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 .
Status Of Claims
This action is in reply to the application filed on 10/28/2024.
In a preliminary amendment, claims 1-20 were cancelled and claims 21-40 were added.
Claims 21-40 are currently pending and has been examined.
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the "right to exclude" granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Omum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); and In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321 (c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the conflicting application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement.
Effective January 1, 1994, a registered attorney or agent of record may sign a terminal disclaimer. A terminal disclaimer signed by the assignee must fully comply with 37 CFR 3.73(b).
Claims 21-40 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent No. 11,610,246.
Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because claims 21-40 of the instant pending application omits certain steps of claims 1-20 in the 11,610,246 patent. Therefore, claims 21-40 are prima facie obvious of claims 1-20 because it would have been obvious to omit certain steps with the motivation of providing apparatus and methods for associating products with relevant content.
Claims 21-40 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent No. 11,836,778.
Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because claims 21-40 of the instant pending application omits certain steps of claims 1-20 in the 11,836,778 patent. Therefore, claims 21-40 are prima facie obvious of claims 1-20 because it would have been obvious to omit certain steps with the motivation of providing apparatus and methods for associating products with relevant content.
Claims 21-40 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent No. 12,217,294.
Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because claims 21-40 of the instant pending application omits certain steps of claims 1-20 in the 12,217,294 patent. Therefore, claims 21-40 are prima facie obvious of claims 1-20 because it would have been obvious to omit certain steps with the motivation of providing apparatus and methods for associating products with relevant content.
Claim Rejections – 35 § 112(b)
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 22-24 and 28-40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 22, recites in part “extracting phrases from a relevant item”. It is unclear how an item is determined to be a relevant item. Does the process of extracting phrases from an item automatically make that item a relevant item? Claim 22 is therefore found to be indefinite, because the resulting claim does not clearly set forth the metes and bounds of the patent protection desired. All dependent claims, namely claims 23 and 24 are rejected for at least the same reason.
Claim 22, recites in part “determining, according to the phrases extracted from the relevant item and their frequency scores, which products are relevant to the request”. It is unclear how determination is made as to which products are relevant to the request, according to the phrases extracted from the relevant item and their frequency scores. Is there a formula or an algorithm being used in the determination of which products are relevant to the request, according to the phrases extracted from the relevant item and their frequency scores? Claim 22 is therefore found to be indefinite, because the resulting claim does not clearly set forth the metes and bounds of the patent protection desired. All dependent claims, namely claims 23 and 24 are rejected for at least the same reason.
Claim 28, recites in part “associate one or more products of a product catalog to one or more relevant items of the received content”. It is unclear how determination is made as to which items are the one or more relevant items of the received content. How is determination made whether there is only 1 relevant item or whether there are multiple relevant items? Is there a formula or an algorithm being used in the determination of which items of the received content will be designated as one or more relevant items? Claim 28 is therefore found to be indefinite, because the resulting claim does not clearly set forth the metes and bounds of the patent protection desired. All dependent claims, namely claims 29-34 are rejected for at least the same reason.
Claim 35, recites in part “associate one or more products of a product catalog to one or more relevant items of the received content”. It is unclear how determination is made as to which items are the one or more relevant items of the received content. How is determination made whether there is only 1 relevant item or whether there are multiple relevant items? Is there a formula or an algorithm being used in the determination of which items of the received content will be designated as one or more relevant items? Claim 35 is therefore found to be indefinite, because the resulting claim does not clearly set forth the metes and bounds of the patent protection desired. All dependent claims, namely claims 36-40 are rejected for at least the same reason.
The term "relevant" in claims 22-24, 28-31, and 35-37, is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term "relevant" is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. All dependent claims, namely claims 32-34 and 38-40, are rejected for at least the same reason.
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.
Claims 21-40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Claims 21-40: Step 2A Prong One
Claim 21 recites receiving content from a plurality of content providers, associating one or more products to one or more items of the received content, in response to a request for a product listing for a particular product from a product catalog: presenting the product listing for the particular product, and presenting one or more items of associated content. Claims 28 and 35 recite similar limitations.
