Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
DETAILED ACTION
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
2. A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 10/14/2025 has been entered. Claims 2, 6, 9, 13, and 16 have been amended. Claims 21-25 have been added. Claims 1, 2, 5-9, 12-16, and 19-25 remain pending in the application.
Information Disclosure Statement
3. The information disclosure statement (IDS(s)) submitted on 01/22/2026 is/are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
With respect to Applicant’s first argument, Applicant’s reliance on the Reminders Memo and Example 39. It is acknowledged that a claim does not recite a mathematical concept merely because a recited AI technique may internally rely on mathematics. However, the present rejection is not based on the claim reciting a mathematical concept. Rather, claim 1 is directed to a mental process because it recites, at a high level, extracting phrases from articles, analyzing the phrases, identifying relationships, associating those relationships with hardware-state characteristics, recognizing/localizing component states, and generating content responsive to those determinations. These limitations amount to observation, evaluation, classification, and judgement, which fall within the mental process grouping when claimed in this manner.
With respect to Applicant’s second argument, it is acknowledged that the specification must be considered to determine whether the disclosed invention improves technology or a technical field. The specification here does describe potentially technical objectives. However, the claim itself does not recite the particular mechanisms described in the specification that could support such an improvement. Thus, claim 1 does not expressly recite the more concrete features, but instead broadly recites the desired results of KG creation, state recognition, content generation, and control signaling. Accordingly, after considering the specification, claim 1 still does not reflect the asserted technological improvement with sufficient specificity.
With respect to Applicant’s third argument, Applicant’s reliance on the “Apply It” consideration. Although claim 1 recites dynamically issuing a control signal to an operatively coupled device associated with the generated content, the control signal configured to selectively control an event injection responsive to synchronization of the recognized one or more physical components and the generated content, this limitation is recited only at a high functional level. This limitation is viewed as merely applying the result of the abstract information analysis in a technological environment, rather than reciting specific technological solution for the improvement.
With respect to Applicant’s fourth argument, it is acknowledged that a rejection should only be made where it is more likely than not that the claim is ineligible. After full consideration of Applicant’s arguments, the claim language, and the specification as a whole, the present claim remains more likely than not directed to a mental process type abstract idea implemented using generic computer and AI components, with additional elements that do not integrate the exception into a practical application and do not amount to significantly more than the exception itself.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
4. 35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1, 2, 5-9, 12-16, and 19-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to the abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1, the claims are directed to a process, machine, and manufacture.
Step 2A Prong 1, Claims 1, 8, and 15 recite, in part
analyze the extracted one or more phrases referring to one or more physical objects (Mental processes, evaluation/judgment/classification of information).
identify one or more adjectives describing a proximal relationship between two or more of the extracted phrases (Mental processes, evaluation of information).
associate the identified one or more adjectives with a hardware state characteristic of the physical object (Mental processes, evaluation of information).
recognize one or more physical components (Mental processes, identification from observed information).
localize an active state of the recognized one or more physical components (Mental processes, evaluation/judgment).
Step 2A Prong 2, this judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application.
The additional elements:
a computer system comprising: a processing unit operatively coupled to memory (mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component).
an artificial intelligence (AI) platform, in communication with the processing unit, having one or more tools to support knowledge graph (KG) driven content generation (mere instructions to apply the abstract idea using AI/computer technology).
a KG manager configured to create a KG from one or more knowledge articles, wherein the KG manager is configured to utilize natural language processing (NLP) to extract one or more phrases from the one or more knowledge articles (mere data gathering and output recited at a high level of generality, and thus are insignificant extra-solution activity).
the KG including nodes and edges, with individual nodes representing a physical object and an individual edge representing the hardware state characteristic of the physical object (mere data gathering and output recited at a high level of generality, and thus are insignificant extra-solution activity).
receiving, as an input into a recurrent neural network cell, a memory flow, an external input, a state flow, and a hidden output flow (mere data gathering and output recited at a high level of generality, and thus are insignificant extra-solution activity).
a director configured to leverage a trained computer vision model (mere instructions to apply the abstract idea using AI/computer technology).
dynamically generate content responsive to the localized active state and the hardware state characteristic represented in the KG (post-solution activity).
a signal manager configured to dynamically issue a control signal to an operatively coupled device associated with the generated content, the control signal configured to selectively control an event injection responsive to synchronization of the recognized one or more physical components and the generated content (mere instructions to apply the exception and generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use).
