DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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.
Claims 1 and 4-20 are pending.
Claims 1 and 4-20 are rejected, grounds follow.
THIS OFFICE ACTION IS FINAL, see additional information at the conclusion of this action.
Response to Amendment
The amendment to the claims filed on 03 September 2025 does not comply with the requirements of 37 CFR 1.121(c) because there is a limitation from claim 1 (“comparing the user defined tags to a legacy tag dictionary to identify new tags of the user defined tags”, as filed on 22 May 2025) which was omitted from the marked up version of the claim on 03 September. In it’s place is a single struck-through capital “C”; so it is not clear in the record whether the limitation was to be canceled.
Examiner contacted Applicant’s representative and confirmed that the limitation was intended to be canceled. In the interest of compact prosecution, the claim sheet submitted on 03 September has been treated on the merits.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks page 6, filed 03 September 2025, with respect to the 35 USC 112(b) rejection of several claims have been fully considered and are persuasive due to the cancellation of the terminology at issue. The 35 USC 112(b) rejection of the claims has been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks page 6, with respect to the 35 USC 101 rejection have been fully considered and are persuasive. Examiner agrees that the claims no longer embrace ineligible subject matter. Accordingly, The 35 USC 101 rejection of the claims has been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks page 8 with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-20 under 35 USC 103 have been fully considered but are not persuasive. The Niagara software platform referenced by Michaels (see e.g. Michaels [0096]) is a commercially available software package. One of ordinary skill in the art would know the “haystack tag dictionary” referenced by Michaels (ibid.) is one of the default tag dictionaries that are part of a Niagara deployment. (to show the meaning of this term used in the primary reference of Michaels, please see e.g. Page 22 of Honeywell WEBs-N4 Framework operating guide: “By default, two dictionaries are part of every Niagara build: 1) The Niagara dictionary contains commonly-used tags. 2) The Haystack dictionary is an open source dictionary created by Project Haystack to “streamline working with data from the Internet of Things.” (project-haystack.org).”) Michaels teaches that the tags, may be, variously, “Niagara” tags ([0096] “for example “n:point” refers to the point tag in the Niagara tag dictionary”), or “Haystack” tags (see [0096] “for example, “hs:stage=2” refers to the stage value tag in a haystack tag dictionary and assigns it to a value of 2”) which each refer to a “Niagara Tag dictionary” and a “haystack tag dictionary” of a “Niagara software platform” deployment (see [0096]). One of ordinary skill in the art would recognize this disclosure as reciting the Niagara tag dictionary and the Haystack tag dictionary which one of ordinary skill in the art would know are pre-defined default tag dictionaries of Niagara deployments. Michaels therefore teaches a pre-defined default tag dictionary associated with a station, at least because the disclosed Niagara and Haystack tag dictionaries are each a default dictionary included in every Niagara Software platform build. Accordingly the rejection is maintained.
In the interest of compact prosecution, should applicant intend the *association* to be pre-defined: as mentioned in the written interview summary, Michaels teaches pre-defining of the association between the dictionary and the station (itself comprised of devices and points, see Michaels [0028]) as part of the import of, e.g., CAF – Control Application Files – files, (see fig. 7 and particularly [0110]) to build out the system library; (ibid) and may be checked against the associated dictionary at this time, as well as upon subsequent import of the user-editable spreadsheet created subsequent to export of a system library file. (see e.g. fig. 10 describing update of existing points and/or devices in a station) In this sense at least the association between the dictionary and the station is also pre-defined prior to import of the user-editable spreadsheet.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claim(s) 1 and 4-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Michaels et al., US Pg-pub 2019/0235455 in view of Ramamurti et al., US Pg-Pub 2020/0133978.
Regarding Claim 1, Michaels teaches:
A method for a building automation system (BAS), (see e.g. [0028] “a computing system for automatically tagging entities in a building automation system (BMS) is shown and described.”) the method comprising: providing, by a processing circuit, (see fig. 4, Processor 406) a system library file in an editable spreadsheet format; ([0095] “the construction of the system library 624 can be enhanced for system library files to explicitly list the appropriate tags for the device and the points. For example, a “System Library Editor” and an existing spreadsheet that creates System Libraries can be enhanced to support the addition/modification/deletion of tagging data.”)
importing, by the processing circuit, a controller application file into the system library file; ([0095] “system library files can include PCT files (e.g., files corresponding to a programmable controller tool such as FX-PCT and FC-PCT) and/or WT4000 files (e.g., files corresponding to a BACnet device).”)
editing the system library file to include user defined tags; ([0126] “a user interface 1300 of the system library shows adding a tags column to the points table and, when a point is selected for editing, a tags edit box may allow the user to associate tags with the point. These updates may apply to editing existing system libraries as well as creating a system library from a caf or a csv file. The associated spreadsheet may be enhanced to support adding tags at both the application and the point level, for example by adding the appropriate named ranges to the spreadsheets and enhancing the macros to write the tags to the generated system library file.”)
