Ex parte Fan Jing Meng

• Docket Number: Appeal 2022-002940,Application 16/142,788
• Decision Date: 01 September 2023
• Parties: Ex parte FAN JING MENG, XIAO ZHANG, PENG FEI CHEN, LIN YANG, JING MIN XU, SHI LEI ZHANG, NAGA A. AYACHITULA, ZHUO SU, and ROHIT KHANDEKAR Technology Center 3600
• Court: United States Patent and Trademark Office. United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board

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Ex parte FAN JING MENG, XIAO ZHANG, PENG FEI CHEN, LIN YANG, JING MIN XU, SHI LEI ZHANG, NAGA A. AYACHITULA, ZHUO SU, and ROHIT KHANDEKAR Technology Center 3600

Appeal 2022-002940

Application 16/142,788

United States Patent and Trademark Office, Patent Trial and Appeal Board

September 1, 2023

FILING DATE: 09/26/2018

Before DANIEL S. SONG, BRANDON J. WARNER, and LEE L. STEPINA, Administrative Patent Judges

DECISION ON APPEAL

STEPINA, ADMINISTRATIVE PATENT JUDGE

STATEMENT OF THE CASE

Pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 134(a), Appellant^[1] appeals from the Examiner's decision to reject claims 1-18, 20, and 21.^[2] We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).

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CLAIMED SUBJECT MATTER

Appellant's disclosure “relates to information technology service management and, more particularly, to the automatic update of textual taxonomies based on ticket data.” Spec. ¶ 1. According to Appellant, “[i]nformation technology management typically employs a system of ‘tickets' to track actions from initial reporting to resolution, with tickets being generated by a wide variety of sources that include individual hardware devices, software applications, and human users of the system.” Id. ¶ 2. Thus, the term “ticket” is similar in meaning to “reported matter or issue.” Id. (“Tickets are not limited to problems or defects in the system but are often used for more general tracking of events and information.”). Appellant explains that when a computer network becomes very large, “[m]anual classification of tickets, where a human operator with subject matter expertise identifies a ticket and forwards it to a responsible party, cannot scale appropriately to handle large volumes of tickets.” Id. ¶ 3. Further, “[e]xisting systems for automatic classification are generally unable to respond to new types of ticket that were encountered during training.” Id.

Claim 1, reproduced below, is illustrative of the claimed subject matter.

1. A computer-implemented method for ticket classification and response, comprising

clustering a plurality of predetermined tickets according to semantic similarity to form a plurality of ticket clusters

determining a plurality of templates, after clustering the plurality of tickets, wherein each template represents the contents of a respective ticket cluster and includes an invariant portion and a variable portion

determining a new ticket sub-class, based on the variable portion of the template, that represents a specific sub-type of an existing class that was not previously in a ticket taxonomy;

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updating the ticket taxonomy to include the new ticket sub-class;

automatically labeling the plurality of tickets according to the updated ticket taxonomy to handle numerous and heterogeneous tickets within an enterprise system; and automatically responding to the labeled tickets.

Appeal Br. 27 (Claims App.).

REJECTION^[3]

Claims 1-18, 20, and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.

OPINION

Aside from separate arguments for claims 4, 8, 14, and 18, Appellant argues for the patent eligibility the appealed claims as a group. Appeal Br. 9-13. We select claim 1 as representative of the group, and claims 2, 3, 5-7, 9-13, 15-17, 20, and 21 stand or fall with claim 1. 37 C.F.R. §41.37(c)(1)(iv)(2021).

In determining whether a claim falls within an excluded category, we are guided by the Supreme Court's two-step framework, described in Mayo and Alice. See Alice Corp. v. CLS Bonk lnt'l, 573 U.S. 208, 217-218 (2014) (citing Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 75-77 (2012)). In accordance with that framework, we first determine what concept the claim is "directed to." Alice, 573 U.S. at 219 ("On their face,

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the claims before us are drawn to the concept of intermediated settlement, i.e., the use of a third party to mitigate settlement risk."); see also Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 611 (2010) ('"Claims 1 and 4 in petitioners' application explain the basic concept of hedging, or protecting against risk.").

