DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
1. Claims 1-2, 4-10, and 12-16 are currently pending in this application.
Claims 1 and 9 are amended as filed on 10/13/2025.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-2, 4-10, and 12-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Siebel et al. (Pre-Grant Publication No. US 2017/0006135 A1), hereinafter Siebel, in view of Maes et al. (Pre-Grant Publication No. US 2019/0268214 A1), hereinafter Maes, in view of Swanke et al. (Pre-Grant Publication No. US 2003/0078826 A1), hereinafter Swanke, in view of Gurdasani et al. (Pre-Grant Publication No. US 2017/0171043 A1), hereinafter Gurdasani, and in further view of Srivastava et al. (Pre-Grant Publication No. US 2018/0260760 A1), hereinafter Sri.
2. With respect to claims 1 and 9, Siebel taught a method for triage management (0484, where the sensor and network health applications triage the network in order to reconcile deployment issues), the method comprising: obtaining, by a processor, activity logs from a plurality of sources, each activity log comprising one or more issues for triage (0299, the log data, where data can be historical data as seen in 0234); processing the activity logs associated with each issue (0484); identifying, by the processor, for each issue, relevant resources from a plurality of resources to resolve the issue based on the category of the issue, the priority score associated with the issue, and attributes of the relevant resources comprising historical issue resolution data (0478, where the prioritized equipment is the relevant resource(s), the risk score is the priority, and the attributes can be any of the equipment or system data listed); determining, by the processor, a triage activity based on availability of the identified relevant resources, the categories of the issues, and the priority scores associated with the issues, wherein the triage activity comprises a sequence for resolving the issues, and wherein the sequence is determined based on the priority scores associated with the issues and the availability of the relevant resources (0484 & 0478, where the individual elements are shown above with the previous citations); and generating, by the processor, a report for the triage activity, the report comprising real time information related to the obtained activity logs, the plurality of sources, and the sequence of the issues (0234, the created reports).
However, while Siebel did teach associating the triage with contacting customers (0530, the call centers based on the analyzed activity logs) Siebel did not explicitly state scheduling a call, by the processor, for a predetermined time duration based on the availability of the relevant resources, wherein the predetermined time duration is determined based on the attributes of each of the relevant resources. On the other hand, Maes did teach scheduling a call, by the processor, for a predetermined time duration based on the availability of the relevant resources, wherein the predetermined time duration is determined based on the attributes of each of the relevant resources (0060, where the call/notification is transmitted based on the issue prediction time, which is seen in 0063). Both of the systems of Siebel and Maes are directed towards network issue resolution and therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, at the time of the effective filing of the invention, to modify the teachings of Siebel, to utilize sending a notification/call based on a resolution time, as taught by Maes, in order to more efficiently manage the issue resolutions.
However, Siebel did not explicitly state scheduling a call, by the processor, with relevant resources for a predetermined time duration to resolve the issue, wherein scheduling the call comprises sending invites to the identified relevant resources based on the availability of the relevant resource. On the other hand, Swanke did teach scheduling a call, by the processor, with relevant resources for a predetermined time duration to resolve the issue, wherein scheduling the call comprises sending invites to the identified relevant resources based on the availability of the relevant resource (0025). Both of the systems of Siebel and Swanke are directed towards project management and therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, at the time of the effective filing of the invention, to modify the teachings of Siebel, to utilize automatically scheduling a meeting to diagnose a problem, as taught by Swanke, in order to provide a system that more efficiently handles problems that may arise.
However, while Siebel also implicitly taught the decision tree and categorization in (0484 & 0478), in order to provide a more explicitly showing from the newly applied reference, it is contended that Siebel did not explicitly state processing the activity logs, by the processor, using a decision tree, wherein the decision tree is configured to output a category of each issue in the activity log and a priority score associated with each issue, the priority score being indicative of a criticality of the issue and mapping the category of the issue with the nature of issues handled by the plurality of resources. On the other hand, Gurdasani did teach processing the activity logs, by the processor, using a decision tree, wherein the decision tree is configured to output a category of each issue in the activity log and a priority score associated with each issue, the priority score being indicative of a criticality of the issue and mapping the category of the issue with the nature of issues handled by the plurality of resources (0066, where the monitoring of the logs can be seen in, at least, 0015. Furthermore, the decision tree is given as part of the selection process). Both of the systems of Siebel and Gurdasani are directed towards monitoring log data and therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, at the time of the effective filing of the invention, to modify the teachings of Siebel, to utilize categorizing based on detected logged issues, as taught by Gurdasani, in order to more efficiently manage issue classification.
