DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1 – 4 and 6 – 19 are pending.
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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 16 June 2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
With regard to the Final Office Action from 25 March 2026, the Applicant has filed a response on 16 June 2026.
With regard to the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection given to the claims for being directed toa judicial exception without significantly more, the Applicant has amended the independent claims to include several GUI that present particular information, including a way for the user to interact with the system through the GUI and have the system provide responses based on the user interaction. The current amendment to the independent claims provide additional elements that integrate the earlier-mentioned mental process into a practical application, the practical application being the analysis of several contract documents in order to provide and present the contract documents based on all indicated analyses conditions. The Examiner hereby withdraws the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the independent claims have been considered but are moot due to the new ground of rejection necessitated by the amendment to these claims. The claims will be addressed by their current presentation.
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajkumar et al. (US 2008/0306784 A1: hereafter — Rajkumar) in view of Follis (US 2016/0267563 A1) further in view of Harmes et al. (US 2004/0085355 A1: hereafter — Harmes), further in view of Brannon et al. (US 2020/0202271 A1: hereafter — Brannon), and further in view of Clark et al. (US 2015/0106276 A1: hereafter — Clark).
For claim 1, Rajkumar discloses a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a program including instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause an information processing apparatus connected to a document processing apparatus through a communication interface (Rajkumar: [0007] — a method for analysing clauses of business documents; [0010] — a storage device coupled to a processor; [0052] — a communication mechanism and communication device to enable communication; [0053] — a computer-readable medium; [0023] — a contract as a business document; FIG. 3 — showing an interface for communicating the information of the contracts to a human user), to:
accept a plurality of contract documents to be stored in a contract document database (Rajkumar: [0007] — ‘storing a plurality of business documents used by the enterprise in the database, each of the plurality of business document stored in the database including a plurality of clauses’ (indicating stored contract documents in a contract document database));
extract, from the plurality of contract documents, contract document information and [[contract status information]], the contract document information including at least a contract document identification, [[a contract document name, and contents of the contract document, respectively, and the contract status information indicating a contract status of each of the plurality of contract documents]] (Rajkumar: FIG. 7 Part 722 — a display of the contract number which serves as a contract document identification for each contract document being extracted out for viewing);
display, via a first screen on a graphical user interface, the contract information (Rajkumar: FIG. 6 — a user interface that displays contract information by themselves, such that for each contract, there is displayed contract information for its clause, ‘non-standard’ information, contract number, organization, supplier, etc.);
in response to an input operation by a user, display a second screen on the graphical user interface that is different from the first screen, the second screen including an analysis condition input field (Rajkumar: [0013], FIG. 3 — a GUI showing a contract clause analysis page; [0028] — this contains information that enable a user to view clause attributes, to set clause and contract search conditions by entering and/or selecting values for such clause and/or business document attributes; [0030] — ‘As shown, the Contract Clause Analysis page, Clause Attribute View 300 may include two regions; namely a main search region 302 to enable the user to enter and/or select attributes values for clauses and a contract criteria region 324 for additional contracts attributes’ (indicating analysis condition input field for the user to enter clause or analysis information));
accept, via the analysis condition input field on the second screen, an analysis condition for analyzing the plurality of contract documents stored in the contract document database (Rajkumar: FIG. 3, [0030] — ‘This page 300 affords the user the ability to select the conditions on which the clauses and the business documents are to be searched’ (indicating that a user would need to manipulate the content on the screen in order to get to this page); ‘As shown, the Contract Clause Analysis page, Clause Attribute View 300 may include two regions; namely a main search region 302 to enable the user to enter and/or select attributes values for clauses and a contract criteria region 324 for additional contracts attributes’ (indicating analysis condition input field for the user to enter clause or analysis information); [0007] — ‘storing a plurality of business documents used by the enterprise in the database, each of the plurality of business document stored in the database including a plurality of clauses’; [0026] — ‘Embodiments of the present invention may carry out a search on standard clauses that may be stored in a standard clause library or on non-standard clauses found in customized, individual business documents’);
in response to accepting the analysis condition via the analysis condition input field, extract, from the contract document database, a contract document containing contract document information and/or contract status information that matches to the analysis condition (Rajkumar: FIG. 7 Part 722 — a display of the contract number which serves as a contract document identification for each contract document being extracted out for viewing; [0035] — retrieving a list of specifically identified clauses that are used in one or more business documents based a user inputting individual named clause to be searched for; [0047] — presenting a result of the search in a Master-Detail format (the result of the search being an indication of the acceptance and matching of the analysis condition); [0048] — after the analysis is complete, the user may select to look at the six contracts that include the search clause);
display, via a third screen on the graphical user interface that is different from the first screen and the second screen, the contract document extracted from the contract document database (Rajkumar: FIG. 7, [0048] — after the analysis is complete, the user may select to look at the six contracts that include the search clause (indicating that the user is able to view the extracted contract document)).