Concepts determined to be abstract ideas, and, thus, patent ineligible, include certain methods of organizing human activity, such as fundamental economic practices (Alice, 573 U.S. at 219-220; Bilski, 561 U.S. at 611); mathematical formulas (Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584, 594-595 (1978)); and mental processes (Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67 (1972)). Concepts determined to be patent eligible include physical and chemical processes, such as "molding rubber products" (Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 191 (1981)); "tanning, dyeing, making water-proof cloth, vulcanizing India rubber, smelting ores" (id. at 182 n.7 (quoting Corning v. Burden, 56 U.S. 252, 267-268 (1853))); and manufacturing flour (Benson, 409 U.S. at 69 (citing Cochrane v. Deener, 94 U.S. 780, 785 (1876))).

If the claim is "directed to" an abstract idea, we turn to the second step of the Alice and Mayo framework, where "we must examine the elements of the claim to determine whether it contains an 'inventive concept' sufficient to 'transform' the claimed abstract idea into a patent-eligible application." Alice, 573 U.S. at 221 (internal citation omitted). "A claim that recites an abstract idea must include 'additional features' to ensure 'that the [claim] is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the [abstract idea].'" Id. (alteration in the original) (quoting Mayo, 566 U.S. at 77).

In January of 2019, the USPTO published revised guidance on the application of 35 U.S.C. § 101. 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter

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Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed.Reg. 50 (Jan. 7, 2019) (hereinafter, the "Guidance"). Step 1 of the Guidance entails considering whether the claimed subject matter falls within the four statutory categories of patentable subject matter identified by 35 U.S.C. § 101, i.e., a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. Under Step 2A of the Guidance, one first looks to whether the claim recites:

(1) any judicial exceptions, including certain groupings of abstract ideas (i.e., mathematical concepts, certain methods of organizing human activity such as a fundamental economic practice, or mental processes); and

(2) additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application (see MANUAL OF PATENT EXAMINING Procedure ("MPEP") §§ 2106.05(a)-(c), (e)-(h) (9th ed. Rev. 07.2022, rev. February 2023)).

Only if a claim (1) recites a judicial exception ("Prong 1") and (2) does not integrate that exception into a practical application ("Prong 2"), does one then look, in Step 2B, to whether the claim:

(3) adds a specific limitation beyond the judicial exception that is not "well-understood, routine, conventional" in the field (see MPEP § 2106.05(d)); or

(4) simply appends well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception.

See Guidance.

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Claim 1

Stepl

The Examiner determines, and we agree, that claim 1 is drawn to a process, claim 10 is drawn to a product, and claim 11 is drawn to a system. See Final Act. 14; Appeal Br. 27, 29 (Claims App.).

Step 2A, Prong 1

The Examiner quotes claim 1, with a substantial portion underlined, including the steps of "clustering a plurality of predetermined tickets," "determining a plurality of templates," "determining a new ticket sub-class," and "updating the ticket taxonomy," and determines that these steps recite a certain method of organizing human activity, which qualifies as an abstract idea.^[4] Final Act. 15. Specifically, the Examiner takes the position that "the claimed limitations are analyzing ticket data to cluster tickets based on templates into sub classes, so a human user can respond to the ticket. The Applicant's claimed limitations are merely classifying tickets for human users, which is directed towards the abstract idea of Organizing Human Activity." Id.

Appellant contends that the Examiner erred in determining that claim 1 recites a method of organizing human activity because "the claim language recites an automatic response to the tickets, and thus cannot be fairly interpreted as a response by a human being." Appeal Br. 11. According to Appellant, "[o]n their face, the claims do not recite any features which might

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be fairly interpreted as the organization of human activity, and so the claims do not recite any abstract idea." Id.

In response, the Examiner notes that paragraph 73 of Appellant's Specification discloses that an automatic response may include forwarding a ticket to a human operator for resolution. Ans. 4; see also Spec. ¶ 73.

In reply, Appellant argues that "the examples given in paragraph 73 are provided in a permissive fashion (i.e., 'The response may include ...'). Such a permissive statement does not provide a clear definition of the term." Reply Br. 3-4. In Appellant's words, "the Examiner's contention that the claims recite the...