pages, word processing or other text type documents, multi-media documents, and so forth.” Id. (citing Spec. ¶ 21). Appellant further characterizes the “entry” as, for example, including title, creator, or other metadata associated with the document. Reply Br. 4. Appellant argues that Hsu’s entity store does not contain entries associated with a document. Appeal Br. 19. Appellant argues Hsu’s entries are, for example, entities (people, companies), items (products), or attributes of those entities or products. Id. at 17 (citing Hsu ¶ 37). Appellant states that the entries may also include common queries that have been previously submitted to the search engine. Reply Br. 4 (citing Hsu ¶ 29). Appellant argues that Hsu’s entries have not been shown to correspond to an associated document. Id. Appeal 2020-005012 Application 15/442,514 5 Analysis We are persuaded by Appellant’s argument. The Examiner does not explain what document in Hsu teaches or suggests the claimed “associated document.” The Examiner finds Hsu discloses a data store (entity store 206) that contains terms and phrases associated with categories. Final Act. 3. The Examiner also associates the entity store 206 to the “short text index.” Final Act. 3. The Examiner does not explain how each of the entries in that entity store 206 correspond to an associated document. At best, the Examiner finds Hsu to teach a single document (entity store 206) having numerous entries associated with the entity store itself. We do not agree that the claimed “searching a short text index using the search string to retrieve a plurality of text entries, each entry corresponding to an associated document” is met where the index and the document are the same item. Such an interpretation would essentially make redundant the “each entry corresponding to an associated document” limitation. Nor has the Examiner pointed to any other document or documents to which each entry in the index corresponds. Accordingly, we do not sustain the Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1, 10, and 17, on the record before us, each having the “searching” limitation, and the remaining claims depending therefrom. CONCLUSION For the above-described reasons, we reverse the Examiner’s obviousness rejections of claims 1–20 over the applied art, as summarized below. Appeal 2020-005012 Application 15/442,514 6 DECISION SUMMARY In summary: Claim(s) Rejected 35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed 1–20 103 Hsu, Das 1–20 REVERSED Copy with citationCopy as parenthetical citation