The reference of Rajkumar provides teaching for accepting an analysis condition as a clause to be able to search through stored contract documents to extract and display contract documents that match the analysis condition. This differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention provides an initial extraction of contract document information and contract status information containing the name, contents and status of each of the plurality of contract documents.
This teaching isn’t new to the art as the reference of Harmes is now introduced to teach this as:
extract, from the plurality of contract documents, contract document information and contract status information, the contract document information including at least a contract document identification, a contract document name, and contents of the contract document, respectively, and the contract status information indicating a contract status of each of the plurality of contract documents (Harmes: FIGURE 2, [0033] — contract documents are shown to be arranged based on status information that indicate a contract status (the arrangement based on a contract status is indicative of an extraction of contract status information for the purpose of such arrangement according to the status) and the status can also be organised by a name of party; [0040], FIGUREs 4 & 7 — showing the display of documents and the extraction of the document names for displaying the contract documents; [0021] — the user can retrieve information such as contract document and view contents on the display (the display of contents is an indication of the extraction of the contents of the document)).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to improve upon the teaching of Rajkumar which accepts an analysis condition as a clause to be able to search through stored contract documents to extract and display contract documents that match the analysis condition, by applying the known technique of Harmes which initially extracts contract document information and contract status information containing the name, contents and status of each of the plurality of contract documents from stored contract documents, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of generating searchable information from each stored contract for the purpose of being able to search through those contract information based on certain analysis conditions that may be applicable to each contract, resulting in the further quick retrieval of contracts that match each analysis condition. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
The combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes discloses the extraction of contract information based on matching an analysis condition, but differs from the claimed invention as it fails to teach of analysing the extracted contract document to identify a notification matter for an analysis result.
This isn’t new to the prior art as the reference of Brannon is now introduced to teach this as:
analyze contents of the extracted contract document including text data of the extracted contract document by performing at least one of keyword analysis, morphological analysis, syntax analysis, semantic analysis, and context analysis on the text data, to identify risk factors including a risk clause and a predetermined condition, and detect a notification matter for an analysis result based on the identified risk factors (Brannon: [0013] — analysing one or more documents defining one or more obligations (the obligations being the predetermined condition) and determining a notification obligation (detecting the notification matter for an analysis result based on a predetermined condition); [0519] — performing risk analysis techniques; [0536] — performing text analysis on a contract to determine contract terms); and
display and output, via a fourth screen of the graphical user interface that is different from each of the first screen, the second screen, and the third screen, a result of the analyzing the plurality of contract documents based on the analysis condition and the notification contents corresponding to the detected notification matter, wherein the fourth screen displays the notification contents so as to alert a user to the identified risk factors (Brannon: [0013] — generating a task associated with the notification obligation (the generated task is the notification content); [0626], [0628] — an interface for displaying documents; [0014] — ‘a data processing incident notification generation system may perform operations comprising analyzing the attributes of the particular incident to determine a risk level associated with the particular incident, wherein determining the notification obligation for the vendor is further based on the risk level associated with the particular incident’ (indicating an analysis to determine risk factors); [0759] — a graphical user interface for implementing the limitation; [0297] — displaying an indicator of a risk level; [0632] — displaying risk scores associated with contracts (indicating a way to alert a user through a display of risk factors, noting also that the display would be on a GUI)).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found is obvious to improve upon the teaching of the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes which provides the extraction of contract information based on matching an analysis condition, by applying the known technique of Brannon which teaches analysing the extracted contract document to identify a notification matter for an analysis result, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of informing and presenting a user viewing the document with available tasks that should be performed, so that the tasks can be performed in due time during a time period where performing such tasks might still be valid. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
The combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon provides teaching for the extraction of a contract document identification as well as accepting a clause as an analysis condition for analysing a plurality of contract documents stored in a contract document database. This combination differs from the claimed invention in that it fails to teach of analysing contents of the contract by performing a textual analysis on the contract to identify a risk clause, as provided by the claimed invention.
