Ex Parte Oda

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Jun 26, 2014

11245123 (P.T.A.B. Jun. 26, 2014)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte HIROMI ODA
___________

Appeal 2011-003628
Application 11/245,1231
Technology Center 2600
____________

Before JEAN R. HOMERE, CAROLYN D. THOMAS, and
CARL W. WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judges.

WHITEHEAD JR., Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

1 Appellant incorrectly indicated the application number as 11/245, 143 in
the header sections of the Appeal Brief, but correctly indicated the
application number as 11/245,123 on page 1 of the Appeal Brief.
Appeal 2011-003628
Application 11/245,123

2
STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant is appealing the final rejection of claims 1-15 and 17-21
under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a). Claim 16 is canceled. Appeal Brief 3. We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b) (2012).
We affirm.
Introduction
The present invention relates to “a document classifying device
compris[ing] a vector creating element for creating a document feature
vector from an input document to be classified, based upon frequencies with
which predetermined collocations occur in the input document” having “a
classifying element for classifying the input document into one of a number
of categories using the document feature vector.” Specification ¶ 7.

Representative Claim (Disputed limitations emphasized)
1. A document classifying device, comprising:
(a) vector creating means for creating a document feature
vector from an input document to be classified, the document
feature vector based upon frequencies with which
predetermined collocations occur in the input document and
with reference to a dictionary including a list of positive
collocation of bound-form words extracted from positive
training documents and a list of negative collocation of
bound-form words extracted from negative training documents;
and
(b) classifying means for classifying the input document into
one of a number of categories using the document feature
vector, the categories comprising at least one of positive
documents or negative documents; and
Appeal 2011-003628
Application 11/245,123

3
(c) a collocation list construction unit for calculating:
a frequency of a positive collocation of bound-form
words from the input document by referring to a list of positive
collocation of bound-form words; and
a frequency of a negative collocation of bound-form
words from the input document by referring to a list of negative
collocation of bound-form words.

Rejections on Appeal
Claims 12-15 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101being directed to
non-statutory subject matter. Answer 25-26.
Claims 1-3, 5, 6, and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102 (b) as
being anticipated by Dave (Kushal Dave et al., Mining the Peanut Gallery:
Opinion Extraction and Semantic Classification of Product Reviews, Proc.
12th Int’l Conference on Word Wide Web, 519-528 (2003)). Answer 4-8.
Claim 4 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (a) as being
unpatentable over Dave and Ehsani (US Patent Application Publication
Number 2002/0032564 A1; published March 14, 2002). Answer 9-10.
Claims 7, 8, 10-12, 14, 15, and 17-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 (a) as being unpatentable over Dave and Vernau (US Patent Number
6,847,972 B1; issued January 25, 2005). Answer 10-24.
Claims 9 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (a) as being
unpatentable over Dave, Vernau, and Ehsani. Answer 24-25.

ANALYSIS
Rather than reiterate the arguments of Appellant and the Examiner,
we refer to the Appeal Brief (filed July 26, 2010), the Answer (mailed
October 6, 2010), and the Reply Brief (filed December 6, 2010) for the
Appeal 2011-003628
Application 11/245,123

4
respective details. We have considered in this decision only those
arguments Appellant actually raised in the Briefs. Any other arguments
Appellant could have made but chose not to make in the Briefs are deemed
to be waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejections in light of Appellant’s
contentions that the Examiner has erred. We disagree with Appellant’s
contentions. We concur with the findings and reasons set forth by the
Examiner in the action from which this appeal is taken and the reasons set
forth by the Examiner in the Answer in response to Appellant’s Appeal Brief
and adopt them as our own, except as to those findings that we expressly
overturn or set aside in the analysis as follows.