These limitations, as drafted, given the broadest reasonable interpretation, cover manual, human performance of the limitations, following rules or instructions, which constitutes Certain Methods of Organizing Human activity but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “computing device,” “non-transitory computer readable medium,“ “RSS feed,“ “computing system,“ “electronic database,” and “processor,” nothing in the claim precludes the limitations from practically being performed by a human following rules or instructions or in the mind of a user. For example, but for the recited generic computer components, the claimed steps encompass a user receiving content from a plurality of content providers, associating one or more products to one or more items of the received content, in response to a request for a product listing for a particular product from a product catalog: presenting the product listing for the particular product, and presenting one or more items of associated content. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers manual, human performance of the limitation but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, this claim recites an abstract idea.
Dependent claims incorporate the abstract idea identified above and recite additional limitations that further narrows or defines the abstract idea embodied in the claims, but for the recitation of generic computer components, by further reciting extracting phrases, generating frequency scores for extracted phrases, determining relevant products, removing blacklisted phrases, subscribing to content provider feeds, and receiving items from content providers. Therefore, claims 22-27, 29-34 and 36-40 are similarly drawn to additional aspects of Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity.
Claims 21-40: Step 2A Prong Two
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the remaining elements amount to no more than general purpose computer components programmed to perform the abstract ideas along with generally linking the abstract idea to a particular technological environment. For example the claims, directly or indirectly, recite generic computer components to carry out the abstract idea as set forth above. Applicant’s specification describes the generic computer components as conventional computer components including “The computing device 20 may include a desktop, a laptop, a tablet, a smart phone, and/or some other type of computing device which enables a user to communicate with the e-commerce system 30 via the network 40“ (see at least Paragraph [0015]), “one or more electronic databases 37 configured to store data“ (see at least Paragraph [0016]), “As shown, the computing device 50 may include a processor 51, a memory 53, a mass storage device 55, a network interface 57, and various input/output (I/O) devices 59” (see at least Paragraph [0018]), “may subscribe to various RSS (Rich Site Summary) or (Really Simply Syndication) feeds in order to receive RSS documents from such RSS feeds” (see at least Paragraph [0028]), and “certain embodiments may be implemented as a plurality of instructions on a non-transitory, computer readable storage medium such as, for example, flash memory devices, hard disk devices, compact disc media, DVD media, EEPROMs, etc.” (see at least Paragraph [0044]). As set forth in the 2019 Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. at 55 “merely include[ing] instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer” is an example of when an abstract idea has not been integrated into a practical application.
Claims 21-40: Step 2B
The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because as discussed above with respect to integration into a practical application, the additional elements are recited at a high level of generality, and the written description indicates that these elements are generic computer components. Using generic computer components to perform abstract ideas does not provide a necessary inventive concept. See Alice, 573 U.S. at 223 (“mere recitation of a generic computer cannot transform a patent-ineligible abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention”). As explained above, the generic computer components are at best the equivalent of merely adding the words “apply it” to the judicial exception.
Gathering and analyzing information using conventional techniques and displaying the result has also been found to be insufficient to show an improvement to technology, (see MPEP 2106.05(a) and TLI Communications, 823 F.3d at 612-13, 118 USPQ2d at 1747-48).
Dependent claims recite additional subject matter which, as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, amount to invoking computers as a tool to perform the abstract idea. Looking at the limitations as an ordered combination does not add anything more than what is already present when looking at the elements taken individually. Their collective functions merely provide conventional computer implementation. Even when considered in combination, the additional elements represent mere instructions to apply an exception and insignificant extra-solution activity, which cannot provide an inventive concept.
Thus these elements taken individually or together do not amount to significantly more than the abstract ideas themselves.
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 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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 21-24, 28-31 and 35-37 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Musgrove et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication 2005/0065909 A1.
