`
`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`Filed on behalf of Google Inc.
`
`By: Aaron P. Maurer
`Registration No. 44,911
`Williams & Connolly, LLP
`725 12th St., NW
`Washington, DC 20005
`Telephone: 202-434-5000
`Facsimile: 202-434-5029
`Email: amaurer@wc.com
`
`UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
`
`BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
`
`GOOGLE INC.
`Petitioner
`
`v.
`
`IMPROVED SEARCH LLC
`Patent Owner
`
`Case No. IPR2016-00797
`
`PETITION FOR INTER PARTES REVIEW OF U.S. PAT. NO. 6,604,101 B1
`(Claims 1-2, 4-7, 12-13, 15-17, 22-28)
`
`Mail Stop: Patent Board
`Patent Trial and Appeal Board
`U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
`P.O. Box 1450
`Alexandria, VA 22313-1450
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, (cid:38)(cid:82)(cid:89)(cid:72)(cid:85)
`
`

`

`
`
`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`TABLE OF CONTENTS
`
`I.
`
`II.
`
`INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 1
`
`REQUIREMENTS OF PETITION AND MANDATORY NOTICES .......... 2
`
`A.
`
`B.
`
`C.
`
`Real Parties-in-Interest .......................................................................... 2
`
`Related Matters ...................................................................................... 3
`
`Lead and Backup Counsel and Service Information ............................. 3
`
`D. Grounds for Standing ............................................................................ 3
`
`E.
`
`Power of Attorney and Fees .................................................................. 3
`
`III.
`
`IDENTIFICATION OF CHALLENGE AND RELIEF REQUESTED ......... 4
`
`IV. BACKGROUND ............................................................................................. 6
`
`A. Overview of Cross-Language Search .................................................... 6
`
`B.
`
`The ’101 Patent ..................................................................................... 8
`
`V.
`
`THE PERSON OF ORDINARY SKILL IN THE ART ............................... 10
`
`VI. CONSTRUCTION OF THE CHALLENGED CLAIMS ............................. 10
`
`A.
`
`B.
`
`C.
`
`D.
`
`E.
`
`F.
`
`“content word,” “keyword,” “key word”: “any word to be processed
`for subsequent searching” ................................................................... 10
`
`“to extract”: “to identify as a word” .................................................... 11
`
`“dialectal standardization”: “replacing one term with another term in
`the same language that has the same or similar meaning” .................. 11
`
`“contextual search”: “identification of one or more documents from a
`larger collection based on the presence of specific words contained in
`the text of those documents” ............................................................... 12
`
`“database”: “a collection of data organized for convenient access on a
`computer” ............................................................................................ 13
`
`“query input device for inputting a query in a first language”:
`i
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.(cid:76)
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`

`

`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`“keyboard or equivalents” ................................................................... 15
`
`
`
`“dialectal controller for dialectally standardizing the content word/key
`word extracted from the query input”: “any hardware and/or software
`that dialectally standardizes the content word/key word extracted from
`the query input” ................................................................................... 15
`
`“first translator for translating the dialectally standardized word into a
`second language”: “any hardware and/or software that translates the
`dialectally standardized word into a second language” ...................... 16
`
`“search engine for searching in the second language, the site names
`(URLs), pages and descriptions satisfying search criteria”: “Infoseek,
`Webcrawler, Lycos, Hot Bot, AltaVista, Dogpile, Savvy Search, Deja
`News, Infospace, China.com, or equivalents” .................................... 17
`
`“second translator for translating the search results into the first
`language”: “any hardware and/or software that translates the search
`results into the first language” ............................................................. 18
`
`G.
`
`H.
`
`I.
`
`J.
`
`VII. DETAILED EXPLANATION OF GROUNDS FOR INVALIDITY .......... 19
`
`A.
`
`Ground 1: Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 22, 24, 27, and 28 Would Have Been
`Obvious in Light of Fluhr ’97 and Fluhr ’98. ..................................... 19
`
`1.
`
`2.
`
`3.
`
`Independent Claim 1 ................................................................. 20
`
`Independent Claim 22 ............................................................... 22
`
`Dependent Claims 2, 4, 5, 24, 27, and 28 ................................. 30
`
`B.
`
`Ground 2: Claims 6, 7, 23, and 25 Would Have Been Obvious in
`Light of Fluhr ’97, Fluhr ’98, and Yamabana ..................................... 36
`
`1.
`
`2.
`
`Dependent Claims 6, 7, and 25 ................................................. 36
`
`Independent Claim 23 ............................................................... 39
`
`C.
`
`D.
`
`Ground 3: Claim 28 Would Have Been Obvious in Light of Fluhr
`’97, Fluhr ’98, and Bian. ..................................................................... 43
`
`Ground 4: Claims 12, 13, 15, 16, and 26 Would Have Been Obvious
`in Light of Bian, Fluhr ’97, and Fluhr ’98. ......................................... 45
`ii
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.(cid:76)i
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`