a pre-defined default tag dictionary associated with a station ([0096] “systems and methods of automatic tagging of devices and points are configured using the Niagara software platform (e.g., Niagara 4). Accordingly, tags can be of the form “namespace:tag” … For example, “hs:stage=2” refers to the stage value tag in a Haystack tag dictionary and assigns it a value of 2.” Nb. stations of comprised of deviced and points, see Michaels [0028]; nb. one of ordinary skill would recognize the meaning of “Haystack tag dictionary of a Niagara software platform” to be a pre-defined default tag dictionary of the commercially available Niagara software platform, as shown in e.g. the Honeywell WEBs-N4 operating guide, page 22.)
Michaels differs from the claimed invention in that:
Michaels does not appear to clearly articulate: automatically adding, [to the tag dictionary], tags of the user defined tags which are new relative to existing tags of [the] tag dictionary.
However, Ramamurti teaches a building management system (see e.g. [0003] “In a building management system, a building and equipment of the building can be represented as text strings, strings of characters representing the building, points, and equipment.”) which receives user-defined tags (see e.g. [0129] “new tags received from the user”) and compares them ([0125] “the mapping system 300 can determine whether a new tag associate with new a character and/or new character grouping is included in the naming convention received in the step 606 and add the new tag and the new characters and/or new character groupings to the dictionary.”) to a tag dictionary ([0125] “Furthermore, if the dictionary already exists, the mapping system 300 can determine whether any new character or character groupings are mapped to existing tags of the dictionary.”) in order to determine which tags are new relative to the dictionary to add them to the dictionary ([0125] “add the new tag and the new characters and/or new character groupings to the dictionary.”)
Ramamurti and Michaels are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor and the claimed invention and other references of Building Management and Building Automation systems and contain overlapping structural and functional similarities; each uses Project Haystack schemas for building namespaces of meta data tags to annotate building automation system stations and points; each takes input from users in order to update said tags.
One of ordinary skill in the art could have modified the teachings of Michaels to include reviewing user-defined tags for addition to an already existing tag dictionary, as suggested by Ramamurti.
One of ordinary skill in the art could have been motivated to make this modification in order to facilitate future labeling and tag prediction, as suggested by Ramamurti ([0129] “Once the expert is done labeling, the new tags received from the user or existing tags are assigned to the right substrings and added to the dictionary 330. These new tags can be used by the mapping system 300 for future labeling and/or tag prediction.”)
Regarding Claim 4, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 1,
Michaels further teaches:
copying the system library file from a text file format into the editable spreadsheet format. ([0095] “the construction of the system library 624 can be enhanced for system library files to explicitly list the appropriate tags for the device and the points. For example, a “System Library Editor” and an existing spreadsheet that creates System Libraries can be enhanced to support the addition/modification/deletion of tagging data.”)
Regarding Claim 5, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 1,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein a user interface produces an indication to manage de- linking of one or more tags of tagged entities in the building automation system (BAS). ([0124] “the Remove Tags button may remove the tags. In some embodiments, the Remove Tags button may not remove the implied tags that a software package (e.g., Niagara) automatically associates with various entities.”)
Regarding Claim 6, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 1,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the user defined tags comprises a marker, a label-value pair or a collection of information. (see [0118] “If the tag type is a value tag (i.e., the result of step 920 is “yes”), the tag may be added to the point or device and a specific value may be associated with the tag (step 924).”)
Regarding Claim 7, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 1,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the user defined tags are associated with a space, a piece of equipment, a sensor, a device, or a point. ([0008] “In some embodiments the first entity includes one of a space, a piece of equipment, a sensor, a device, or a point. In some embodiments the tag type is a value tag, wherein a value tag further includes a numeric value associated with the first entity.”)
Regarding Claim 8, Michaels teaches:
A method of managing tagging of entities in a building management system (BMS), (see e.g. [0028] “a computing system for automatically tagging entities in a building automation system (BMS) is shown and described.”) comprises: receiving, by a processing circuit, (see fig. 4, Processor 406) a system library file in a text file format; (see e.g. fig. 12, file name: libraries are .xml files; see also [0098] “an application supported by a PCT system library. In this example, all of the fields are xml attributes.”)
copy the system library file to an editable spreadsheet format; ([0095] “the construction of the system library 624 can be enhanced for system library files to explicitly list the appropriate tags for the device and the points. For example, a “System Library Editor” and an existing spreadsheet that creates System Libraries can be enhanced to support the addition/modification/deletion of tagging data.”)