Claim 21:
Musgrove discloses the following limitations as shown below:
via a computing device: receiving content from a plurality of content providers (see at least Paragraphs 5-7, Browsers generally reside on the computer used to access content on the Internet, i.e. the client computer; Paragraph 24, product placement engine 10 is provided with a central processing unit 12 (hereinafter "CPU") which is adapted to control and/or facilitate functions of various modules of the web page 10 as described in detail below. It should be initially noted that the product placement engine 10 of FIG. 1 may be implemented with any type of hardware and software, and may be a pre-programmed general purpose computing device. For example, the product placement engine 10 may be implemented using a server, a personal computer, a portable computer, a thin client, or any other appropriate computational devices; Paragraph 25; Paragraph 26);
associating one or more products to one or more items of the received content (see at least Paragraph 3, analyzes a document such as a web page to extract information regarding the content of the document, and identify any relevant products or services that relate to the document; Paragraph 16, automatically identifying products for association with a document (reads on “content”) including the steps of providing a products database having product records containing information regarding an associated product);
in response to a request for a product listing for a particular product from a product catalog: presenting the product listing for the particular product (see at least Paragraph 10, for the consumer's consideration in a page displaying detailed information regarding a product that was selected by the consumer. The identified product is implemented as a link which may be selected by the consumer to obtain detailed information regarding the product; Paragraph 16, automatically identifying products for association with a document including the steps of providing a products database having product records containing information regarding an associated product … searching the product records of the products database to identify products); and
presenting one or more items of associated content (see at least Paragraph 10, provide a boxed window that may be entitled "Also Consider" or the like which identifies an alternative product for the consumer's consideration in a page displaying detailed information regarding a product that was selected by the consumer. The identified product is implemented as a link which may be selected by the consumer to obtain detailed information regarding the product; Paragraph 23, product placement engine 10 associates products from a catalog or a database of products to a web page, even if the web page does not mention any particular product or is not discretely associated with a product; Paragraph 31, the highest ranking results are provided to a display module 28 which prepares a product placement unit such as an ad or a link embedded within, or otherwise associated with, the web page that was analyzed).
Claims 28 and 35 recite substantially similar non-transitory computer readable medium and apparatus limitations to those of method claim 21 and, as such, are rejected for similar reasons as given above.
Claim 22:
Musgrove discloses the limitations shown in the rejections above. Musgrove further discloses the following limitations:
extracting phrases from a relevant item (see at least Paragraph 3, a product placement engine system and method that analyzes a document such as a web page to extract information regarding the content of the document, and identify any relevant products or services that relate to the document ; Paragraph 16, parsing the product records to identify word matches in each of the product records and the document);
generating frequency scores for the phrases extracted from the relevant item according to frequency of the phrases in the relevant item (see at least Paragraph 17, search a products database having product records containing information regarding an associated product to identify products satisfying the keyword query search string and assign product scores to the identified products based on matches to the keyword query search string; Paragraph 18, determining word scores of the words in the document based on the frequency of the words in the document); and
determining, according to the phrases extracted from the relevant item and their frequency scores, which products are relevant to the request (see at least Paragraph 16, parsing the product records to identify word matches in each of the product records and the document; Paragraph 18, selecting products from the identified products that have the highest updated product scores).
Claims 29 and 36 recite substantially similar non-transitory computer readable medium and apparatus limitations to those of method claim 22 and, as such, are rejected for similar reasons as given above.
Claim 23:
Musgrove discloses the limitations shown in the rejections above. Musgrove further discloses the following limitations:
wherein generating the frequency scores comprises weighting the phrases according to position of the phrases in the relevant item (see at least Paragraph 44, the analysis module 16 of the described embodiment parse and analyze the entire web page, and not just the prose text in the main body of the web page. The section of the document in which the word is found can impact which constant from TABLE 2 is applicable. Thus, the parser 14 obtains the meta-tagged keywords, meta-tagged description, title from window bar, headings, sub-titles, etc. This may be attained using Document Object Modeling or other similar procedures known in the art. If meta-tagged keywords are not present, heuristic processes for extracting the keywords from the document may be used, ranging from executing an advanced document summarizer, to simply extracting words most frequently occurring in the titles and section headings of the web page; Paragraph 63, The word scores are adjusted by predetermined weightings corresponding to the use of each word in the document).
Claim 30 recites substantially similar non-transitory computer readable medium limitations to those of method claim 23 and, as such, is rejected for similar reasons as given above.
Claim 24:
Musgrove discloses the limitations shown in the rejections above. Musgrove further discloses the following limitations:
comprising removing blacklisted phrases from the phrases extracted from the relevant item prior to generating the frequency scores for the relevant item (see at least Paragraph 34, observations of "stop words" occurring in the main body of the web page are not counted and are ignored. Examples of such stop words may include prepositions, articles, negations, special words like "www", ".com," etc. These stop words may be provided in a list that is stored in the database 13 for retrieval and reference by the analysis module 16).