However, Siebel did not explicitly state that the attributes of the relevant resources comprised at least one of expertise level, experience in resolving similar issues, historical issue resolution data including issues resolved in the past, time taken to resolve the issues, and complexity of issues previously resolved, wherein the call is rescheduled by modifying the sequence for resolving the issues based on changes in the availability of the relevant resources and the attributes of each of the relevant resources. On the other hand, Sri did teach that the attributes of the relevant resources comprised at least one of expertise level, experience in resolving similar issues, historical issue resolution data including issues resolved in the past, time taken to resolve the issues, and complexity of issues previously resolved (0084, where this at least teaches the previously resolved limitation), wherein the call is rescheduled by modifying the sequence for resolving the issues based on changes in the availability of the relevant resources and the attributes of each of the relevant resources (0084, where the reallocation implicitly teaches the rescheduling in order to resolve the issue). Both of the systems of Siebel and Sri are directed towards managing the assignment of tasks for relevant resources and therefore, it would have been obvious to person having ordinary skill in the art, at the time of the effective filing of the invention, to modify the teachings of Siebel, to reschedule task resolution based on priorities of the tasks as well as the availability of the associated experts, as taught by Sri, in order to provide a robust system that is able to handle changing tasks.
3. As for claims 2 and 10, they are rejected on the same basis as claims 1 and 9 (respectively). In addition, Siebel taught executing, by the processor, a service module on a client machine associated with a user (0153, where the edge analytics component is the module and is located in a sensor that is in the client device in accordance with 0152); and continuously monitoring, by the processor, activities performed by the user on the client machine to retrieve data from a registry of the client machine, based on a predefined set of parameters (0152, where the monitoring can be seen in 0075).
4. As for claims 4 and 12, they are rejected on the same basis as claims 1 and 9 (respectively). In addition, Siebel taught appending to a database, by the processor, at least one of the obtained activity logs, the generated report, and metadata associated with each issue (0234, where the databases can be seen in 0152).
5. As for claims 5 and 13, they are rejected on the same basis as claims 1 and 9 (respectively). In addition, Siebel taught wherein the plurality of sources comprises at least one of identity management units, project management units, user-end- applications, and web server (0077, where the custom applications are the user-end-applications).
6. As for claims 6 and 14, they are rejected on the same basis as claims 1 and 9 (respectively). In addition, Siebel taught wherein the obtained activity logs comprises at least one of attributes of each source of the plurality of the sources, name of an executed function, parameters associated with the executed function, stack traces, name of module, and name of user (0478, where this at least teaches the attributes limitations for similar reasoning to the previous citation in claims 1 and 9).
7. As for claims 7 and 15, they are rejected on the same basis as claims 2 and 10 (respectively). In addition, Siebel taught wherein the predefined set of parameters comprises at least one of information related to software installed on the client machine, frequency of usage of the software installed on the client machine, registry of the client machine, keywords used in each software installed on the client machine, domain of the client machine, services running on the client machine, and metadata associated with the software installed on the client machine (0077, where the custom applications are software installed on a client machine).
8. As for claims 8 and 16, they are rejected on the same basis as claims 2 and 10 (respectively). In addition, Siebel taught wherein the data retrieved from the registry of the client machine comprises information relating to a domain associated to the user (0132, where the specific domain is seen. See also 0444).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 02/06/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
9. The applicant argues on page 10 that “Although Siebel further discusses adjusting sequences when availability changes, Siebel does not disclose identifying relevant resources based on the explicit set of resource attributes recited in the claim namely, expertise level, experience in resolving similar issues, historical issue resolution data, time taken to resolve prior issues, or complexity of past issues resolved.”
However, Siebel was only utilized for making risk (and other ) determinations based on attributes. Siebel wasn’t specifically utilized to teach that the attributes included expertise level and the like. Sri, on the other hand, was utilized (under 35 USC 103) to teach the aforementioned in paragraph 0084.
