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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This non-final office action is in response to the Application filed on 06/27/2024, which is a 371 of PCT/CN2023/074915 Filing Date 02/08/2023 with priority to CN 202210125592.4 Filing Date 02/10/2022.
Claim(s) 1-10, 12, 14-22 are pending for examination. Claim(s) 1, 12, 14 is/are independent claim(s).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim(s) 14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because they are interpreted as being an electrical, or optical, signal or wave.
Claim 14:
Claim 14 recites a "computer program product”. An embodiment of the " computer program product” is an electrical or optical (signal or wave), see published Specification (¶ 0143). The office policy is to interpret “computer program product” as non-statutory. For purposes of examination, the examiner interprets the recited “computer program product” to include nonstatutory subject material (e.g. signals, waves, etc.).
Accordingly, Claim 14 fails to recite statutory subject matter as defined in 35 U.S.C. 101.
This rejection can be overcome by amending the claim to recite “non-transitory” as part of the media (medium), that is: "non-transitory computer readable storage medium"
Claim(s) 1, 2, 7, 12, 14, 15, 20, 22 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. Based upon consideration of all of the relevant factors with respect to the claim as a whole, claim(s) 1, 2, 7, 12, 14, 15, 20, 22 is/are determined to be directed to a judicial exception, i.e. an abstract idea without significantly more. The rationale for this determination is explained below.
The claim(s) is/are directed toward the abstract idea of automatically generating landing pages from web page content. The claim(s) do/does not contain any improvement to a technology or field, nor do they contain any additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because there are not sufficient limitations beyond linking the abstract idea to a computer.
In analyzing the Applicant’s claims for subject matter eligibility we use the Alice Mayo framework.
See MPEP 2106 - Patent Subject Matter Eligibility.
In step 1 we determine that claim 14 is a non-statutory “computer program product”, (see separate analysis above).
In step 1 we determine that the claims are a "process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter", (claim 1 is a method, claim 12 is a device), so we move to step 2A.
Step 2A is a two-prong inquiry, in Prong One we determine whether a claim recites a judicial exception, and if so, then we determine in Prong Two if the recited judicial exception is integrated into a practical application of that exception.
In step 2A, Prong One we determine that the “obtaining”, “generating”, and “outputting”, limitations in the claims are directed to a judicial exception, namely the abstract idea of automatically generating landing pages from web page content, which falls under the abstract idea grouping of methods of organizing human activity [mental processes, mathematical concepts] as described in MPEP 2106.04(a).
This moves us to Prong Two.
In step 2A, Prong Two we use the factors discussed in 2106.04(d)(I) to determine that the abstract idea is not integrated to a practical application. Specifically the claims take the abstract idea of automatically generating landing pages from web page content and merely include instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely use a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea, as discussed in MPEP § 2106.05(f). This moves us to step 2B.
In step 2B, we determine that the “obtaining …” and “generating …” steps in claims 2 and 15, the “displaying …” step in claims 7 and 20, and the “types of elements” in claims 22 do not recite significantly more than the judicial exception (see MPEP 2106.05(A)-(B)).
ii. Simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, (See 2106.05(d) Well-Understood, Routine, Conventional Activity, including (II) that describes what courts have recognized the following computer functions as well‐understood, routine, and conventional functions when they are claimed in a merely generic manner).
iii. Adding insignificant extra-solution activity to the judicial exception, e.g., mere data gathering in conjunction with a law of nature or abstract idea
In claim 12, the Applicant performs these steps on a "system", which does nothing more than link the abstract idea to a computer.
Although the applicant adds the idea of automatically generating landing pages from web page content to a computing device, the addition of a computing device does not add "something more" to the claims. This merely takes the abstract idea and simply adds the words “apply it” (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, e.g., a limitation indicating that a particular function such as creating and maintaining electronic records is performed by a computer, as discussed in Alice Corp., 573 U.S. at 225-26, 110 USPQ2d at 1984 (see MPEP § 2106.05(f));
Therefore, the claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to the abstract idea without significantly more.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 7-10, 12, 14, 15, 20-22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Mizuno; Hiroshi et al. US Pub. No. 2014/0101136 (Mizuno).