This however isn’t new to the art as the reference of Clark is now introduced to teach this as:
analyze contents of the extracted contract document including text data of the extracted contract document by performing at least one of keyword analysis, morphological analysis, syntax analysis, semantic analysis, and context analysis on the text data, to identify risk factors including a risk clause and a predetermined condition, and detect a notification matter for an analysis result based on the identified risk factors (Clark: [0045] — surfacing potential risk and liability across all contracts (indicating a presentation or display of detected potential risks in contracts); [0053] — analysing a contract by analysing clauses in the contracts through parsing (indicating a syntax and keyword analysis) for the purpose of identifying clauses with risk (based on a risk score); [0061] — machine learning algorithm for analysing electronic documents such that the documents can be any specific type of legal documents such as risk regarding legal contracts (indicating the identification of risk factors); [00100] — associating a plurality of documents with a transactional document type, the transactional document type being one as risk regarding legal contracts (indicating the identification of risk factors)).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found is obvious to improve upon the teaching of the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon provides teaching for the extraction of a contract document identification as well as accepting a clause as an analysis condition for analysing a plurality of contract documents stored in a contract document database, by applying the known technique of Clark which provides detecting a risk clause in a contract based on certain textual analysis, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of being able to inform users and enterprises of potential liabilities to look out for within a contract, leading the users or enterprises to quickly work on addressing them. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
For claim 2, Rajkumar discloses a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a program including instructions that, when executed by a processor, causes an information processing apparatus connected to a document processing apparatus through a communication interface (Rajkumar: [0007] — a method for analysing clauses of business documents; [0010] — a storage device coupled to a processor; [0052] — a communication mechanism and communication device to enable communication; [0053] — a computer-readable medium; [0023] — a contract as a business document; FIG. 3 — showing an interface for communicating the information of the contracts to a human user), to:
accept a plurality of contract documents to be stored in a contract document database (Rajkumar: [0007] — ‘storing a plurality of business documents used by the enterprise in the database, each of the plurality of business document stored in the database including a plurality of clauses’ (indicating stored contract documents in a contract document database));
extract, from the plurality of contract documents, contract document information [[and contract status information]], the contract document information including at least a contract document identification, [[a contract document name, and contents of the contract document, respectively, and the contract status information indicating a contract status of each of the plurality of contract documents]] (Rajkumar: FIG. 7 Part 722 — a display of the contract number which serves as a contract document identification for each contract document being extracted out for viewing);
display, via a first screen on a graphical user interface, the contract information (Rajkumar: FIG. 6 — a user interface that displays contract information by themselves, such that for each contract, there is displayed contract information for its clause, ‘non-standard’ information, contract number, organization, supplier, etc.);
in response to an input operation by a user, display a second screen on the graphical user interface that is different from the first screen, the second screen including an analysis condition input field (Rajkumar: [0013], FIG. 3 — a GUI showing a contract clause analysis page; [0028] — this contains information that enable a user to view clause attributes, to set clause and contract search conditions by entering and/or selecting values for such clause and/or business document attributes; [0030] — ‘As shown, the Contract Clause Analysis page, Clause Attribute View 300 may include two regions; namely a main search region 302 to enable the user to enter and/or select attributes values for clauses and a contract criteria region 324 for additional contracts attributes’ (indicating analysis condition input field for the user to enter clause or analysis information));
