Obviousness

For a patent to be granted, it must be useful, novel, and non-obvious. The obviousness requirement, under 35 U.S.C. § 103, dictates that a patent cannot be obtained if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made. This analysis involves considering the scope and content of the prior art, the differences between the prior art and the claims, the level of ordinary skill in the art, and any secondary considerations of non-obviousness.

US patent 9633139 ("the '139 patent") generally describes methods and systems for search indexing, focusing on quick and efficient searching through incremental filtering and specific search target features. The priority date for this patent is September 3, 2002.

The claims of US9633139 B2 primarily relate to:

• Receiving multiple search strings in the same search field and incrementally filtering results to locate documents where words begin with those strings. (e.g., Claim 1, 14, 19).
• A search index system that locates punctuation marks in a search string and treats them as string separators based on their location. (e.g., Claim 8).
• Selectively performing a search or executing a command based on a string entered into a search field. (e.g., Claim 10, 16).

To perform an obviousness analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103, we need to consider combinations of prior art that would have motivated a person of ordinary skill in the art to arrive at the claimed invention.

A person having ordinary skill in the art in this field would likely be a software engineer or computer scientist with experience in database systems, information retrieval, and user interface design. They would be familiar with common search engine architectures, indexing techniques (like inverted indexes), and incremental data processing.

Let's analyze some potential combinations of prior art for obviousness:

1. Claims related to incremental filtering with multiple search strings (e.g., Claim 1, 14, 19):

• Claim 1: "A method of performing a search comprising: receiving at least a first search string and a second search string as the first and second search strings are being entered into the same search field; and incrementally locating at least a first document that has a least a first word that begins with the first string and a second word that begins with the second string."

  • Prior Art Combination: A combination of a search system that performs incremental searching (e.g., as acknowledged by the '139 patent in its background, where "search results are provided or narrowed substantially immediately after each character in a search string is entered by a user") and a search system that allows for boolean or multi-word searches (common in many prior art search engines).
  • Motivation to Combine: The '139 patent itself discusses the drawbacks of conventional search applications being "slow and cumbersome to use," and requiring users to "type in a search term, click on a search button, and review the results." A person of ordinary skill would be motivated to improve the user experience and efficiency of searching. Given that incremental searching provides "substantially immediate feedback" and that multi-word queries are standard for more precise results, it would be an obvious design choice to combine these features. For example, if a user wants to find documents containing "John Doe," and an incremental search system already exists, it would be an obvious step to allow the user to type "Joh Do" into a single field and have the system incrementally filter for documents containing words starting with "Joh" AND words starting with "Do." The patent states that this enables "substantially instant redisplay of a given search result list". This combination would lead to a more efficient and user-friendly search experience by allowing more complex queries to be refined in real-time.

2. Claims related to treating punctuation as string separators (e.g., Claim 8):

• Claim 8: "A search index system comprising: scan code that determines at least in part what files to index; index code that indexes files based at least in part on the scan code determination, wherein the index code is further configured to locate punctuation marks in at least a first search string and to treat at least a portion of the punctuation marks as string separators based at least in part on their location within the first search string."

  • Prior Art Combination: Any indexing system that processes text (which would inherently encounter punctuation) combined with common text processing or natural language processing techniques that handle punctuation for tokenization or word separation. The patent acknowledges that "indexing of multiple forms of a word is performed, and where punctuation marks are in a word or character string, the word and character string can be selectively broken into multiple words or strings which can reduce index size and facilitate searching."
  • Motivation to Combine: A person of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to optimize index size and improve search accuracy and efficiency. Treating certain punctuation marks as word separators is a standard technique in text indexing to correctly identify individual words for searching. For example, if a document contains "nbc.org," it is common to index "nbc" and "org" as separate words to improve searchability, as noted in the '139 patent. The patent describes an index process that "indexes the individual words separated by punctuation, so that for xy.com, xy and com are separately indexed." This approach reduces index size and enhances searchability for various forms of a word or related terms, making it an obvious choice for improving any search indexing system.

3. Claims related to selectively performing a search or executing a command (e.g., Claim 10, 16):

• Claim 10: "A method of selectively performing a search and executing a command, the method comprising: receiving at least a first string in a search field; determining if the first string is a command; selectively initiating command execution in response to determining that the first string is a command; and selectively initiating a search if the first string is not a command."

  • Prior Art Combination: A search application with a search field (ubiquitous in prior art) combined with command-line interpreters or operating systems that allow users to enter commands into a prompt.
  • Motivation to Combine: The '139 patent mentions that "conventional search application programs often are slow and cumbersome to use." A person of ordinary skill would be motivated to create a more versatile and efficient user interface. Integrating command-line functionality into a search field provides a single point of entry for both searching and executing system commands, improving user efficiency by reducing the need to switch between applications or interfaces. The patent describes how a search field can act as a "command line interface, in addition to acting as search fields." This integration, allowing a user to type "email samantha jones" to generate an email or "movies lord" to find movie show times, would be an obvious way to enhance user productivity and streamline interactions with the system, making the search field a more powerful and flexible tool.