Claim 1:
Mizuno teaches:
A method for landing page processing, comprising:
obtaining a target uniform resource locator (URL) inputted by a user in response to a landing page generation operation triggered by the user [¶ 0018, 24, 26, 43-50, 71, 74] (obtaining content of a resource that is associated with a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and a domain);
generating a target landing page that matches a page content of a page corresponding to the target URL [¶ 0048] (URLs match) [¶ 0020, 47-50, 55, 66-67, 81, 84, 100, 121] (determining that the inline style attributes for a plurality of the elements have at least a threshold level of similarity; and including, in the transcoded resource, the plurality of the elements and a single style definition for the plurality of the elements) [¶ 0013-14, 17, 133-135, 139-149, 153-155] (generate landing page, a search results page, that includes content of one or more landing pages corresponding to search results. The content of a landing page that is included in the search results page can be content that was designated as ATF (above the fold) content); and
outputting the target landing page [¶ 0011, 13-14, 135, 141-143, 148-150] (display a search result having an associated landing page).
Claim 2:
Mizuno teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein generating the target landing page that matches the page content of the page corresponding to the target URL comprises:
obtaining the page content of the page corresponding to the target URL [¶ 0048] (URLs match) [¶ 0020, 47-50, 55, 66-67, 81, 84, 100, 121] (determining that the inline style attributes for a plurality of the elements have at least a threshold level of similarity; and including, in the transcoded resource, the plurality of the elements and a single style definition for the plurality of the elements) [¶ 0013-14, 17, 133-135, 139-149, 153-155] (generate landing page, a search results page, that includes content of one or more landing pages corresponding to search results. The content of a landing page that is included in the search results page can be content that was designated as ATF (above the fold) content); and
generating the target landing page based on the page content [¶ 0048] (URLs match) [¶ 0020, 47-50, 55, 66-67, 81, 84, 100, 121] (determining that the inline style attributes for a plurality of the elements have at least a threshold level of similarity; and including, in the transcoded resource, the plurality of the elements and a single style definition for the plurality of the elements) [¶ 0013-14, 17, 133-135, 139-149, 153-155] (generate landing page, a search results page, that includes content of one or more landing pages corresponding to search results. The content of a landing page that is included in the search results page can be content that was designated as ATF (above the fold) content).
Claim 7:
Mizuno teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein outputting the target landing page comprises:
displaying the target landing page [¶ 0011, 13-14, 135, 141-143, 148-150] (display a search result having an associated landing page), or
displaying a download access corresponding to the target landing page.
Claim 8:
Mizuno teaches:
The method of claim 2, wherein obtaining the page content of the page corresponding to the target URL comprises:
obtaining structured information of the page corresponding to the target URL [¶ 0018, 24, 26, 43-50, 71, 74] (obtaining content of a resource that is associated with a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and a domain); and
performing semantic analysis on the structured information to obtain semantics of the structured information [¶ 0065-72] (Fig. 2D, scores may be determined based on one or more criteria, such as an amount of area that responds to user interaction, differences in text formatting, similarity to content of other resources, and/or other factors, similarity exceeds a threshold level, similarity exceeds a threshold level), the region may be designated as boilerplate content that should be omitted during transcoding, the region is significantly different from corresponding regions of other resources in the subset 116, the region may be selected for inclusion during transcoding) [¶ 0042] (54-55, 86) [¶ 0020, 27, 47, 54, 60-64, 83-95, 98-101, 121-122] (threshold level of similarity, determining that the size of the image satisfies a size threshold; determining an update frequency for the image; determining that the update frequency satisfies an update frequency threshold, interactivity score satisfies a threshold).
Claim 9:
Mizuno teaches:
The method of claim 8, wherein the structured information comprises one or more of following types of element:
an image, a video, a text, and a link [¶ 0101, 116, 122, 159] (image) [¶ 0008, 166-168] (video, resource that includes one or more of, blog content, news content, social media data, map content, video or other media content, electronic book content, electronic mail messages, electronic coupons, shopping information) [¶ 0014, 27, 52, 62-65, 78] (text content) [¶ 0008, 59, 138, 140, 164-168] (link or hyperlink).
Claim 10:
Mizuno teaches:
The method of claim 8, wherein the semantics of the structured information comprise one or more of following:
a page type, a page layout, a page title, an involved product brand, and an image with an importance level exceeding a certain threshold on a page [¶ 0065-72] (Fig. 2D, scores may be determined based on one or more criteria, such as an amount of area that responds to user interaction, differences in text formatting, similarity to content of other resources, and/or other factors, similarity exceeds a threshold level, similarity exceeds a threshold level), the region may be designated as boilerplate content that should be omitted during transcoding, the region is significantly different from corresponding regions of other resources in the subset 116, the region may be selected for inclusion during transcoding) [¶ 0042] (54-55, 86) [¶ 0020, 27, 47, 54, 60-64, 83-95, 98-101, 121-122] (threshold level of similarity, determining that the size of the image satisfies a size threshold; determining an update frequency for the image; determining that the update frequency satisfies an update frequency threshold, interactivity score satisfies a threshold) [¶ 0087, 103, 110] (layout analysis) [¶ 0147] (title).
