DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Status
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Response to Arguments
101 Rejection: Applicant’s arguments, filed 10/13/2025, with respect to claims 1-20 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The threshold that the rejection is more likely than not (i.e., more than 50%) ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101 has not been met. Accordingly, the 101 rejection of claims 1-20 has been withdrawn.
Prior Art Rejection: Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-20 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Upon further consideration, and in view of applicant’s amendments, a new grounds of
rejection is made in view of newly cited references Broder, Malegaonkar, and Chang.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shapira (US 9519690 B1) hereafter Shapira in view of Roberts et al (US 20110126253 A1) hereafter Roberts in view of Broder et al (US 8688521 B2) hereafter Broder
Regarding claim 1, Shapira teaches a system, comprising: a processor; and a memory storing instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform a set of operations, the set of operations comprising: receiving, from a first user device of a user, an indication to generate a content post within a hierarchical content store (Para 16, the user may provide a comment to a social media content item), the hierarchical content store comprising a set of categories, wherein each category of the set of categories has an associated set of subcategories (Para 63, causes a number of engagements to be obtained by the user that results in the user being the top ranked user); generating, in response to the indication, the content post within the hierarchical content store (Para 62, all comments may be displayed in UI 400 and/or UI 500); generating, within the hierarchical content store, an association between the content post and at least one of a category of the set of categories or a subcategory of an associated set of subcategories for the category (Para 50, process 300 may include ranking the user based on the number of engagements).
Shapira does not appear to explicitly teach receiving, from a second user device, a request for
content from the hierarchical content store, wherein the request comprises an indication of at least one of the category or the subcategory; identifying, based on the indication of the request and the generated association, the post within the hierarchical content store; and providing, in response to the request for content, the identified post for display by the second user device.
In analogous art, Roberts teaches receiving, from a second user device, a request for content from the hierarchical content store, wherein the request comprises an indication of at least one of the category or the subcategory (Para 0021, The recipient media device 135 can be configured to transmit requests for media content and commentary associated with the media content from devices in the system 100); identifying, based on the indication of the request and the generated association, the post within the hierarchical content store (Para 0021, Notably, the media content and associated commentary can include video content, audio content, still image content, text content, and other media content); and providing, in response to the request for content, the identified post for display by the second user device(Para 0021, the recipient media device 135 can transmit media content and commentary associated with the recipient media device 135 to the requesting devices). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Shapira to include the teaching of Roberts. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to manage content, as taught by Roberts (Para 0002, The present disclosure relates generally to media content and more specifically to an apparatus and method for managing a social network).
Shapira in view of Roberts does not appear to explicitly teach identifying, based on the indication of the at least one of the category or the subcategory and the generated association, the post within the hierarchical content store.
In analogous art, Broder teaches identifying, based on the indication of the at least one of the category or the subcategory and the generated association (Para 65, retrieve information related to the web page, such as, for example, content categories associated with the given web page and stored within the content taxonomy), the post within the hierarchical content store (Para 45, The content taxonomy 510 and the advertising taxonomy 520 are represented as hierarchies of nodes). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Shapira in view of Roberts to include the teaching of Broder. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to match content, as taught by Broder (Abs, A system and method to facilitate matching of content to advertising information in a network are described).
Regarding claim 2, Shapira in view of Roberts further in view of Broder teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the set of operations further comprises generating another association between the post and at least one of a user profile of the user and a subject matter entity (SME) profile of the user (Shapira, Para 13, the system may count the number of engagements made by each user with respect to a social media content item, and provide engagement information indicating these numbers in association with the social media content item).
Regarding claim 3, Shapira in view of Roberts further in view of Broder teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the request for content further comprises an indication of one or more filter criteria and identifying the post within the hierarchical content store further comprises determining the post satisfies the one or more filter criteria (Shapira, Para 48, process 300 may include determining whether the user has sufficient resources to obtain the indicated engagement).
Regarding claim 4, Shapira in view of Roberts further in view of Broder teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the set of operations further comprises generating an association between the post and a vendor profile of the hierarchical content store (Shapira, Para 49, Operation 310 may also include decrementing the user resources for the engagement from a user account of resources associated with the user).
Regarding claim 5, Shapira in view of Roberts further in view of Broder teaches the system of claim 1, wherein providing the identified post further comprises: identifying, based on an association between the post and a vendor profile within the hierarchical content store, a vendor corresponding to the post; determining, for the vendor, a referral identifier; and processing the post to embed the referral identifier, thereby causing the second user device to provide the referral identifier when requesting content from a computing device of the vendor (Shapira, Para 15, A user device 120 may be associated with an owner or possessor of the user device. Such association may be based on a registration of the user device 120 with a user identifier).
Regarding claim 6, Shapira in view of Roberts further in view of Broder teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the request for content further comprises a search query and identifying the post within the hierarchical content store further comprises determining the post is relevant to the search query (Shapira, Para 73, The various databases 130 described herein may be, include, or interface to, other data storage, including file-based, or query formats).