accept, via the analysis condition input field on the second screen, an analysis condition for analyzing the plurality of contract documents and a method for displaying an analysis result, the analysis condition including at least one of a numerical value, a contract, and an organization (Rajkumar: FIG. 3, [0030] — ‘This page 300 affords the user the ability to select the conditions on which the clauses and the business documents are to be searched’ (indicating that a user would need to manipulate the content on the screen in order to get to this page); ‘As shown, the Contract Clause Analysis page, Clause Attribute View 300 may include two regions; namely a main search region 302 to enable the user to enter and/or select attributes values for clauses and a contract criteria region 324 for additional contracts attributes’ (indicating analysis condition input field for the user to enter clause or analysis information); [0007] — ‘storing a plurality of business documents used by the enterprise in the database, each of the plurality of business document stored in the database including a plurality of clauses’; [0026] — ‘Embodiments of the present invention may carry out a search on standard clauses that may be stored in a standard clause library or on non-standard clauses found in customized, individual business documents’; [0031] — ‘The Contract Type 314 attribute may be selected at 314, as may be the Organization (e.g., company name; in this exemplary and illustrative case, Vision Enterprises). The organization LOY allows the user to further narrow the search criteria to cause the generated business document clause analysis report to include only business documents relating to the selected organization’ (to show that the analysis result could be displayed according to an organisation analysis condition)).
in response to accepting the analysis condition via the analysis condition input field, extract, from the contract document database, a contract document containing contract document information and/or contract status information matching one or more of the numerical value, the contract, and the organization included in the analysis condition (Rajkumar: FIG. 7 Part 722 — a display of the contract number (as a numerical value) which serves as a contract document identification for each contract document being extracted out for viewing; FIG. 7 Part 726 — display of information showing the customer name (which can be interpreted as an organisation) ; [0035] — retrieving a list of specifically identified clauses that are used in one or more business documents based a user inputting individual named clause to be searched for; [0047] — presenting a result of the search in a Master-Detail format (the result of the search being an indication of the acceptance and matching of the analysis condition); [0048] — after the analysis is complete, the user may select to look at the six contracts that include the search clause);
display, via a third screen on the graphical user interface that is different from the first screen and the second screen, the contract document extracted from the contract document database (Rajkumar: FIG. 7, [0048] — after the analysis is complete, the user may select to look at the six contracts that include the search clause (indicating that the user is able to view the extracted contract document)).
The reference of Rajkumar provides teaching for accepting an analysis condition as a clause to be able to search through stored contract documents to extract and display contract documents that match the analysis condition. This differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention provides an initial extraction of contract document information and contract status information containing the name, contents and status of each of the plurality of contract documents.
This teaching isn’t new to the art as the reference of Harmes is now introduced to teach this as:
extract, from the plurality of contract documents, contract document information and contract status information, the contract document information including at least a contract document identification, a contract document name, and contents of the contract document, respectively, and the contract status information indicating a contract status of each of the plurality of contract documents (Harmes: FIGURE 2, [0033] — contract documents are shown to be arranged based on status information that indicate a contract status (the arrangement based on a contract status is indicative of an extraction of contract status information for the purpose of such arrangement according to the status) and the status can also be organised by a name of party; [0040], FIGUREs 4 & 7 — showing the display of documents and the extraction of the document names for displaying the contract documents; [0021] — the user can retrieve information such as contract document and view contents on the display (the display of contents is an indication of the extraction of the contents of the document)).
The same motivation for incorporating the Harmes reference as applied to claim 1 above is applicable here still.
The combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes discloses the extraction of contract information based on matching an analysis condition, but differs from the claimed invention as it fails to teach of analysing the extracted contract document to identify a notification matter for an analysis result.