Claims 12, 14, 15, 20-22:
Claim(s) 12, 14 is/are substantially similar to claim 1 and is/are rejected using the same art and the same rationale.
Claim 1 is a “method” claim, claim 12 is a “system” claim and claim 14 is a “computer program product” claim, but the steps or elements of each claim are essentially the same.
Claim(s) 15 is/are substantially similar to claim 2 and is/are rejected using the same art and the same rationale.
Claim(s) 20 is/are substantially similar to claim 7 and is/are rejected using the same art and the same rationale.
Claim(s) 21 is/are substantially similar to claim 8 and is/are rejected using the same art and the same rationale.
Claim(s) 22 is/are substantially similar to claim 9 and is/are rejected using the same art and the same rationale.
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) 3-6 16-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mizuno; Hiroshi et al. US Pub. No. 2014/0101136 (Mizuno) in view of Zhang; Guannan et al. US Pub. No. 2016/0110082 (Zhang).
Claim 3:
Mizuno teaches: [¶ 0065-72] (Fig. 2D, scores may be determined based on one or more criteria, such as an amount of area that responds to user interaction, differences in text formatting, similarity to content of other resources, and/or other factors, similarity exceeds a threshold level, similarity exceeds a threshold level), the region may be designated as boilerplate content that should be omitted during transcoding, the region is significantly different from corresponding regions of other resources in the subset 116, the region may be selected for inclusion during transcoding) [¶ 0042] (54-55, 86) [¶ 0020, 27, 47, 54, 60-64, 83-95, 98-101, 121-122] (threshold level of similarity, determining that the size of the image satisfies a size threshold; determining an update frequency for the image; determining that the update frequency satisfies an update frequency threshold, interactivity score satisfies a threshold).
Mizuno does not appear to explicitly disclose “determining, from a plurality of landing page templates, a target template that matches the page”.
However, the disclosure of Zhang teaches:
The method of claim 2, wherein generating the target landing page based on the page content comprises:
determining, from a plurality of landing page templates, a target template that matches the page [¶ 0087-89] (filter templates, content item templates may be filtered based on the content item data in addition to or in lieu of the dimensional value filtering); and
filling the page content into a component corresponding to the target template so as to generate the target landing page [¶ 0079] (filter and rank images) [¶ 0054, 70, 107] (content item slot, space manager 226 may increase the space allocation of an element and/or rendering box to fit the maximum width and/or height possible of a placeholder for the element and/or rendering box based on the weight attribute and any available space for the element and/or rendering box given the first and second dimensional values for the content item slot).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the method of generating landing pages in Mizuno and the method of generating landing pages in Zhang, with a reasonable expectation of success.
The motivation for doing so would have been the use of known technique to improve similar devices (methods, or products) in the same way; (See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 US 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1396 (U.S. 2007) and MPEP § 2143(D)).
The know technique of template matching in Zhang could be applied to the landing page templates in Mizuno. Zhang and Mizuno are similar devices because each generate landing pages. One of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that applying the known technique would improve the similar devices and resulted in an improved system, with a reasonable expectation of success, to allow for more flexible landing pages with different layout variations [Zhang: ¶ 0003].
Claim 4:
Mizuno teaches:
The method of claim 3, wherein determining, from a plurality of landing page templates, the target template that matches the page content comprises:
determining the target template from at least one landing page template of the plurality of landing page templates that matches a type of the page [¶ 0024, 26-27, 41-43, 69-73, 82-83, 96-97, 118-119] (Figs. 1, 3, generating a transcoding template based on the scores; and designating the transcoding template for use when transcoding a resource in the set of resources, transcoding template based on identifying the commonalities among the selected content).
Claim 5:
Mizuno teaches:
The method of claim 4, wherein determining the target template from at least one landing page template of the plurality of landing page templates that matches the type of the page comprises:
determining a template in the at least one landing page template that accommodates a content matching the page content as the target template [¶ 0020, 101, 106, 109, 122] (determining a size of the image; determining that the size of the image satisfies a size threshold) [¶ 0098] (elements that have a width that exceeds a threshold can be resized to fit within the threshold).
Claim 6:
Mizuno teaches:
The method of claim 3, wherein the target template comprises one or more of following components:
an image, a video, a text, and a link [¶ 0101, 116, 122, 159] (image) [¶ 0008, 166-168] (video, resource that includes one or more of, blog content, news content, social media data, map content, video or other media content, electronic book content, electronic mail messages, electronic coupons, shopping information) [¶ 0014, 27, 52, 62-65, 78] (text content) [¶ 0008, 59, 138, 140, 164-168] (link or hyperlink).