Regarding claim 7, Shapira in view of Roberts further in view of Broder teaches the system of claim 6, wherein determining the post is relevant to the search query comprises at least one of performing keyword searching within content of the post or evaluating a semantic similarity between the content and the search query (Shapira, Para 50, The ranking may be based on number of engagement by a user for the specific content).
Regarding claim 8, Shapira in view of Roberts further in view of Broder teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the post comprises at least one of textual content, audio content, image content, or video content (Shapira, Para 14, The one or more user interfaces may also include, for instance, a media player that plays music, videos, etc., a social media browser that displays social media content aggregated from various social media platforms).
Claims 9, 10, 11, 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Heiden et al (US 20090055404 A1) hereafter Heiden in view of Malegaonkar et al (US 20160360028 A1) hereafter Malegaonkar
Regarding claim 9, Heiden teaches a method for generating a subject matter entity (SME) profile within a hierarchical content store for an SME, the method comprising: receiving, via a user interface of a user device, an indication to create a new SME profile at a content platform (Para 0007, the system can enable a user to create a professional profile for purposes such as job seeking, career management and/or professional networking)(“professional profile” is a species of the genus “SME profile”); obtaining, by the user device, SME information corresponding to the SME (Para 0024, The information can be stored in a database whereby the individual can later update the online profile with additional information in the form of text, images, charts, video, audio and multimedia documents); providing the SME information to the content platform for validation, thereby causing the content platform to generate a new SME profile comprising the SME information (Para 0043, The validation data may be provided by a certifying authority, for example, and certify a representation provided by the element of the online profile); and providing, via the user interface, an indication that the new SME profile has been created (Para 0043, generate (1120) the online profile incorporating the online profile element and the validation data).
Heiden does not appear to explicitly teach wherein the SME has an associated unique identifier; and providing the SME information to the content platform for validation according to the unique identifier associated with the SME.
In analogous art, Malegaonkar teaches wherein the SME has an associated unique identifier; and providing the SME information to the content platform for validation according to the unique identifier associated with the SME (Para 0031, the registering user may scan a QR code from his or her mobile device as part of the registration. The QR code may initiate a registration app/process on the device for the user to register and/or confirm his/her profile). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Heiden to include the teaching of Malegaonkar. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to verify user profiles, as taught by Malegaonkar (Para 0029, the expert may scan or otherwise present a badge or other form of identification (e.g., a QR code, etc.). In response, a profile associated with the expert may be retrieved from the MTE app (e.g., the name of the expert, the area of expertise of the expert, etc.) and presented to the expert for confirmation).
Regarding claim 10, Heiden in view of Malegaonkar teaches the method of claim 9, wherein: obtaining the SME information comprises presenting a set of properties and receiving, via the user interface, user input of a value corresponding to each property of the set of properties (Heiden, Para 0034, The user interface can enable user 205 to add or edit information corresponding to online profile sections in accordance with a predefined category specified by the user interface); and the SME information comprises values corresponding to the set of properties (Heiden, Para 0034, information corresponding to online profile sections in accordance with a predefined category specified by the user interface).
Regarding claim 11, Heiden in view of Malegaonkar teaches the method of claim 9, wherein obtaining SME information comprises at least one of receiving user selection of media on the user device or capturing media at the user device to include as SME information for the new SME profile (Heiden, Para 0034, The user interface can enable user 205 to insert text or upload media objects of different types, such as images, video, audio and multimedia documents, to be incorporated into one or more of the sections of the online profile).
Regarding claim 13, Heiden in view of Malegaonkar teaches the method of claim 9, wherein the SME information comprises at least one of textual content, audio content, image content, or video content relating to the SME (Heiden, Para 0024, The information can be stored in a database whereby the individual can later update the online profile with additional information in the form of text, images, charts, video, audio and multimedia documents).
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Heiden in view of Malegaonkar in view of Cadiz et al (US 20020186257 A1) hereafter Cadiz
Regarding claim 12, Heiden in view of Malegaonkar teaches the method of claim 9, as shown above. Heiden in view of Malegaonkar does not appear to explicitly teach wherein: at least a part of the SME information obtained by the user device is pre-populated by the content platform; and obtaining the SME information further comprises user customization of the pre-populated SME information.
In analogous art, Cadiz teaches wherein: at least a part of the SME information obtained by the user device is pre-populated by the content platform; and obtaining the SME information further comprises user customization of the pre-populated SME information (Para 0112, a ticket database for individual users is pre-populated with a set of exemplary, fully functional tickets that a user can select from in creating a personal profile of tickets). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Heiden in view of Malegaonkar to include the teaching of Cadiz. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to provide a communication device, as taught by Cadiz (Para 0002, The present invention involves a new system and process for providing dynamic communication access and information awareness in an interactive peripheral display).
