Warren Young

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Mar 12, 2020

14202657 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Mar. 12, 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.
14/202,657 03/10/2014 Warren Young 1288-002 2237
88360 7590 03/12/2020
Richards Patent Law P.C.
20 N Clark Street
Suite 3300
Chicago, IL 60602
EXAMINER
HOLLAND, SHERYL L
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
2161
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
03/12/2020 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):
docketing@richardspatentlaw.com
eofficeaction@appcoll.com
robin@richardspatentlaw.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte WARREN YOUNG
Appeal 2018-004248
Application 14/202,657
Technology Center 2100
Before JEREMY J. CURCURI, AMBER L. HAGY, and
PHILLIP A. BENNETT, Administrative Patent Judges.
HAGY, 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 9–16, 18, and 19, which are all of the
pending claims.2 See Final Act. 1. 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 the inventor, Warren
Young. Brief 3.
2 Claims 1–8 and 17 have been canceled. Final Act. 2; Brief 9, 11 (Claims
App’x).
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CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER
The claims are directed to a method for personalizing review
information for a reviewable item for a user on a social network. See
Abstract; claim 9. By way of background, Appellant’s Specification
observes that “[t]here is an issue of trust on review sites on the Internet
today,” because people do not know the reviewers and thus cannot know if a
review is real or fake or otherwise biased. Spec. ¶ 3. Appellant’s invention
purports to address that issue by providing a “social review system,” in
which users may search reviews that their friends have made of products or
services, allowing users to “make more informed decisions.” Id. ¶ 17. The
Specification notes that a user’s review network may be divided into social
degrees, including, for example, “friends” of the user at one degree and
friends of those friends (“friends +1”) at another degree. Id. ¶ 22. The
individual ratings and reviews of products and services may be “prioritized,
arranged, and displayed in such a way to give priority to people the user
knows and trust, such as: User’s first, then user’s friends, then user’s friends
+1, then people the user is ‘following’, then everyone else.” Id. ¶ 23. In this
way, “[t]he social review system may enable reviews in a category to be
compared between users,” and also a user “may compare their reviews for a
category of data with the reviews of all of their friends in aggregate . . . .”
Id. ¶ 27. Appellant’s Specification also discusses other ways in which
reviews may be aggregated based on social relationships. E.g., id. ¶¶ 28, 29,
54, 115, 130.
Claim 9, which is the sole independent claim, illustrates the claimed
subject matter, and is reproduced below with disputed limitations italicized:

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9. A method for personalizing review information for
a reviewable item for a user on a social network, comprising the
steps of:
providing a database of users including the user and other
users of the social network, wherein the database includes
connections between the user and the other users of the
database at two or more social degrees;
receiving reviews for the reviewable item from each user
of at least two or more users of the other users, wherein each
review of the reviewable item includes a rating and a
recommendation for the reviewable item, wherein the rating is a
numerical value in a rating scale, and wherein the
recommendation is a binary endorsement; and
in response to a request from the user to view the review
information for the reviewable item, displaying, by a user
interface of the user, combined ratings and combined
recommendations for the reviewable item at each of at least two
of the two or more social degrees;
wherein the combined ratings and the combined
recommendations are determined by the steps of:
for each social degree, creating a combined rating
from all reviews received from all the other users at that
social degree, and
for each social degree, creating a combined
recommendation from all reviews received from all the
other users at that social degree.

REFERENCES
The prior art relied upon by the Examiner is:
Name Reference Date
Ratterman US 8,635,098 B2 Jan. 21, 2014
Bedard
Kane
Shifflett
US 2006/0282304 A1
US 2010/0042460 A1
US 2011/0264596 A1
Dec. 14, 2006
Feb. 18, 2010
Oct. 27, 2011

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REJECTIONS3
Claims 9, 10, 14, 16, and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)4
as being unpatentable over the combination of Ratterman and Kane. Final
Act. 7–12.
Claims 11–13 and 19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over the combination of Ratterman, Kane, and Shifflet. Final
Act. 13–17.
Claim 15 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over the combination of Ratterman, Kane, and Bedard. Final
Act. 18–19.
OPINION
With regard to independent claim 9, the Examiner finds Ratterman
discloses the limitations “providing a database of users . . .” (Final Act. 7
(citing Ratterman 7:11–19, claim 1 lines 8–21)), “receiving reviews for the
reviewable item . . .” (id. at 8 (citing Ratterman 5:22–25, claim 1 lines 8–
21)), “combined ratings and combined recommendations for the reviewable
item at each of at least two or more social degrees . . .” (id. (citing Ratterman
5:33–39, claim 1 lines 8–21)), and “wherein the combined ratings and
combined recommendations are determined by” creating combined ratings
and combined recommendations “from all reviews received from all the