This isn’t new to the prior art as the reference of Brannon is now introduced to teach this as:
analyze contents of the extracted contract document and the analysis condition document, including text data of the extracted contract document, by performing at least one or keyword analysis, morphological analysis, syntax analysis, semantic analysis, and context analysis on the text data, to identify [[risk factors including a risk clause and]] a predetermined condition, and detect a notification matter for the analysis result based on the identified risk factors (Brannon: [0013] — analysing one or more documents defining one or more obligations (the obligations being the analysis condition, thereby teaching of the analysis of the analysis condition document) and determining a notification obligation (detecting the notification matter for an analysis result based on a predetermined condition)); and
display and output, via a fourth screen of the graphical user interface that is different from each of the first screen, the second screen, and the third screen, a result of the analyzing the plurality of contract documents based on the analysis condition and the notification contents corresponding to the detected notification matter, wherein the fourth screen displays the notification contents so as to alert a user to the identified risk factors (Brannon: [0013] — generating a task associated with the notification obligation (the generated task is the notification content); [0626], [0628] — an interface for displaying documents; [0014] — ‘a data processing incident notification generation system may perform operations comprising analyzing the attributes of the particular incident to determine a risk level associated with the particular incident, wherein determining the notification obligation for the vendor is further based on the risk level associated with the particular incident’ (indicating an analysis to determine risk factors); [0759] — a graphical user interface for implementing the limitation; [0297] — displaying an indicator of a risk level; [0632] — displaying risk scores associated with contracts (indicating a way to alert a user through a display of risk factors, noting also that the display would be on a GUI)).
The same motivation for incorporating the Brannon reference as applied to claim 1 above is applicable here still.
The combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon provides teaching for the extraction of a contract document identification as well as accepting a clause as an analysis condition for analysing a plurality of contract documents stored in a contract document database. This combination differs from the claimed invention in that it fails to teach of analysing contents of the contract by performing a textual analysis on the contract to identify a risk clause, as provided by the claimed invention.
This however isn’t new to the art as the reference of Clark is now introduced to teach this as:
analyze contents of the extracted contract document and the analysis condition document, including text data of the extracted contract document by performing at least one of keyword analysis, morphological analysis, syntax analysis, semantic analysis, and context analysis on the text data, to identify risk factors including a risk clause and a predetermined condition, and detect a notification matter for the analysis result based on the identified risk factors (Clark: [0045] — surfacing potential risk and liability across all contracts (indicating a presentation or display of detected potential risks in contracts); [0053] — analysing a contract by analysing clauses in the contracts through parsing (indicating a syntax and keyword analysis) for the purpose of identifying clauses with risk (based on a risk score); [0061] — machine learning algorithm for analysing electronic documents such that the documents can be any specific type of legal documents such as risk regarding legal contracts (indicating the identification of risk factors); [00100] — associating a plurality of documents with a transactional document type, the transactional document type being one as risk regarding legal contracts (indicating the identification of risk factors)).
The same motivation for incorporating the Clark reference as applied to claim 1 above is applicable here still.
For claim 3, the limitations of claim 1 are incorporated and the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark discloses an information processing apparatus comprising:
a communication device configured to communicate with a document processing apparatus through a communication interface (Rajkumar: [0052] — a communication mechanism and communication device to enable communication);
a processor (Rajkumar: [0010] — a processor); and
the non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 1 (Rajkumar: [0053] — a computer-readable medium).
For claim 4, the limitations of claim 2 are incorporated and the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark discloses an information processing apparatus comprising:
a communication device configured to communicate with a document processing apparatus through a communication interface (Rajkumar: [0052] — a communication mechanism and communication device to enable communication);
a processor (Rajkumar: [0010] — a processor); and
the non-transitory computer-readable medium according to claim 2 (Rajkumar: [0053] — a computer-readable medium).
As for claim 7, method claim 7 and computer-readable medium claim 1 are related as method detailing procedures taken to implement the available computer-programmable instructions. Accordingly, claim 7 is similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to computer-readable medium claim 1.