Claims 14, 17, 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Spencer et al (US 20070143283 A1) hereafter Spencer in view of Chang et al (US 20050033732 A1) hereafter Chang
Regarding claim 14, Spencer teaches a method for providing content in response to a request from a search crawler of a search platform, the method comprising: receiving, from the search crawler, a request for content from a hierarchical content store of a content platform(Para 0036, the commercial web server 23 determines in step 50 that the request is from a search engine spider 30)(“search engine spider” is synonymous with “search crawler”)(“commercial web server” is a species of “hierarchical content store”); identifying, from the hierarchical content store, responsive content for the request for content (Para 0038, the proxy server 39 obtains, in real-time, the requested web page 32 from the commercial website)(“ requested web page” is a species of “responsive content”); generating metadata for the identified responsive content based on one or more associations between the responsive content within the hierarchical content store (Para 0036, some of the hyperlinks and URLs contained on the commercial website 10 are replaced with hyperlinks and URLs directed to corresponding proxy web pages 42 contained on the proxy website 38)(“ hyperlinks and URLs” are species of “generated metadata”); enriching the responsive content with the generated metadata to generate enriched content (Para 0036, the commercial web server 23 revises some of the hyperlinks on the dynamic web page 32 to make the URLs more spider-friendly ); and providing, in response to the request for content, the enriched content(Para 0046, Once the proxy web page has been created, the proxy web page is served to the spider in step 72)(“proxy web page” is a species of “enriched content”).
Spencer does not appear to explicitly teach wherein the responsive content comprises a plurality of nodes from the hierarchical content store.
In analogous art, Chang teaches wherein the responsive content comprises a plurality of nodes from the hierarchical content store (Para 0013, The web crawler (102) retrieves all HTML cross hierarchical relations between objects, i.e., HTML nodes, and organizes them in a graph database (108)). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Spencer to include the teaching of Chang. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to depict hierarchical relationships, as taught by Chang (Para 0019, The web crawler (100) builds the structural data elements to depict the HTML hierarchical relations among the HTML nodes).
Regarding claim 17, Spencer in view of Chang teaches the computer storage media of claim 14, wherein the request for content is received from the search crawler based on a listing of content generated by the content platform, wherein the listing of content is based on a content hierarchy of the hierarchical content store (Spencer, Para 0013, spider-friendly URLs that direct the search engine spider to proxy web pages on the proxy website)(“proxy website” is a species of “content based on a content hierarchy”).
Regarding claim 18, Spencer in view of Chang teaches the computer storage media of claim 14, wherein the responsive content comprises content from a plurality of posts of the hierarchical content store and the plurality of posts are each related to at least one of a category or a subcategory for a given category of the hierarchical content store (Spencer, Para 0028, Included in the commercial website 10 is a listing of product categories 34, each of which includes a hyperlink to a dynamically-generated web page contained further within the commercial website 10).
Claims 15, 16, 19, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Spencer in view of Chang in view of Heiden
Regarding claim 15, Spencer in view of Chang teaches the computer storage media of claim 14, as shown above.
Spencer in view of Chang does not appear to explicitly teach wherein the one or more associations comprises at least one of: an association between the content and a user profile of the content platform; an association between the content and a vendor profile of the content platform; an association between the content and a subject matter entity (SME) profile of the content platform; an association between the content and a category of the hierarchical content store; or an association between the content and a subcategory for a given category of the hierarchical content store.
In analogous art, Heiden teaches wherein the one or more associations comprises at least one of: an association between the content and a user profile of the content platform; an association between the content and a vendor profile of the content platform; an association between the content and a subject matter entity (SME) profile of the content platform; an association between the content and a category of the hierarchical content store; or an association between the content and a subcategory for a given category of the hierarchical content store(Para 0032, System 120 can then annotate the organization information stored in association with the generated online profile by associating URL links and/or other informational metadata). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Spencer in view of Chang to include the teaching of Heiden. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to manage online profiles, as taught by Heiden (Para 0002, This relates to online user profiles, and more particularly, to managing and controlling the presentation and distribution of online user profiles).
Regarding claim 16, Spencer in view of Chang in view of Heiden teaches the computer storage media of claim 15, wherein the responsive content is identified from the hierarchical content store as a result of the one or more associations for the responsive content within the hierarchical content store (Heiden, Para 0025, the system can enable an individual to share the online profile directly with another individual or organization associated with the system or across a network). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Spencer in view of Chang to include the teaching of Heiden. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to manage online profiles, as taught by Heiden (Para 0002, This relates to online user profiles, and more particularly, to managing and controlling the presentation and distribution of online user profiles).
Regarding claim 19, Spencer in view of Chang in view of Heiden teaches the computer storage media of claim 14, wherein the responsive content is further identified based on at least one of keyword matching or semantic similarity between the responsive content and the request for content (Spencer, Para 0026, The system can also embed verified information supporting those claims into the online profile (e.g., definitions of acronyms, terms, organization information, etc.)).
Regarding claim 20, Spencer in view of Chang in view of Heiden teaches the computer storage media of claim 14, wherein the responsive content is accessible from the content platform by a user device for a user that does not have a user profile with the content platform (Spencer, Para 0024, To create an online profile, an individual can electronically upload a current resume or CV into the system, or create one from scratch by manually supplying information into the system).
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Brooks Hale whose telephone number is 571-272-0160. The examiner can normally be reached 9am to 5pm est.
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/B.T.H./Examiner, Art Unit 2166
/SANJIV SHAH/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2166