35 U.S.C. § 101 rejection
Claims 12-15 recite a computer-readable medium. However,
Appellant’s Specification does not define the computer-readable medium to
exclude transitory media. Spec. [0015]. Because the claimed medium
encompasses transitory media, it is not patent eligible. See Ex parte
Mewherter, 107 USPQ2d 1857 (PTAB 2013) (precedential).
35 U.S.C. § 102 rejection
Appellant argues:
Dave fails to at least disclose that a document feature vector is
created based upon frequencies with which predetermined
collocations occur in the input document and with reference to a
dictionary including a list of positive collocation of bound-form
words extracted from positive training documents and a list of
negative collocation of bound-form words extracted from
negative training documents, as claimed in independent claim
1.
Appeal Brief 13 (emphasis omitted).
Appeal 2011-003628
Application 11/245,123

5
Appellant’s argument is counterintuitive of Appellant’s own
definition of “bound-form words” provided in the Specification and
therefore is not persuasive.2 Dave’s Table 5 clearly discloses a list of
positive and negative “bound-form words” in accordance with the definition
set forth by Appellant in the Specification.
Appellant also argue Dave eliminates words such as “to” and “this” in
considering whether an N-gram has a positive or negative connotation and
therefore “teaches away from the use of collocations of bound-form words
as claimed in independent claim 1.” Appeal Brief 13.
“‘[T]eaching away’ is irrelevant to anticipation.” Leggett & Platt,
Inc. v. VUTEk, Inc., 537 F.3d 1349, 1356 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (citation omitted).
Further, Appellant’s arguments are again counterintuitive of the
definition of “bound form words” provided in Appellant’s own
Specification, which indicates and defines “bound form words” as being
neutral without either positive or negative connotation.
Appellant traverses the Examiner’s assertion that “both the claim as
written does not restrict the analysis to a device that only uses bound-form

2 The term “bound form” is used herein to denote, among
components of a language, a component which does not occur
independently, always plays an auxiliary role for other
components, and includes the following parts of speech: case-
marking particles, sentence-final particles, auxiliary verbs,
prefixes, postfixes, and the like. Although bound forms
themselves may not directly and/or explicitly have positive or
negative connotations, whether they are positive or negative in
semantic orientation can be determined in relation with other
accompanying words.
Specification ¶ 23.
Appeal 2011-003628
Application 11/245,123

6
words, and more importantly, the Applicant’s original disclosure would have
no support for such a limitation.” Appeal Brief 13. However, we agree with
the Examiner’s findings and assessment. As stated above, Appellant’s
arguments are not commensurate with the scope of the claim because of the
definition of “bound-form words” provided in the Specification.
Therefore, we sustain the Examiner’s anticipation rejection of claims
1, as well as dependent claims 2, 3, 5, 6, and 21 not separately argued for the
reasons articulated above.

35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection
In regards to claim 4, Appellant argues Ehsani does not address
Dave’s deficiencies because the combination of the two references would
not disclose a document feature vector created based upon the frequencies
with which predetermined collocations occur as claimed in independent
claim 1. Appeal Brief 17. We did not find Dave deficient and therefore
sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of claim 4 for the same reasons
articulated above.
Appellant argues Dave fails to disclose a “document feature vector
based upon frequencies with which predetermined collocations occur in the
input document” as recited in independent claims 7, 12, and 17. Id. We do
not find Appellant’s argument to be persuasive for the same reasons
articulated above and therefore sustain the Examiner’s obviousness rejection
of independent claims 7, 12, and 17, as well as, dependent claims 8, 10, 11,
14, 15, and 18-20, not separately argued.
Appellant argues Ehsani does not address the deficiency of the
combination of Dave and Vernau and therefore claims 9 and 13 are
Appeal 2011-003628
Application 11/245,123

7
allowable over the prior art. Id. at 19-20. Appellant argues the combination
of Dave, Vernau, and Ehsani fails to disclose a “document feature vector” as
recited in independent claims 7 and 12. Id. at 20. We do not find
Appellant’s arguments to be persuasive for the reasons articulated above and
therefore we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claims 9 and 13.

DECISION
The Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 101 rejection is affirmed.
The Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 102 rejection is affirmed.
The Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejections are affirmed.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv). See
37 C.F.R. § 41.50(f).

AFFIRMED

msc