Step 2B, the claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception, either alone or in combination.
The additional elements:
a computer system comprising: a processing unit operatively coupled to memory (mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component).
an artificial intelligence (AI) platform, in communication with the processing unit, having one or more tools to support knowledge graph (KG) driven content generation (mere instructions to apply the abstract idea using AI/computer technology).
a KG manager configured to create a KG from one or more knowledge articles, wherein the KG manager is configured to utilize natural language processing (NLP) to extract one or more phrases from the one or more knowledge articles (mere data gathering and output recited at a high level of generality, and thus are insignificant extra-solution activity).
the KG including nodes and edges, with individual nodes representing a physical object and an individual edge representing the hardware state characteristic of the physical object (mere data gathering and output recited at a high level of generality, and thus are insignificant extra-solution activity).
receiving, as an input into a recurrent neural network cell, a memory flow, an external input, a state flow, and a hidden output flow (mere data gathering and output recited at a high level of generality, and thus are insignificant extra-solution activity).
a director configured to leverage a trained computer vision model (mere instructions to apply the abstract idea using AI/computer technology).
dynamically generate content responsive to the localized active state and the hardware state characteristic represented in the KG (post-solution activity).
a signal manager configured to dynamically issue a control signal to an operatively coupled device associated with the generated content, the control signal configured to selectively control an event injection responsive to synchronization of the recognized one or more physical components and the generated content (mere instructions to apply the exception and generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use).
Claims 2, 5-7, 9, 12-14, 16, and 19-25 provide further limitations to the abstract idea (Mental processes) as rejected in claims 1, 8, 15, however, they do not disclose any additional elements that would amount to a practical application or significantly more than an abstract idea (data gathering/insignificant extra-solution activity and/or generic computer component).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 2, 5-9, 12-16, and 19-25 would be allowable if the 35 U.S.C. § 101 for being directed to an abstract idea is successfully addressed.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
McRae (Pub. No. US 20160165170 A1), An Augmented Reality (AR) device, places manual controls and virtual displays onto a surface of a controllable electronic device (CED) or next to the CED as viewed through the AR device allowing the user to manipulate the controls and view feedback via the virtual displays associated with the controllable device.
Glaser et al. (Pub. No. US 20190378205 A1), system and method for computer vision driven applications in an environment that can include collecting image data across an environment; maintaining an environmental object graph from the image data whereby maintaining the environmental object graph is an iterative process that includes: classifying objects, tracking object locations, detecting interaction events, instantiating object associations in the environmental object graph, and updating the environmental object graph by propagating change in at least one object instance across object associations.
Guven et al. (Pub. No. US 20190056779 A1), generating an augmented reality experience based on Knowledge Media.
Aditya et al. (Pub. No. US 20210117509 A1), a knowledge graph generation system extracts noun-phrases from sentences of a knowledge corpora and determines the relations between the noun-phrases based on a relation classifier that is configured to predict a relation between a pair of entities without restricting the entities to a set of named entities.
Gupta et al. (Pub. No. US 20220358727 A1), hardware and software for smart assistant systems in augmented-reality (AR) and virtual-reality (VR) environment.
Cheng et al. (Pub. No. US 11809480 B1), determining one or more entities and one or more relationships between one or more of the entities associated with the media content based on the visual input, generating a personalized knowledge graph of the media content for the user based on the determined entities and relationships in real-time responsive to the visual input of the media content being received, generating a content summary based on the personalized knowledge graph.
It is noted that any citation to specific pages, columns, lines, or figures in the prior art references and any interpretation of the references should not be considered to be limiting in any way. A reference is relevant for all it contains and may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably suggested to one having ordinary skill in the art. In re Heck, 699 F.2d 1331, 1332-33, 216 U.S.P.Q. 1038, 1039 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (quoting In re Lemelson, 397 F.2d 1006, 1009, 158 U.S.P.Q. 275, 277 (C.C.P.A. 1968)).
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/TAN H TRAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2141
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