For claim 9, claim 1 is incorporated and the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark discloses the non-transitory computer-readable medium, wherein the predetermined condition further includes a position of a party of the contract document (Rajkumar: [0008] — attributes which could be searched for include buyer, seller, supplier (these being positions of the involved party)).
For claim 10, claim 1 is incorporated and the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark discloses the non-transitory computer-readable medium, wherein the contract document from the contract document database includes extracting the plurality of the contract documents in designated units selected from contract document units and provision units (Rajkumar: [0007] — identifying stored business documents that satisfy the occurrences of the clauses (teaching of being able to view or extract contract documents, as document units); [0025] — being able to find all instances of business documents that make use of a certain selected clause or clauses (teaching of extracting documents based on the clauses as provision units)).
As for claim 13, method claim 13 and computer-readable medium claim 9 are related as method detailing procedures taken to implement the available computer-programmable instructions. Accordingly, claim 13 is similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to computer-readable medium claim 9.
As for claim 14, method claim 14 and computer-readable medium claim 10 are related as method detailing procedures taken to implement the available computer-programmable instructions. Accordingly, claim 14 is similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to computer-readable medium claim 10.
For claim 16, claim 1 is incorporated and the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark discloses the non-transitory computer-readable medium, wherein:
the contract status information includes information related to a term of a contract (Rajkumar: [0025] — being able to find all instances of business documents that make use of a certain selected clause or clauses (the clauses are taken as business contract terms), so as to be able to find if some business document clauses or terms should be amended; and
wherein the extracting the contract document from the contract document database includes extracting the contract document information that matches to a condition related to the term of the contract in response to meeting the condition (Rajkumar: [0025] — being able to find all instances of business documents that make use of a certain selected clause or clauses (the clauses are taken as business contract terms), so as to be able to find if some business document clauses or terms should be amended; [0028] — searching for documents based on the clauses (terms) of interest (in order to be able to extract such documents)).
As for claim 18, method claim 18 and computer-readable medium claim 16 are related as method detailing procedures taken to implement the available computer-programmable instructions. Accordingly, claim 18 is similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to computer-readable medium claim 16.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajkumar (US 2008/0306784 A1) in view of Harmes (US 2004/0085355 A1) further in view of Brannon (US 2020/0202271 A1), further in view of Clark (US 2015/0106276 A1), as applied to claim 1, and further in view of Kasravi et al. (US 2003/0115080 A1: hereafter — Kasravi).
For claim 6, claim 5 is incorporated and the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark provides teaching for extracting information of interest from contract documents. This combination differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention now further provides teaching for performing one of semantic or syntactic analyses for extracting contract document information.
This teaching is however not new to the art as the reference of Yamamoto is now introduced to teach this as:
the non-transitory computer-readable medium, wherein the instructions further cause the information processing apparatus to:
extract the contract document information by performing any of predetermined keywords analysis, morphological analysis, syntax analysis, semantic analysis, and context analysis and labeling (Kasravi: [0047] — performing syntactic and semantic analyses to extract relevant information from an electronic contracts database).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to combine the known the technique of performing syntactic and semantic analyses on contract documents to obtain relevant information as taught performed by Kasravi, with the teaching of extracting information of interest from contract documents as taught by the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result extracting accurate, context-aware, and structured information from documents, to further present structured and useful data. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
Claims 8 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajkumar (US 2008/0306784 A1) in view of Harmes (US 2004/0085355 A1) further in view of Brannon (US 2020/0202271 A1) further in view of Clark (US 2015/0106276 A1), as applied to claims 1 and 7, and further in view of Dimerman (US 2019/0138571 A1).
For claim 8, claim 1 is incorporated and the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark provides teaching for outputting and displaying a notification after analysing a contract document. This combination however differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention further provides teaching for presenting the notification contents using graphs.