editing the system library file in the editable spreadsheet format to include user defined tags; ([0126] “The associated spreadsheet may be enhanced to support adding tags at both the application and the point level, for example by adding the appropriate named ranges to the spreadsheets and enhancing the macros to write the tags to the generated system library file.”)
a pre-defined default tag dictionary associated with a station ([0096] “systems and methods of automatic tagging of devices and points are configured using the Niagara software platform (e.g., Niagara 4). Accordingly, tags can be of the form “namespace:tag” … For example, “hs:stage=2” refers to the stage value tag in a Haystack tag dictionary and assigns it a value of 2.” Nb. stations of comprised of deviced and points, see Michaels [0028]; nb. one of ordinary skill would recognize the meaning of “Haystack tag dictionary of a Niagara software platform” to be a pre-defined default tag dictionary of the commercially available Niagara software platform, as shown in e.g. the Honeywell WEBs-N4 operating guide, page 22.)
Michaels differs from the claimed invention in that:
Nor adding, [to the tag dictionary], tags of the user defined tags which are new relative to existing tags of [the] tag dictionary.
However, Ramamurti teaches a building management system (see e.g. [0003] “In a building management system, a building and equipment of the building can be represented as text strings, strings of characters representing the building, points, and equipment.”) which receives user-defined tags (see e.g. [0129] “new tags received from the user”) and compares them ([0125] “the mapping system 300 can determine whether a new tag associate with new a character and/or new character grouping is included in the naming convention received in the step 606 and add the new tag and the new characters and/or new character groupings to the dictionary.”) to a tag dictionary ([0125] “Furthermore, if the dictionary already exists, the mapping system 300 can determine whether any new character or character groupings are mapped to existing tags of the dictionary.”) in order to determine which new tags to add to the dictionary ([0125] “add the new tag and the new characters and/or new character groupings to the dictionary.”)
Ramamurti and Michaels are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor and the claimed invention and other references of Building Management and Building Automation systems and contain overlapping structural and functional similarities; each uses Project Haystack schemas for building namespaces of meta data tags to annotate building automation system stations and points; each takes input from users in order to update said tags.
One of ordinary skill in the art could have modified the teachings of Michaels to include reviewing user-defined tags for addition to an already existing tag dictionary, as suggested by Ramamurti.
One of ordinary skill in the art could have been motivated to make this modification in order to facilitate future labeling and tag prediction, as suggested by Ramamurti ([0129] “Once the expert is done labeling, the new tags received from the user or existing tags are assigned to the right substrings and added to the dictionary 330. These new tags can be used by the mapping system 300 for future labeling and/or tag prediction.”)
Regarding Claim 9, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 8,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the text file format is an XML format. (see e.g. fig. 12, file name: libraries are .xml files; see also [0098] “an application supported by a PCT system library. In this example, all of the fields are xml attributes.”)
Regarding Claim 10, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 8,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the system library file in the editable spreadsheet format comprises a template worksheet for a type of library. ([0126] “The associated spreadsheet may be enhanced to support adding tags at both the application and the point level, for example by adding the appropriate named ranges to the spreadsheets and enhancing the macros to write the tags to the generated system library file.”; i.e. named ranges and macros comprising a template.)
Regarding Claim 11, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 8,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the type of library is determined by header information in the system library file in the text file format. (see [0097] Table 1 and [0099] Table 3; System Library headers determine whether the type of library is a PCT system library or a WT4000 system library, e.g.)
Regarding Claim 12, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 8,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the user defined tags are associated with an entity comprising one of a space, a piece of equipment, a sensor, a device, or a point. ([0008] “In some embodiments the first entity includes one of a space, a piece of equipment, a sensor, a device, or a point. In some embodiments the tag type is a value tag, wherein a value tag further includes a numeric value associated with the first entity.”)
Regarding Claim 13, Michaels teaches:
A building management system (BMS) (see e.g. [0028] “a computing system for automatically tagging entities in a building automation system (BMS) is shown and described.”) , comprising: a system library comprising a plurality of relationships between a plurality of tags and a plurality of entities; ([0011] “[0011] Another implementation of the present disclosure is a building automation system (BAS) including a system library including a number of relationships between a number of tags and a number of entities.”)
and a computing system in communication with the system library, (see fig. 6; [0095] “computing system 600 includes a system library 624 containing data as described herein, which can be run by software code regardless of whether the automatic tagging is done on import or thereafter.”)
wherein the computing system is configured to provide data from a system library file in a text format to a system library file in a spreadsheet format, ([0095] con’t … “the construction of the system library 624 can be enhanced for system library files to explicitly list the appropriate tags for the device and the points. For example, a “System Library Editor” and an existing spreadsheet that creates System Libraries can be enhanced to support the addition/modification/deletion of tagging data.”)
