Obviousness

Obviousness Analysis of US Patent 9,529,918 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

This analysis identifies combinations of prior art references that would render the independent claims of US Patent 9,529,918 obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) at the time of the invention (priority date June 11, 2010). A PHOSITA in this field would be a software engineer or computer scientist experienced in mobile application development, search engine technologies, and network communication. The motivation for combining these references stems from a desire to improve the user experience of discovering and acquiring mobile applications, a problem explicitly recognized in the background of US9529918 itself.

The core of US9529918's independent claims (Claim 1 and Claim 11) lies in a method and system for downloading applications by:

1. Receiving a search query from a user device.
2. Determining the user's "search intent" from the query.
3. Selecting applications from a central repository based on this intent.
4. Displaying an icon of the selected application on the user device.
5. Upon user input, establishing a direct communication link and initiating the download of the selected application.

All components required for these claims were individually known and routinely combined in various contexts prior to the priority date of US9529918.

Combinations of Prior Art for Obviousness

Combination 1: Gross, Inamdar, and Microsoft Corporation (or Samsung)

Prior Art References:

• US20060064411A1 to Gross (Priority Date: September 22, 2004): This patent application, titled "Search engine using user intent," discloses a system and method for receiving a search query, determining the user's intent, conducting a search based on that intent, and returning results to the user.
• US20070204039A1 to Inamdar (Priority Date: February 24, 2006): This reference, titled "System and method of downloading restricted applications to wireless devices," describes the process of receiving a request to download an application to a wireless device and then downloading it from a server to the device, implicitly establishing a communication link.
• US20070082707A1 to Microsoft Corporation (Priority Date: September 16, 2005): This patent application, "Tile space user interface for mobile devices," teaches a user interface for mobile devices displaying "tiles" (icons) that correspond to applications. Each tile is selectable to launch the corresponding application.
• US7636900B2 to Samsung (Priority Date: October 25, 2006): This patent, "Personalized virtual reality home screen for mobile devices," further supports the concept of displaying a plurality of application icons on a mobile device's display.

Motivation to Combine:

A PHOSITA, encountering the widespread use of mobile applications and the common issue of inefficient application discovery through simple keyword searches (as noted in US9529918, paragraph ), would be motivated to improve the application search and download experience.

1. Enhancing Application Search Relevance (Gross): The PHOSITA would recognize the value of applying intent-based search, as taught by Gross, to the domain of mobile applications. Gross's method of determining user intent and conducting a search based on it directly addresses the problem of retrieving irrelevant results from simple keyword searches in application repositories.
2. Facilitating Application Acquisition (Inamdar): It was well-known to download applications to mobile devices, as demonstrated by Inamdar, which details the process of downloading applications to wireless devices via a server. The establishment of a direct communication link for this download is a standard networking practice.
3. Intuitive User Interaction (Microsoft/Samsung): To seamlessly integrate the improved search with the download process, a PHOSITA would find it obvious to present the intent-matched applications graphically on the user's device. Microsoft's "tile space" interface, displaying selectable icons (tiles) representing applications, and Samsung's similar teaching of application icons on a display, provide a clear and intuitive mechanism for users to select an application for download. The idea of creating a "display segment" to show these results is a routine GUI design choice for organizing information.

By combining these elements, a PHOSITA would arrive at the claimed invention, providing a system where a user submits a query, their intent is determined, relevant application icons are displayed, and the user can tap an icon to directly download the application. This combination yields the predictable result of a more efficient and user-friendly application discovery and acquisition process.

Claim Coverage by Combination 1:

• Receiving an input search query from a user device: Taught by Gross.
• Determining the search intent based on the input search query: Taught by Gross.
• Selecting, based on the search intent, at least one application from at least one applications central repository: Obvious by combining Gross's intent-based search with the common knowledge of application repositories (acknowledged in US9529918, paragraph ).
• Causing an icon corresponding to the at least one selected application to be displayed on a display of the user device: Taught by Microsoft Corporation and Samsung.
• Receiving via the communication network an input from the user device indicating a particular one of the at least one selected application: Taught by Microsoft Corporation's selectable tiles, and the concept of user gestures (Claim 2 of US9529918) was also known in the art.
• Causing establishment of a direct communication link between the user device and a location hosting the particular one of the at least one selected application in response to an input received from the user device: Taught by Inamdar's downloading from a server to a wireless device, which inherently involves a communication link. The "direct" nature of the link is a standard client-server download model.
• Causing initiation of a download of the particular one of the at least one selected application to the user device over the direct communication link: Taught by Inamdar.
• Claim 10 (instigating a display segment): A common user interface technique for presenting search results or recommendations distinctly.

Combination 2: Gross (or Koo), Yahoo! Inc., Inamdar, and Microsoft Corporation

Prior Art References:

• US20060064411A1 to Gross (or US20060136403A1 to Koo): For receiving queries and determining search intent.
• US20080114759A1 to Yahoo! Inc. (Priority Date: November 9, 2006): This patent application, "Deriving user intent from a user query," describes methods for extracting query components, matching them to entities, and determining user intent based on these matches. This reference specifically addresses detailed aspects of intent determination, such as tokenization and mapping to entities, as described in claims 5 and 15 of US9529918.
• US20070204039A1 to Inamdar: For downloading applications to wireless devices.
• US20070082707A1 to Microsoft Corporation: For displaying application icons on a mobile device and allowing user interaction.

Motivation to Combine:

Building on the previous reasoning, a PHOSITA would be further motivated to combine the more detailed intent determination techniques from Yahoo! Inc. with the other references. The Yahoo! Inc. patent provides explicit mechanisms for parsing queries and mapping tokens to entities to derive intent, which would be directly applicable to making the "determining search intent" step (Claims 1 and 11) of US9529918 more robust and accurate. This combination addresses the recognized problem of vague or general search queries yielding irrelevant results by providing a sophisticated method for understanding the user's true interest, and then seamlessly translating that into an actionable application download through known display and download mechanisms. The overall result—an intuitive and efficient system for application discovery and acquisition based on inferred user intent—would be predictable and desirable to a PHOSITA.

Therefore, claims 1, 3-7, 10, 11, and 13-19 of US9529918 would be rendered obvious by these combinations of prior art.