`

`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`Independent Claim 12 ............................................................... 47
`
`
`
`Dependent Claims 13, 15, 16, and 26 ....................................... 53
`
`1.
`
`2.
`
`E.
`
`Ground 5: Claim 17 Would Have Been Obvious in Light of Bian,
`Fluhr ’97, Fluhr ’98, and Yamabana ................................................... 58
`
`VIII. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................. 60
`
`iii
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.i(cid:76)(cid:76)
`
`

`

`
`
`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`TABLE OF CASES
`
`Baldwin Graphic Sys., Inc. v. Siebert, Inc., 512 F.3d 1338 (Fed. Cir.
`2008) ................................................................................................................... 31
`
`Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Ben Venue Labs., Inc., 246 F.3d 1368
`(Fed. Cir. 2001) ................................................................................................... 39
`
`Brown v. Piper, 91 U.S. 37 (1875) .......................................................................... 32
`
`Cole v. Kimberly-Clark Corp., 102 F.3d 524 (Fed. Cir. 1996) ............................... 14
`
`Halliburton Energy Servs., Inc. v. M-I LLC, 514 F.3d 1244 (Fed. Cir.
`2008) ....................................................................................................... 16, 17, 18
`
`KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) .................................... 36, 46, 58
`
`W. Union Co. v. MoneyGram Payment Sys., Inc., 626 F.3d 1361 (Fed.
`Cir. 2010) ...................................................................................................... 19, 30
`
`Watts v. XL Sys., Inc., 232 F.3d 877 (Fed. Cir. 2000) ............................................. 14
`
`Williamson v. Citrix Online, LLC, 792 F.3d 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2015) .................. 14, 47
`
`iv
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.i(cid:89)
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`

`

`
`
`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`EXHIBIT LIST
`
`DESCRIPTION
`EX.
`1001 U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`1003
`
`1004
`
`1005
`
`1002 Declaration of Douglas W. Oard, Ph.D.
`Christian Fluhr et al., “Multilingual Database and Crosslingual
`Interrogation in a Real Internet Application: Architecture and Problems of
`Interpretation,” Cross-Language Text & Speech Retrieval: Papers from the
`1997 AAAI Spring Symposium, Technical Report SS-97-05, at 32 (AAAI
`Press 1997)
`Christian Fluhr et al., “Distributed Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval,”
`Cross-Language Information Retrieval, at 41 (Gregory Grefenstette, ed.,
`Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998)
`Kiyoshi Yamabana et al., “A Language Conversion Front-End for Cross-
`Language Information Retrieval,” Cross-Language Information Retrieval,
`at 93 (Gregory Grefenstette ed., Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998)
`Guo-Wei Bian & Hsin-Hsi Chen, “Integrating Query Translation and
`Document Translation in a Cross-Language Information Retrieval System,”
`Machine Translation and the Information Soup: Third Conference of the
`Association
`for Machine Translation
`in
`the Americas, AMTA’98,
`Langhorne, PA, USA, October 28-31, 1998 Proceedings, at 250 (David
`Farwell et al., eds., Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 1998)
`Gregory Grefenstette, “The Problem of Cross-Language Information
`Retrieval,” Cross-Language Information Retrieval, at 1 (Gregory
`Grefenstette, ed., Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998)
`Lisa Ballesteros et al., “Phrasal Translation and Query Expansion
`Techniques for Cross-Language Information Retrieval,” SIGIR ’97:
`Proceedings of the 20th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on
`Research and Development in Information Retrieval, at 84 (Nicholas J.
`Belkin, et al. eds., ACM, 1997)
`1009 Entry for “software,” Le Dictionnaire Du Français (Hachette, 1992)
`
`1006
`
`1007
`
`1008
`
`1010 File History of U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101
`1011 Executed Summons, Improved Search LLC v. AOL Inc., Case No. 1:15-cv-
`00262 (D. Del. March 26, 2015) [ECF No. 4]
`
`v
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.(cid:89)
`
`