Claims 31 and 37 recite substantially similar non-transitory computer readable medium and apparatus limitations to those of method claim 24 and, as such, are rejected for similar reasons as given above.
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 of this title, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art axe 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 25, 32 and 38 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Patent Application Publication US 2005/0065909 A1 to Musgrove et al. in view of US Patent Application Publication US 2008/0126476 A1 to Nicholas et al.
Claim 25:
Musgrove discloses the limitations shown in the rejections above. Musgrove may not specifically disclose the following limitations, but Nicholas as shown does:
subscribing to a really simply syndication (RSS) feed of a content provider of the plurality of content providers (see at least Paragraph 3, Feed formatted content is structured data, such as for example Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Extensible Markup Language (XML), or a subset of a general format such as RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication), a hybrid or extension of some such standard, or the like); and
wherein receiving items from the plurality of content providers comprises receiving items published via the RSS feed (see at least Paragraph 3, Feed formatted content 100 may be accessed through a feed, stored in a local file, or the like. A feed is the data returned when a request for feed formatted content is made; Paragraph 4, Feed formatted content is generally displayed either on an aggregator web page or an aggregator program that may compile from one or more sources; Paragraph 148).
At the time of the filing of the application it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of the system and method of content association of Musgrove with the feed of Nicholas with the motivation of providing the user with relevant associated content and more convenient way of purchasing products (Nicholas, see at least Paragraph 110).
Claims 32 and 38 recite substantially similar non-transitory computer readable medium and apparatus limitations to those of method claim 25 and, as such, are rejected for similar reasons as given above.
Claims 26, 27, 33, 34, 39 and 40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US Patent Application Publication US 2005/0065909 A1 to Musgrove et al. in view of US Patent Application Publication US 2011/0213655 A1 to Henkin et al.
Claim 26:
Musgrove discloses the limitations shown in the rejections above. Musgrove may not specifically disclose the following limitations, but Henkin as shown does:
wherein receiving items from the plurality of content providers comprises crawling a content provider of the plurality of content providers to locate content served by the content provider (see at least Paragraph 94, The Hybrid System uses various different algorithms and mechanisms in order to extract the content from the page (deep crawling, parsing; Paragraph 106, Related External feeds (e.g., RSS); Paragraph 1006, a separate process or thread running on the Hybrid System may continuously and/or periodically crawl, analyze, and score identified target content).
At the time of the filing of the application it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of the system and method of content association of Musgrove with the feature of Henkin with the motivation of providing the benefit of enabling “… to select, in real-time, contextually relevant related information, advertisements, and/or other content which may then be displayed to the end-user” (Henkin, see at least the Abstract).
Claims 33 and 39 recite substantially similar non-transitory computer readable medium and apparatus limitations to those of method claim 26 and, as such, are rejected for similar reasons as given above.
Claim 27:
Musgrove discloses the limitations shown in the rejections above. Musgrove may not specifically disclose the following limitations, but Henkin as shown does:
wherein receiving items from the plurality of content providers comprises periodically polling a content provider of the plurality of content providers (see at least Paragraph 106, Related External feeds (e.g., RSS); Paragraph 1006, a separate process or thread running on the Hybrid System may continuously and/or periodically crawl, analyze, and score identified target content; Paragraph 254, may be initiated at one or more different time intervals (e.g., during a specific time interval, at regular periodic intervals, at irregular periodic intervals, upon demand, etc.); Paragraph 447, may be executed as a parallel, asynchronous process which, for example, may be configured or designed to periodically and automatically update one or more portions of the Hybrid Related Repository (such as, for example, Related Content Corpus 230b); Paragraph 1007).
At the time of the filing of the application it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teaching of the system and method of content association of Musgrove with the feature of Henkin for at least the same reasons given for claim 26 above.
Claims 34 and 40 recite substantially similar non-transitory computer readable medium and apparatus limitations to those of method claim 27 and, as such, are rejected for similar reasons as given above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Joy Chng whose telephone number is 571.270.7897. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday, 9:00am-5:00pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, JASON DUNHAM can be reached on 571.272.8109. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JOY CHNG/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3686