10. The applicant argues on page 11 that “Although Sri therefore teaches one of the recited attributes ("experience in resolving similar issues"), Sri does not disclose or suggest the remaining explicitly required attributes: expertise level, historical issue resolution data across multiple prior issues, time taken to resolve past issues, or complexity of issues previously resolved. Additionally, Sri does not discuss or teach using a priority score associated with each issue to select resources.”
However, the claim only requires that “at least one of” the aforementioned attributes are taught. Accordingly, Sri teaches (at least), the similar/relevant issues and expertise (appropriate skills) level requirements. Further, priority is both implicitly taught by selecting the person with the appropriate attributes as well as explicitly shown in 0046 and the resolution rankings of 0076. Thus, the limitations are taught.
11. The applicant argues on page 12 that “the claimed invention performs identification by combining the priority score of each issue with the performance-based attributes of the resources. None of the cited references teach or suggest using historical performance metrics such as actual time taken to resolve similar issues or complexity levels previously handled to determine resource fitness. The cited systems generally allocate tasks based on static metadata or administrative routing rules, not dynamic, evidence-based performance analytics”.
Because this doesn’t explicitly point out where/how/why the citations (from the cited references) don’t teach the claimed features, the argument can’t be properly addressed. However, in order to expedite prosecution, it can be seen that looking at Sri alone (0017-0019) teaches a system that estimates a time to resolution as well as analyzes historical resolutions in order to make its decisions. In order to be able to appropriate estimate a time while looking at historical resolutions, it seems clear that the Sri reasonable considers resolution time.
12. The applicant argues on page 13 that “First, no historical performance modelling emerges from the combination. Neither Siebel nor Sri discloses evaluating how each resource performed in the past, including how long they took to resolve prior issues, what complexity levels they successfully handled, or whether they resolved issues like the present issue category. The claimed invention expressly requires using such historical resolution data as a determinant for selecting relevant resources, whereas the cited art treats task assignment as a static or rule-based administrative operation with no learning from prior resolutions.”
However, it is to be noted that the claim doesn’t require the time taken to resolve historical issues to be taken into account. The relevant section of the claim is “attributes of the relevant resources comprising at least one of expertise level, experience in resolving similar issues, historical issue resolution data including issues resolved in the past, time taken to resolve the issues, and complexity of issues previously resolved”. It can be clearly seen that the claim only requires that one of the listed items to be true. Accordingly, even assuming arguendo that the references do not teach the time resolution limitation, it is still seen that said limitation is not specifically required by the claim. It is to be noted that applicant’s further arguments (Second through Fifth) on pages 13-14 appear to be either variations of the above argument or the previous arguments (addressed beforehand) and are thus, addressed accordingly.
13. The applicant argues on page 16-17 that “Sri, as described in paragraph [0084], teaches reassigning a ticket when a developer has availability, a relevant skillset, or previously resolved a similar ticket. Although Sri discusses accessing a developer's schedule and shifting a single ticket assignment, Sri does not teach or suggest modifying the overall issue-resolution sequence. Sri's system performs a direct handoff or reassignment that Sri does not perform recalculation or resequencing of the entire list of issues. There is no concept of a triage sequence that changes when a developer's availability status shifts. Sri also does not disclose modifying the ordering or scheduling of calls; rather, it only discusses assignment and reassignment of a specific ticket. In sharp contrast, the claimed invention requires "rescheduling the call by modifying the sequence for resolving the issues based on changes in the availability of the relevant resources and the attributes of each of the relevant resources." As supported by paragraph [0035] of the as filed specification, the triage activity module continuously monitors resource availability and dynamically adjusts the sequence of issues whenever availability changes. This includes reordering such that a low-priority issue can be moved upward in the sequence solely because a resource with suitable attributes becomes available”.
However, with regard to the first argument, the cited portion of Sri (0084) shows reassigning the issue. If the issue was already assigned then the sequence of events included assigning and completed work (by said assigning). Accordingly, if that section is changed, then the sequence has shifted under broadest reasonable interpretation. With regard to second argument, the applicant cites paragraph 0035 (of the specification) mentions that triage activity could include different triage type activities but the aforementioned activities, as well as “resequencing of the entire list” is not currently claimed. Thus, in response to applicant's argument that the references fail to show certain features of the invention, it is noted that the features upon which applicant relies are not recited in the rejected claim(s). Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993).
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOSEPH L GREENE whose telephone number is (571)270-3730. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Thursday, 10:00am - 4:00pm.
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/JOSEPH L GREENE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2443