Obviousness

A patent claim may be deemed obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103 if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art (POSA) at the time of the invention. This analysis considers the scope and content of the prior art, the differences between the prior art and the claims, the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art, and secondary considerations of non-obviousness. A clear rationale must be articulated for combining prior art references.

US patent 7770122 describes a codeless dynamic website hosting system that enables non-technical users to create and host websites with various general facilities (e.g., webmail, chat, user registration, login, password maintenance, RSS feeds) without writing code or uploading files via FTP. The system utilizes templates with editable text boxes and areas, and control buttons for modifying attributes like location, size, fonts, colors, and mouse-over effects. All content and attributes are written to hidden boxes and submitted to a server computer, where they are stored in a database and used to construct web pages for visitors.

The patent explicitly identifies U.S. Pat. No. 7,610,219 to Sayed as a prior art system. It states that while systems like Google Sites and Yahoo Site Builder enable non-technical people to develop websites without coding, "these systems do not enable an individual to add general facilities to a website such as webmail, subscription, send page, user registration, login page and supporting backend system, password maintenance, chat box, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds etc." It further notes that "the look and feel of the websites that these systems enable to develop is not at par with those developed by professional web site developers."

Given this, the following combinations of prior art could render the claims of US7770122 obvious:

Combination 1: U.S. Pat. No. 7,610,219 (Sayed) + existing web development platforms (e.g., Google Sites, Yahoo Site Builder) + common web facilities.

• Sayed: Although the full text of Sayed is not provided, US7770122 refers to it as a "prior art process of hosting a web page by a user of the prior art system described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,610,219 to Sayed" (FIG. 12). This indicates Sayed generally addresses web page hosting by a user.

• Google Sites/Yahoo Site Builder: US7770122 acknowledges these platforms enable non-technical users to develop websites without technical knowledge and coding skills.

• Common Web Facilities: The patent itself lists facilities like webmail, chat, user registration, login, password maintenance, subscription, send page, and RSS feeds as "general user facilities" and "known parts of a specific html (hypertext markup language) web page code (or other types of web page codes)" when discussing "hidden boxes." These facilities were well-known and commonly implemented on dynamic websites prior to the filing date of US7770122.

• Motivation to Combine: A POSA would have been motivated to combine the codeless website creation capabilities of platforms like Google Sites or Yahoo Site Builder with the desire to offer the "general facilities" (webmail, chat, login, etc.) that were common expectations for dynamic websites. The stated deficiency of existing codeless systems (i.e., not offering these general facilities) would have directly motivated a POSA to integrate such functionalities. The mechanisms for implementing these facilities (e.g., using "hidden boxes" for data transfer) were known in the art. Thus, extending a codeless website builder to include configurable, pre-built modules for common dynamic website features would have been a logical step for a POSA seeking to enhance the utility and attractiveness of such platforms. The patent explicitly states that the prior art systems "do not enable an individual to add general facilities to a website," which serves as a clear problem statement and motivation for a POSA to solve it by integrating these known facilities.

Combination 2: U.S. Pat. No. 7,610,219 (Sayed) / Google Sites / Yahoo Site Builder + standard HTML/web development practices.

• Sayed/Google Sites/Yahoo Site Builder: As noted, these provide a foundation for codeless website creation and hosting.

• Standard HTML/Web Development Practices: The patent extensively describes using "html text boxes and text areas" (Definitions) that can be moved, resized, and formatted for various visual attributes (e.g., background color, border color, font family, font size, mouse-over effects) using "control buttons." It also describes the use of "hidden boxes" for submitting attributes and content to a server computer for storage in a database, from which the server reconstructs the web page for visitors. The patent refers to "hidden boxes", "hidden fields", or "hidden input fields" as "known terms of art for parts of a web page code, which are hidden from a user and which do not control the layout and/or format of a web page display rendered by the specific web page code in which the “hidden boxes”, “hidden fields”, or “hidden input fields” are located." This implies that the underlying mechanisms of manipulating HTML elements and using hidden fields for data submission were well-known to a POSA.

• Motivation to Combine: A POSA would have been motivated to combine existing codeless website creation tools with standard web development practices and knowledge of HTML and dynamic web content generation. The ability to visually edit web page elements (text boxes, images, lines) and their attributes (colors, fonts, sizes, positions) using a graphical interface and then have these attributes stored and rendered dynamically by a server was a known paradigm in web development. The use of "hidden boxes" to transmit user-defined layout and content parameters to a server for storage and later retrieval to generate a dynamic webpage would have been a straightforward application of existing web technologies for a POSA. The goal of providing a "look and feel... at par with those developed by professional web site developers" also suggests a motivation to incorporate known design and styling capabilities into a codeless environment.

It is important to note that the obviousness analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is applied from the perspective of a POSA at the time the invention was made, and not with the benefit of hindsight. The patent's own description of what was lacking in prior art (e.g., general facilities, professional look and feel) serves as an indication of what a POSA would have sought to achieve.