`

`
`
`
`INTRODUCTION
`
`
`
`I.
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`Google Inc. (“Petitioner”) respectfully requests inter partes review of claims
`
`1-2, 4-7, 12-13, 15-17, and 22-28 of U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1 (“the ’101
`
`Patent”) (Ex. 1001), assigned to Improved Search LLC (“Patent Owner”).
`
`The ’101 Patent relates to the field of electronic cross-language search, i.e.,
`
`searching for information in a different language than the user’s query. The Patent
`
`does not claim to have invented electronic cross-language search; such systems were
`
`well known by the Patent’s June 2000 priority date. Rather, the inventors believed
`
`prior art systems suffered from an inability to cope with variation among dialects of
`
`a language, and they opined that cross-language search could be improved by
`
`“dialectal standardization”—the conversion of uncommon dialectal variants “to a
`
`commonly known word” before translation. Ex. 1001 at 3:49-53. Examples of the
`
`type of variation accounted for by dialectal standardization are: “centre vs. center,
`
`lorry vs. truck, queue vs. line and petrol vs. gasoline etc.” Ex. 1001 at 5:40-43.
`
`But there was nothing new about this type of “dialectal standardization.” Well
`
`before the Patent’s priority date, researchers in the field of cross-language
`
`information retrieval—an intersection of computer science, library science, and
`
`linguistics—had developed systems that performed “normalization” of search
`
`queries to improve the results of translation and search. These included adjusting
`
`for precisely the types of differences in spelling and usage that the ’101 Patent
`
`1
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.1
`
`

`

`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`describes. In particular, a cross-language search system described by Christian Fluhr
`
`
`
`and other researchers in the late ’90s would, prior to translation, normalize the words
`
`“logiciel” and “software” in French language queries to the preferred word “logiciel”
`
`and similarly normalize the words “harbour” and “harbor” in English language
`
`queries to the preferred “harbor.” Ex. 1003 at 33. The ’101 Patent’s “dialectal
`
`standardization” is just an example of these well-known normalization processes.
`
`In addition to “dialectal standardization,” the ’101 Patent attempts to claim
`
`various other aspects of cross-language search, none of which is novel. The Patent
`
`claims an electronic search system that translates dialectally standardized queries
`
`before sending them off to an Internet search engine. But Guo-Wei Bian described
`
`just such a system several years before. The Patent also claims the step of translating
`
`search results back into the language of the user’s query. That too had been disclosed
`
`by the Patent’s priority date, including in the system described by Kiyoshi
`
`Yamabana, as well as the system described by Bian.
`
`Accordingly, and as explained in more detail below, because the challenged
`
`claims are invalid, the Board should institute trial and cancel those claims.
`
`II.
`
`REQUIREMENTS OF PETITION AND MANDATORY NOTICES
`
`A. Real Parties-in-Interest
`Google Inc. and AOL Inc. are the real parties-in-interest.
`
`2
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.2
`
`

`

`
`
`
`
`B. Related Matters
`Improved Search has asserted the ’101 Patent against AOL Inc. in Improved
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`Search LLC v. AOL Inc., Civ. No. 15-262 (D. Del. filed March 25, 2015). That
`
`proceeding would be affected by a decision in this proceeding. There is one patent
`
`that claims priority to U.S. Patent Application 09/606,655, to which the ’101 Patent
`
`also claims priority: U.S. Patent No. 7,516,154.
`
`C. Lead and Backup Counsel and Service Information
`Lead counsel is Aaron Maurer (Reg. No. 44,911). Backup counsel is David
`
`Krinsky (Reg. No. 72,339). The above are attorneys at Williams & Connolly LLP,
`
`725 12th St. NW, Washington, DC 20005; 202-434-5000 (tel); 202-434-5029 (fax).
`
`Google consents to service by e-mail at amaurer@wc.com and dkrinsky@wc.com.
`
`D. Grounds for Standing
`Petitioner certifies that the ’101 Patent is available for inter partes review and
`
`Petitioner is not barred or estopped from requesting an inter partes review of the
`
`’101 Patent on the grounds identified in this Petition. This Petition is timely under
`
`35 U.S.C. § 315(b), as, even were Google bound by the filing date of the Complaint
`
`in Improved Search LLC v. AOL Inc., AOL was served with the Complaint in the
`
`related infringement action on March 26, 2015. Ex. 1011.
`
`Power of Attorney and Fees
`E.
`This Petition is filed in accordance with 37 C.F.R. § 42.106(a). Also filed
`
`herewith are a Power of Attorney and Exhibit List pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 42.10(b)
`
`3
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.3
`
`