Claims 16-19:
Claim(s) 16 is/are substantially similar to claim 3 and is/are rejected using the same art and the same rationale.
Claim(s) 17 is/are substantially similar to claim 4 and is/are rejected using the same art and the same rationale.
Claim(s) 18 is/are substantially similar to claim 5 and is/are rejected using the same art and the same rationale.
Claim(s) 19 is/are substantially similar to claim 6 and is/are rejected using the same art and the same rationale.
Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Please See PTO-892: Notice of References Cited.
Evidence of the level skill of an ordinary person in the art for Claim 5:
Kothari; Rakesh et al. US 8725559 selecting an advertisement template having a media type that matches a media type preferred by the user.
Evidence of the level skill of an ordinary person in the art for Claim 1:
*Lei; Ping US 20140195893 automatically organize the content of the landing page, the computer extracts from a link address of the current product information content an HTML text. The computer then adds the product information detail associated with the current product information content to the HTML text, and includes the resultant HTML text in the landing page.
*Yan; Zuo et al. US 20150012514 generating, for a given landing page of a content item, a landing page image that visually depicts the given landing page based at least in part on markup language defining the given landing page.
*Gupta; Mohit et al. US 11100554 template landing page, thematic landing page is generated for the theme based on the relevant products.
*Choi; Jin Young et al. US 20220327179 match, PC, mobile, app, Fig. 4, 6; landing page, template; app, PC web, Mobile web; acquiring first information on a user terminal and second information on a landing page.
*Mengle; Advay et al. US Pub. No. 2018/0060921 (Mengle) [¶ 0011, 15, 23, 36, 42-49] (selecting the one or more templates from a plurality of templates based on one or more signals associated with the ad creative) [¶ 0083-84] (selecting the one or more templates from a plurality of templates based on one or more signals associated with the ad creative)
*Dzumla; Andreas et al. US 20190286682 SEM keyword-level landing page; keyword landing page template; Creating a landing page template that matches, or at least partially or closely matches, the existing client web pages in terms of header, footer, menus and design/CSS; testing for relevancy and quality thresholds; keyword-to-content match score with a defined threshold.
Jacobsson; Henrik US 9501530 landing page, matching content, semantic, content candidate; match and the confidence score satisfying a threshold.; semantic relevancy of the entity to the search query threshold.
Boyns; Mark et al. US 20120158893 landing page, template, different layout characteristics to match each of the device-specific layout parameters in the device database; content does not match the template within a threshold value,
Allouche; Gil David US 20190251593 landing pages, comparing attributes of leads from various data sources to a given Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and selecting those leads that match the ICP with a high match rate
Jacobsson; Henrik US 9501530 landing page, matching content, semantic, content candidate; match and the confidence score satisfying a threshold.; semantic relevancy of the entity to the search query threshold;
Kothari; Rakesh et al. US 8725559 advertising content is selected that has attributes that match as many of the user's preferences as possible. The landing page of the advertisement
Preetham; Arcot J. et al. US 20150161120 [0047] For each set of similar images, a selected web page that includes the selected image is identified as a landing page for an image search result that depicts an image from the set of similar images (412).
Citations to Prior Art
A reference to specific paragraphs, columns, pages, or figures in a cited prior art reference is not limited to preferred embodiments or any specific examples. It is well settled that a prior art reference, in its entirety, must be considered for all that it expressly teaches and fairly suggests to one having ordinary skill in the art. Stated differently, a prior art disclosure reading on a limitation of Applicant's claim cannot be ignored on the ground that other embodiments disclosed were instead cited. Therefore, the Examiner's citation to a specific portion of a single prior art reference is not intended to exclusively dictate, but rather, to demonstrate an exemplary disclosure commensurate with the specific limitations being addressed. In re Heck, 699 F.2d 1331, 1332-33,216 USPQ 1038, 1039 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (quoting In re Lemelson, 397 F.2d 1006, 1009, 158 USPQ 275, 277 (CCPA 1968". In re: Upsher-Smith Labs. v. Pamlab, LLC, 412 F.3d 1319, 1323,75 USPQ2d 1213,1215 (Fed. Cir. 2005); In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1264,23 USPQ2d 1780, 1782 (Fed. Cir. 1992); Merck & Co. v. Biocraft Labs., Inc., 874 F.2d 804, 807,10 USPQ2d 1843, 1846 (Fed. Cir. 1989); In re Fracalossi, 681 F.2d 792,794 n.1, 215 USPQ 569, 570 n.1 (CCPA 1982); In re Lamberti, 545 F.2d 747, 750, 192 USPQ 278, 280 (CCPA 1976); In re Bozek, 416 F.2d 1385,1390,163 USPQ 545, 549 (CCPA 1969).
Conclusion
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