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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 3/29/2024, 12/4/2025, & 1/12/2026 was filed before the first office action. The submissions are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 3, 4, 7, 11, 12, 18, and 19, are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claim Rejection Notes
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, and 20, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Howes et al. (US 20120023390 A1, published: 1/26/2012), in view of Bedingfield et al. (US 20070124414 A1, published: 5/31/2007).
Claim 1: Howes teaches a system, comprising: one or more processors ([Howes, 0063]); and memory storing instructions ([Howes, 0063]) that when executed by the one or more processors cause the one or more processors to effectuate operations comprising: determining whether at least one of search queries or search results that are associated with a first resource address having a first character string and associated with an resource satisfies a resource address shortening condition (the application obtains a list of links (or items containing links), such as a list of search results having associated links, or social network messages having embedded links. The links may include both original unshortened links and shortened links produced by a link-shortening service. The application also obtains link statistics from a statistics source, where the statistics may include, for example, a number of times that content available via an unshortened link was viewed via its associated shortened link [Howes, 0008]); and storing the second character string with an association to the first character string in a resource database such that the second character string is associated with the resource (the statistics server 115 then aggregates the statistics from the client 110--and any other clients that run the application and report their tracked statistics to the statistics server--storing the aggregated statistics in a statistics repository 116 [Howes. 0029]. When obtaining statistics for a shortened form of a link, the link statistics module 213 queries the link-shortening service 135 that created the shortened form for its stored statistics 136 using the link-shortening service's API 137 [Howes, 0036]).
Howes does not teach generating, in response to determining that the first resource address satisfies the resource address shortening condition, using a resource address shortening algorithm, and based on at least one of the search queries or the search results of a search engine that are associated with the first resource address, a shortened resource address having a second character string that has different characters than the first character string.
However, Bedingfield teaches generating, in response to determining that the first resource address satisfies the resource address shortening condition, using a resource address shortening algorithm, and based on at least one of the search queries or the search results of a search engine that are associated with the first resource address, a shortened resource address having a second character string that has different characters than the first character string (the web server can automatically shorten a web site's URLs. In one embodiment, before the URL is presented, the web server abbreviates the URL and then presents it in the address bar of the browser in place of the actual location. The user may never see the actual URL. An algorithm for generating the shortened URL as part of this implementation could check to see if a shortened URL had already been generated for that page. A unique URL can be generated for each visit by any user, but it is not necessary. Any hyperlink that can bring a user to another page can be shortened, and the shortened URL can be used as the hyperlink. So, in one embodiment when a user clicks on that shortened URL, the shortened URL appears in the location bar [Bedingfield, 0037]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the invention was filed, to modify the search query address shortening invention of Howes to include the shortening algorithm feature of Bedingfield.
One would have been motivated to make this modification to generate substitute URLs in response to a search query by using specialized algorithms to improve efficiency. Such will improve the process of generating shortened web addresses for responding to search queries more efficiently.
Claims 9 and 16, having similar elements to claim 1, are likewise rejected.
Claim 2: The combination of Howes and Bedingfield, teaches the system of claim 1. Bedingfield further teaches wherein the operations further comprise: receiving a resource address input; determining that a character string included in the resource address input matches the second character string; and retrieving, in response to the character string included in the first resource address matching the second character string, the resource using the first character string ([Bedingfield, 0030, FIG. 5]).
Claims 10 and 17, having similar elements to claim 2, are likewise rejected.
Claim 5: The combination of Howes and Bedingfield, teaches the system of claim 1. Howes further teaches wherein the operations further comprise: providing the second character string of the shortened resource address to one or more client computing devices in search results that include the resource (FIG. 1 illustrates clients 110 and 125, remote content providers 120, remote link-shortening service 135, and an optional statistics server 115, connected by a network 140 [Howes, 0014]).
Claim 13, having similar elements to claim 5, is likewise rejected.
Claim 6: The combination of Howes and Bedingfield, teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the resource address shortening condition includes a search result threshold for a number of times that the resource has been returned (relevance measures above some predetermined relevance threshold may be considered to indicate that the link is highly relevant, and thus should be treated differently from other links, such as being displayed with a special visual emphasis [Howes, 0041]; [Howes, 0006]).
Claims 14 and 20, having similar elements to claim 6, are likewise rejected.
Claim(s) 8 and 15, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Howes et al. (US 20120023390 A1, published: 1/26/2012) and Bedingfield et al. (US 20070124414 A1, published: 5/31/2007), and in further view of Jiang et al. (US 20160299915 A1, published: 10/13/2016).
Claim 8: The combination of Howes and Bedingfield, teaches the system of claim 1. The combination of Howes and Bedingfield, does not teach wherein the resource address shortening condition is based on search result feedback from one or more users.
However, Jiang teaches wherein the resource address shortening condition is based on search result feedback from one or more users (the retrieval method and the retrieval apparatus based on a browser in the present disclosure directly search for associative term lists corresponding to a search term in a storage database and search for matching pages corresponding to associative terms in the storage database, display the associative terms on a retrieval page, and directly push matching pages for user access when a user clicks the associative terms, thereby shortening retrieval time of the retrieval server, improving retrieval efficiency of users; and solving the technical issues of low retrieval feedback speed and retrieval efficiency in the retrieval method and the retrieval apparatus of the existing technology [Jiang, 0129]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the invention was filed, to modify the search query address shortening invention of the combination of Howes and Bedingfield, to include the user feedback on shortened addresses feature of Jiang.
One would have been motivated to make this modification to improve the shortening process by using user generated feedback to streamline the process.
Claim 15, having similar elements to claim 8, is likewise rejected.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SETH A SILVERMAN whose telephone number is (571)272-9783. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Thur, 8AM-4PM MST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Adam Queler can be reached at (571)272-4140. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Seth A Silverman/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2172