`

`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`and 37 C.F.R. § 42.63(e), respectively. The Director is authorized to charge the fees
`
`
`
`specified by 37 C.F.R. § 42.15(a) to Deposit Account No. 506403.
`
`III.
`
`IDENTIFICATION OF CHALLENGE AND RELIEF REQUESTED
`
`Google requests inter partes review of claims 1-2, 4-7, 12-13, 15-17, and 22-
`
`28. The Petition is based on the following references and grounds:
`
`Asserted Prior Art
`
`Fluhr ’97: Christian Fluhr et al., “Multilingual Database and Crosslingual
`
`Interrogation in a Real Internet Application: Architecture and Problems of
`
`Implementation,” in Cross-Language Text & Speech Retrieval: Papers from the
`
`1997 AAAI Spring Symposium, Technical Report SS-97-05, at 32 (AAAI Press 1997)
`
`(Ex. 1003). Fluhr ’97 was published in a technical report of the 1997 AAAI Spring
`
`Symposium, a symposium that would have been well-known to a POSA and was
`
`attended by representatives from nearly every group actively working on cross-
`
`language information retrieval at the time. Ex. 1002 (Decl. of Douglas W. Oard,
`
`“Oard Decl.”) at ¶ 36. AAAI Press made the technical report available for sale to
`
`the public later in 1997, and a number of libraries added it to their collections. Id.
`
`Fluhr ’98: Christian Fluhr et al., “Distributed Cross-Lingual Information
`
`Retrieval,” in Cross-Language Information Retrieval, at 41 (Gregory Grefenstette
`
`ed., Kluwer Academic Publishers 1998) (Ex. 1004). Fluhr ’98 was published in
`
`1998 by Kluwer Academic Publishers as a chapter of a book well-known in the
`
`4
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.4
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`

`

`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`cross-language information retrieval field, Cross-Language Information Retrieval.
`
`
`
`Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.) at ¶ 36.
`
`Yamabana: Kiyoshi Yamabana et al., “A Language Conversion Front-End
`
`for Cross-Language Information Retrieval,” in Cross-Language Information
`
`Retrieval, supra, at 93 (Ex. 1005). Yamabana was published in the same well-
`
`known book as Fluhr ’98, supra.
`
`Bian: Guo-Wei Bian, et al., “Integrating Query Translation and Document
`
`Translation in a Cross-Language Information Retrieval System,” in Machine
`
`Translation and the Information Soup: Third Conference of the Association for
`
`Machine Translation in the Americas, AMTA’98, Langhorne, PA, USA, October 28-
`
`31, 1998 Proceedings, at 250 (David Farwell et al. eds., Springer-Verlag Berlin
`
`Heidelberg 1998) (Ex. 1006). The 1998 book in which Bian was published is a
`
`volume in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science series, a series well-known
`
`to those in the computer science field. Ex. 1006; Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.) at ¶ 57.
`
`Asserted Grounds
`
`Ground References
`
`Basis
`
`Claims challenged
`
`1
`
`2
`
`Fluhr ’97 and Fluhr ’98 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) 1-2, 4-5, 22, 24, 27-
`28
`
`Fluhr ’97, Fluhr ’98, and
`Yamabana
`
`35 U.S.C. § 103(a) 6, 7, 23, 25
`
`5
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.5
`
`