This teaching is however not new to the art as the reference of Dimerman is now introduced to teach this as:
the non-transitory computer-readable medium, wherein the outputting includes outputting the notification contents corresponding to the detected notification matter by using graphs (Dimerman: [0027] — generating and causing displaying with a contract administrator, a time curve graph that shows similarities between contract documents).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to improve upon the teaching of the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark which outputs and displays a notification after analysing a contract document, by applying the known technique of Dimerman which presents the notification contents using graphs, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of the graphical appeal which a graph could have in engaging the user viewing it, over a textual form that the user may not be willing to read. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
As for claim 12, method claim 12 and computer-readable medium claim 8 are related as method detailing procedures taken to implement the available computer-programmable instructions. Accordingly, claim 12 is similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to computer-readable medium claim 8.
Claims 11 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajkumar (US 2008/0306784 A1) in view of Harmes (US 2004/0085355 A1) further in view of Brannon (US 2020/0202271 A1) further in view of Clark (US 2015/0106276 A1), as applied to claims 1 and 7, and further in view of Khatib et al (US 2020/0099530 A1: hereafter — Khatib).
For claim 11, claim 1 is incorporated and the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark teaches displaying notification contents upon analysing a contract document. This combination however differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention further teaches displaying a provisions-display field where search results are displayed.
This teaching is however not new to the art as the reference of Khatib is now introduced to teach this as:
the non-transitory computer-readable medium, wherein the outputting includes displaying a provision display field in which a search result is displayed (Khatib: [0081] — receiving a document or a portion of a document and outputting a classification of one or more provisions or sections of the document that indicates a particular type of clause (the clause being what was searched for in order to produce the output provisions)).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious improve upon the teaching of the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark which displays notification contents upon analysing a contract document, by applying the known technique of Khatib which displays a provisions-display field where search results, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result that the user viewing the presented information is being presented with the most crucial information pertaining to the contract document, as indicated by the document’s provisions. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
As for claim 15, method claim 15 and computer-readable medium claim 11 are related as method detailing procedures taken to implement the available computer-programmable instructions. Accordingly, claim 15 is similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to computer-readable medium claim 11.
Claims 17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajkumar (US 2008/0306784 A1) in view of Harmes (US 2004/0085355 A1) further in view of Brannon (US 2020/0202271 A1) further in view of Clark (US 2015/0106276 A1), as applied to claims 1 and 7, and further in view of YOSHIJI et al (JP 2004199407 A: hereafter — Yoshiji (applying the attached English translation)).
For claim 17, claim 1 is incorporated and the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark provides teaching for displaying notification contents upon analysing a contract document. This combination however differs from the claimed invention in that the claimed invention further provides teaching for displaying a switching button for switching between searching in the contract document or searching in provision units.
This isn’t new to the art as the reference of Yoshiji is now introduced to teach this as:
the non-transitory computer-readable medium, wherein the displaying includes displaying a switching button for switching between searching in the contract document and searching in provision units of the contract documents (Yoshiji: [0118] — a display switching button which switches a display method of obtaining a search result, such that the display can be provided for displaying a document in a normal document mode, or for displaying annotation view (taken here as the provision units)).
Hence, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious to improve upon the teaching of the combination of Rajkumar in view of Harmes further in view of Brannon and further in view of Clark which teaches extracting and analysing a contract document, by applying the known technique of Yoshiji which provides teaching for displaying a switching option for a user to be able to switch between viewing a document or viewing annotations of the document, to thereby come up with the claimed invention. The combination of both prior art elements would have provided the predictable result of granting a user the option to view different modes of the extracted document, either the document as a whole, or to view particular interested sectionsin the document. See KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 415-421, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-97 (2007).
As for claim 19, method claim 19 and computer-readable medium claim 17 are related as method detailing procedures taken to implement the available computer-programmable instructions. Accordingly, claim 19 is similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to computer-readable medium claim 17.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to Applicant’s disclosure.
See PTO-892.
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/OLUWADAMILOLA M OGUNBIYI/
Examiner, Art Unit 2653
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