3 The Examiner rejected claim 16 in the Final Action under 35 U.S.C.
§ 112(b) as indefinite (Final Act. 6), but withdrew that rejection in the
Answer (Ans. 15). That rejection, therefore, is no longer before us.
4 The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (“AIA”) included revisions to
35 U.S.C. § 103 that became effective on March 16, 2013. Because the
present application claims priority to an application filed before March 16,
2013, the Examiner applies the pre-AIA version of § 103. Final Act. 2.
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other users at that social degree” (id. (citing Ratterman 5:22–25, claim 1
lines 8–21)). The Examiner finds Ratterman does not explicitly disclose
“wherein each review of the reviewable item includes a rating and a
recommendation for the reviewable item, wherein the rating is a numerical
value in a rating scale, and wherein a recommendation is a binary
endorsement; and in response to a request from the user to view the review
information for the reviewable item, displaying, by a user interface of the
user,” for which the Examiner relies on Kane in combination with
Ratterman. Id. at 9 (citing Kane ¶¶ 22, 35, 36, 57). In a nutshell, the
Examiner relies on Ratterman as disclosing “an aggregated community score
for recommendations for each user of the community, wherein the scores are
aggregated by the degree of separation to the reviewing user.” Id. The
Examiner relies on Kane as disclosing “a method of generating
recommendations for items, wherein the recommendations include a rating
of 1–5 and a binary recommendation indicator of thumbs up or thumbs
down.” Id. at 9–10. The Examiner then finds “[t]he community
recommendation aggregation score determined by degrees of separation as
taught by Ratterman could have been combined with the 1–5 rating and the
recommendation indicator as taught by Kane to provide a community rating
and recommendation for presentation to a user in a display segregated by
degrees of separation.” Id. at 10.
Appellant argues the Examiner’s rejection is in error because “no
combination of the cited references discloses or suggests displaying
combined numerical ratings and combined binary recommendations for a
reviewable item for each of two or more sets of users that are related at
distinct social degrees from the user.” Brief 7 (emphasis added). In
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particular, Appellant argues “the system of Ratterman et al. provides a
community rating derived from the feedback ratings of the user.” Id.
(emphasis added). Appellant also argues Kane teaches “a personalized
recommendation for a user based on explicit user feedback such [as] a
binary endorsement,” but does not disclose “provid[ing] recommendations
reflecting this binary endorsement to other users, as required under the
claims.” Id.
We are persuaded of error in the Examiner’s rejection. In particular,
we conclude the Examiner’s findings are deficient because the Examiner
does not adequately explain how the cited art teaches or suggests “combined
ratings and combined recommendations for the reviewable item at each of at
least two of the two or more social degrees,” as recited in independent
claim 9. The Examiner relies on Ratterman as disclosing this limitation
(Final Act. 8), but fails to explain how Ratterman’s system, which pertains
to reputation ratings for individual users, would be used to generate ratings
for “a reviewable item.” Instead of disclosing rating items, Ratterman
discloses rating users, wherein the users are individuals engaged in an
“online trading environment, online shopping site,” etc., where “user
feedback is provided.” Ratterman 1:27–32. Ratterman discloses that, in the
context of such environments, “[a] user’s feedback rating is an indication of
the user’s reputation within the electronic community, and provides some
indication of the trustworthiness and responsiveness of the user.” Id. at
2:58–61. In disclosing aggregation of ratings, Ratterman describes a
“Community Rating” for a user as “based upon the user’s Feedback Rating
and the Feedback Rating of other users associated with that user.” Id. at
3:25–27. The Examiner does not find, nor do we discern, that Ratterman
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teaches or suggests ratings and recommendations for a reviewable item,
much less “combined ratings and combined recommendations for the
reviewable item,” as recited in claim 9. Rather, the Examiner’s findings
point only to Ratterman’s “community rating,” which, as noted, is a
reputation score for a particular user and not for any “item.”
Even if a “reviewable item” could be mapped to a “user” in Ratterman
(e.g., a vendor in an electronic marketplace having a feedback rating), the
required social connections in claim 9 could not also map to the connections
of Ratterman’s “user.” Claim 9 differentiates between a “user” and a
“reviewable item,” such that the “user” in claim 9 is the entity that is
considering the review information, not an entity being reviewed. The
Examiner has not pointed to teachings in Ratterman that an entity
considering review information has a social network, and thus the Examiner
has not pointed to teachings in Ratterman that would satisfy the requirement
of ratings and recommendations each being “combined” from “all reviews
received from all the other users” at least two or more social degrees, as
required by claim 9. Rather, the combined ratings in Ratterman relied upon
by the Examiner are the “community ratings” of each of the entities being
rated (e.g., vendors), not any entities considering those reviews or
recommendations, as recited in claim 9.
The Examiner’s findings in the Final Action combining Ratterman
with Kane do not remedy the foregoing deficiencies. See Final Act. 9–10.
As noted above, the Examiner relies on Kane for the format of the
recommendations (that is, a numerical value in a rating scale or a binary
endorsement, such as “thumbs up for thumbs down”) and for displaying the
recommendations. Id. at 9–10. The Examiner does not find that Kane
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teaches or suggests a combined rating or combined recommendation from all
reviews received from other users at a particular social degree, as recited in
claim 9.
For the foregoing reasons, on this record, we are persuaded of error in
the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of independent claim 9, and we,
therefore, do not sustain that rejection. Dependent claims 10–16, 18, and 19
stand with independent claim 9.
CONCLUSION
The Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 9–16, 18, and 19 is
reversed.
DECISION SUMMARY
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. § Reference(s)/Basis Affirmed Reversed
9, 10, 14,
16, 18
103(a) Ratterman, Kane 9, 10, 14,
16, 18
11–13, 19 103(a) Ratterman, Kane,
Shifflet
11–13, 19
15 103(a) Ratterman, Kane,
Bedard
15
OVERALL OUTCOME

9–16, 18,
19
REVERSED