`

`
`3
`
`4
`
`5
`
`
`
`
`
`Fluhr ’97, Fluhr ’98, and
`Bian
`
`Bian, Fluhr ’97, and
`Fluhr ’98
`
`Bian, Fluhr ’97, Fluhr
`’98, and Yamabana
`
`
`
`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`
`35 U.S.C. § 103(a) 28
`
`35 U.S.C. § 103(a) 12-13, 15-16, 26
`
`35 U.S.C. § 103(a) 17
`
`IV. BACKGROUND
`
`A.
`
`Overview of Cross-Language Search
`
`Cross-language search, often referred to at the time of the ’101 Patent as cross-
`
`language information retrieval, or CLIR, involves querying a search engine in one
`
`language to retrieve documents written in a different language. See Ex. 1002 (Oard
`
`Decl.) at ¶ 26. Although finding documents in a language different from the user’s
`
`query is hardly a new problem, the 1990s saw an increase in research into techniques
`
`for performing this type of CLIR in an electronic context, spurred by the growth of
`
`electronic information available in many languages. Id. at ¶ 27.
`
`One approach to CLIR is query translation, which involves translating query
`
`terms into the language of the documents to be searched and then using the translated
`
`terms to conduct a monolingual search in the document language. Id. at ¶ 29. Query
`
`terms are often translated using a “dictionary-based” approach, wherein the system
`
`uses a pre-compiled resource like a bilingual dictionary to identify one or more
`
`known translations of a query term. Id. at ¶ 32. However, most dictionaries include
`
`only the root form of a word as a headword, or entry point into the dictionary, and
`
`6
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.6
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`

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`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
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`
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`
`
`
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`have a limited (though large) number of entries. Id. at ¶¶ 32-33. Accordingly, an
`
`
`
`effective CLIR system must account for, among other things, morphological
`
`variation, such as tense and plurality, as well as spelling variation, such as
`
`hyphenation or regional spelling differences. Id. at ¶ 33. By the 1990s, several
`
`approaches had been developed to address these types of variation, including
`
`through stemming (removing suffixes and sometimes prefixes) and broader
`
`normalization of query words. Id. at ¶ 34.
`
`For example, Christian Fluhr and others developed a system for CLIR in the
`
`mid-1990s. Fluhr’s SPIRIT system incorporated translation abilities into an already-
`
`existing monolingual text retrieval software system.1 Ex. 1003 (Fluhr ’97) at 32; Ex.
`
`1004 (Fluhr ’98) at 42-43. SPIRIT processed text in documents and queries to
`
`produce normalized words and compounds, which were then translated to another
`
`language and used to search for relevant documents in that second language. Ex.
`
`1003 at 33-34; Ex. 1004 at 41, 43-48.
`
`
`1 Throughout this Petition, “SPIRIT” refer to the SPIRIT (Syntactic and
`
`Probabilistic Indexing and Retrieval of Information in Texts) system as modified
`
`by the official European Multilingual Information Retrieval (EMIR) project and
`
`also by the continued work of Fluhr and his team, i.e., the system described in
`
`Fluhr ’97 and Fluhr ’98. See generally Ex. 1003; Ex. 1004.
`
`7
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.7
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`

`

`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`In addition to query standardization and translation, some CLIR systems
`
`
`
`include options to translate the search results into the user’s language, so a user can
`
`better understand relevant documents. Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.) at ¶ 35. Both Kiyoshi
`
`Yamabana and Guo-Wei Bian describe such systems. See generally Ex. 1005
`
`(Yamabana); Ex. 1006 (Bian). Yamabana and Bian’s systems include translation
`
`modules pre- and post-search, to translate queries and results. Both systems were
`
`designed to be compatible with already-existing search engines.
`
`A more detailed summary of the state of the art, including overviews of the
`
`references relied upon herein, is provided in the accompanying declaration of Dr.
`
`Douglas W. Oard (Ex. 1002), a leading expert in cross-language information
`
`retrieval with two decades of experience in the field. Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.) at Part
`
`IV, ¶¶ 26-64.
`
`B.
`
`The ’101 Patent
`
`The ’101 Patent discloses methods and systems for cross-language
`
`information retrieval using a query translation approach, with the option to translate
`
`search results into the user’s language. See, e.g., Ex. 1001 at Abstract, 4:61-67.
`
`According to the specification, “the process and system embodied by the invention
`
`takes place in three stages: dialectal standardization, pre-search engine translation
`
`and post search engine translation.” Id. at 5:1-4.
`
`The Patent relies on known methods of translation and search, without
`
`8
`
`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.8
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`

`

`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
`
`
`
`
`
`
`
`describing any particular technique for performing those functions. Indeed, the
`
`
`
`Patent acknowledges that translated search was not a new concept as of the priority
`
`date, and that existing CLIR systems contained this functionality. Id. at 2:66-3:13.
`
`Rather, the inventors allege that the novel aspect of their invention is their
`
`attempt to address a perceived shortcoming in the existing query translation
`
`techniques, namely, that those techniques did not standardize query words prior to
`
`translation to account for dialectal variations within a language. The Patent explains
`
`that examples of dialectal variations include differences between British English and
`
`American English, such as: “centre vs. center, lorry vs. truck, queue vs. line and
`
`petrol vs. gasoline.” Id. at 5:40-43. In other words, “dialectal variation” includes
`
`spelling differences, e.g., centre/center, as well as different words representing the
`
`same concept (commonly known as synonyms), e.g., lorry/truck. To account for
`
`these variations, the Patent calls for a system that “standardiz[es] the query or phrase
`
`input by the user to a commonly known word” prior to translation. Id. at 2:46-48.
`
`This feature, which the inventors label “dialectal standardization” (to be
`
`performed by a “dialectal controller”), was the only feature the Examiner considered
`
`inventive when allowing the ’101 Patent to issue. Ex. 1010 at 105 (“The following
`
`is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: the step of dialectical
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`standardized feature and use dialectical controller in obtaining the query in the
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`second language . . . is not taught or suggested, or obvious over the prior art of record
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`9
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`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.9
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`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
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`or that encountered in searching the invention[.]”). The Examiner did not have
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`before her the prior art references discussed in this Petition.
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`V.
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`THE PERSON OF ORDINARY SKILL IN THE ART
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`The POSA would have experience in information retrieval, including at least
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`a bachelor’s degree in computer science, information science, or a related field and
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`either working experience in, or an advanced degree focusing on, cross-language
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`information retrieval. See Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.) at ¶¶ 22-23.
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`VI. CONSTRUCTION OF THE CHALLENGED CLAIMS
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`A claim in inter partes review is given the “broadest reasonable construction
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`in light of the specification of the patent in which it appears.” 37 C.F.R. § 42.100(b).
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`A.
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`“content word,” “keyword,” “key word”: “any word to be
`processed for subsequent searching”
`The Patent’s claims alternatively refer to “content word,” “keyword,” and
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`“key word,” which are undefined and used interchangeably throughout the Patent.
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`See, e.g., Ex. 1001 at 5:29-33; id. at 8:6 (claim 1); id. at 9:9 (claim 12); id. at 10:19
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`(claim 22). The specification provides no basis on which to distinguish such
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`“content” or “key” words from any other words, describing them only as objects of
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`pre-search processing. See Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.) at ¶ 75. Accordingly, the broadest
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`reasonable interpretation (BRI) of the words “content word,” “keyword” and “key
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`word” as used in the Patent is as any word to be processed for subsequent searching.
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`10
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`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.10
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`“to extract”: “to identify as a word”
`B.
`The claims refer to processing a query “to extract” a content word from that
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`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
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`query. See, e.g., Ex. 1001 at 8:3-4 (claim 1); id. at 10:31-32 (claim 23). The
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`specification does not provide any description of how a word is to be “extracted”
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`from a query or any particular algorithm for doing so. For example, there is nothing
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`in the Patent that suggests that extraction involves the process of selecting or
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`preferring certain query words over others. To the extent the specification’s
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`reference to the use of “statistical data in conjunction with syntactic analysis,” id. at
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`7:9-13, is interpreted as applying to extraction, it is too vague to provide a basis on
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`which a POSA could infer the methodology the inventors intended. Ex. 1002 (Oard
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`Decl.) at ¶ 76. Moreover, it refers only to one embodiment of the invention and does
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`not limit the BRI of “to extract” as used elsewhere in the Patent. In several instances,
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`however, the specification refers to the extraction process as one of identification of
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`words. See, e.g., Ex. 1001 at Fig. 2, Fig. 3, 5:27-29. Moreover, a POSA would
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`understand that identification of words within a character string is a common first
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`step in information retrieval. Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.) at ¶¶ 31, 77. Accordingly, the
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`BRI of the term “to extract” as used in the ’101 Patent is to identify as a word.
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`C.
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`“dialectal standardization”: “replacing one term with another term
`in the same language that has the same or similar meaning”
`The claims refer
`to “dialectal standardization” of (or “dialectally
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`standardizing”) a query word or words. See, e.g., Ex. 1001 at 8:5-6 (claim 1); id. at
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`11
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`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.11
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`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
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`9:8-9 (claim 12); id. at 10:20-21 (claim 22). The phrase “dialectal standardization”
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`is not a term of art with which a POSA would be familiar. See Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.)
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`at ¶ 78. The Patent specification describes “dialectal standardization” as a process
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`in which a “dialectal controller . . . picks up the keyword and standardizes it to a
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`commonly known word and/or term.” Ex. 1001 at 5:31-33. The specification
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`provides examples of “dialectal variations” between British English and American
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`English, “centre vs. center, lorry vs. truck, queue vs. line and petrol vs. gasoline,”
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`id. at 5:40-43, which show that dialectal variation includes spelling differences, as
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`well as different words representing the same concept, a type of synonymy. Ex.
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`1002 (Oard Decl.) at ¶ 78. The Patent provides no disclosure regarding how to
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`determine which of the words in these pairs is more common than another, and
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`indeed that could easily vary based on context (e.g., whether one were using an
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`American or British translation dictionary). Accordingly, the BRI of the term
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`“dialectal standardization” as used in the ’101 Patent is replacing one term with
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`another term in the same language that has the same or similar meaning.
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`D.
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`“contextual search”: “identification of one or more documents
`from a larger collection based on the presence of specific words
`contained in the text of those documents”
`Several of the challenged claims use the term “contextual search.” See, e.g.,
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`Ex. 1001 at 8:10 (claim 1); id. at 10:24 (claim 22). This term does not appear in the
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`specification, although the specification describes using search engines to find
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`12
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`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.12
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`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
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`documents based on words in the text of those documents. See generally id. at cols.
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`1-3. The prosecution history makes clear that the term “contextual search” was
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`included to distinguish a search to identify documents based on the presence of
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`words in the text of the documents from a search to locate a known document with
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`particular characteristics (e.g., the latest version of a particular paper), because the
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`latter type of search was present in a prior art reference cited by the Examiner. See
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`Ex. 1010 at 99-100; Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.) at ¶¶ 79-81. Accordingly, the BRI of the
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`term “contextual search” as used in the ’101 Patent is a search to identify relevant
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`documents based on words contained in the text of the documents.
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`E.
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` “database”: “a collection of data organized for convenient access
`on a computer”
`Claim 26 uses the word “database.” Ex. 1001 at 10:48. “Database” is not
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`defined in the specification but is used in the specification to refer to the collection
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`of information stored for search by a Web directory or search engine. See, e.g., id.
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`at 1:45-67. A POSA would understand that the word “database” has a broader
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`meaning, and is not limited to those collections used by specific search tools. See
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`Ex. 1002 (Oard Decl.) at ¶ 82. Accordingly, the BRI of “database” as used in the
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`’101 Patent is a collection of data organized for convenient access on a computer.
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`*
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`*
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`*
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`Claim 12 contains several terms requiring construction that are means-plus-
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`function limitations, whereby the patentee recites a function to be performed rather
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`13
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`Petitioner Microsoft Corporation - Ex. 1003, p.13
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`Petition for Inter Partes Review
`U.S. Patent No. 6,604,101 B1
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`than a structure for performing that function. Such claiming “restrict[s] the scope of
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`coverage to only the structure, materials, or acts described in the specification as
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`corresponding to the claimed function and equivalents thereof.” Williamson v. Citrix
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`Online, LLC, 792 F.3d 1339, 1347 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (en banc as to relevant section).
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`Although means-plus-function claiming often invokes the term “means for,”
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`it is not limited to claims reciting those words. Id. at 1348; see also Cole v.
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`Kimberly-Clark Corp., 102 F.3d 524, 531 (Fed. Cir. 1996). Recently, the Federal
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`Circuit rejected the notion that there is a strong presumption against means-plus-
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`function claiming if the claim does not include the word “means.” Williamson, 792
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`F.3d at 1349. It explained that “the essential inquiry is . . . whether the words of the
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`claim are understood by persons of ordinary skill in the art to have a sufficiently
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`definite meaning as the name for structure.” Id. at 1348. Thus, even absent the word
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`“means,” a claim is construed as a means-plus-function claim “if the challenger
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`demonstrates that the claim term fails to ‘recite sufficiently definite structure’ or else
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`recites