edit the system library file in the spreadsheet format to include user defined tags, ([0126] “The associated spreadsheet may be enhanced to support adding tags at both the application and the point level, for example by adding the appropriate named ranges to the spreadsheets and enhancing the macros to write the tags to the generated system library file.”)
a pre-defined default tag dictionary associated with a station ([0096] “systems and methods of automatic tagging of devices and points are configured using the Niagara software platform (e.g., Niagara 4). Accordingly, tags can be of the form “namespace:tag” … For example, “hs:stage=2” refers to the stage value tag in a Haystack tag dictionary and assigns it a value of 2.” Nb. stations of comprised of deviced and points, see Michaels [0028]; nb. one of ordinary skill would recognize the meaning of “Haystack tag dictionary of a Niagara software platform” to be a pre-defined default tag dictionary of the commercially available Niagara software platform, as shown in e.g. the Honeywell WEBs-N4 operating guide, page 22.)
Michaels differs from the claimed invention in that:
Michaels does not appear to clearly articulate: add[ing], [to the tag dictionary], tags of the user defined tags which are new relative to existing tags of [the] tag dictionary
However, Ramamurti teaches a building management system (see e.g. [0003] “In a building management system, a building and equipment of the building can be represented as text strings, strings of characters representing the building, points, and equipment.”) which receives user-defined tags (see e.g. [0129] “new tags received from the user”) and compares them ([0125] “the mapping system 300 can determine whether a new tag associate with new a character and/or new character grouping is included in the naming convention received in the step 606 and add the new tag and the new characters and/or new character groupings to the dictionary.”) to a tag dictionary ([0125] “Furthermore, if the dictionary already exists, the mapping system 300 can determine whether any new character or character groupings are mapped to existing tags of the dictionary.”) in order to determine which new tags to add to the dictionary ([0125] “add the new tag and the new characters and/or new character groupings to the dictionary.”)
Ramamurti and Michaels are analogous art because they are from the same field of endeavor and the claimed invention and other references of Building Management and Building Automation systems and contain overlapping structural and functional similarities; each uses Project Haystack schemas for building namespaces of meta data tags to annotate building automation system stations and points; each takes input from users in order to update said tags.
One of ordinary skill in the art could have modified the teachings of Michaels to include reviewing user-defined tags for addition to an already existing tag dictionary, as suggested by Ramamurti.
One of ordinary skill in the art could have been motivated to make this modification in order to facilitate future labeling and tag prediction, as suggested by Ramamurti ([0129] “Once the expert is done labeling, the new tags received from the user or existing tags are assigned to the right substrings and added to the dictionary 330. These new tags can be used by the mapping system 300 for future labeling and/or tag prediction.”)
Regarding Claim 14, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 13,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the user defined tags comprise point names. (tags may include markers, i.e., names, for example: “CO2” “sensor”, see fig. 13 column “tags” and [0106] “If, for example, the tag is a marker or tag group, then tag addition module 622 may simply add the tag to the device or point.”)
Regarding Claim 15, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 13,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the system library file in editable spreadsheet format comprises a template worksheet for a type of library. ([0126] “The associated spreadsheet may be enhanced to support adding tags at both the application and the point level, for example by adding the appropriate named ranges to the spreadsheets and enhancing the macros to write the tags to the generated system library file.”; i.e. named ranges and macros comprising a template.)
Regarding Claim 16, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 14,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the computing system is configured to import ([0102] “computing system 600 is shown to include an import module 612. Import module 612 may be used to automatically tag devices and/or points upon file import.”) a controller application file ([0110] “the method of automatically tagging upon import may be done either when the points are added to a device on import of CAF files (e.g., either BACnet or N2) and CSV files for BACnet WT 4000”) to the system library file in the spreadsheet format. ([0095] “In some situations, system library files can include PCT files (e.g., files corresponding to a programmable controller tool such as FX-PCT and FC-PCT) and/or WT4000 files (e.g., files corresponding to a BACnet device).”)
Regarding Claim 17, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 14,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the computing system is configured to import a WT400 file to the system library file in the spreadsheet format. ([0110] In some embodiments, the method of automatically tagging upon import may be done either when the points are added to a device on import of CAF files (e.g., either BACnet or N2) and CSV files for BACnet WT 4000).
Regarding Claim 18, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 17,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the tag dictionary comprises a template worksheet with named ranges for the user defined tags. ([0126] “The associated spreadsheet may be enhanced to support adding tags at both the application and the point level, for example by adding the appropriate named ranges to the spreadsheets and enhancing the macros to write the tags to the generated system library file.”; i.e. named ranges and macros comprising a template.)
Regarding Claim 19, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 17,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein the user defined tags are associated with an entity comprising one of a space, a piece of equipment, a sensor, a device, or a point. ([0008] “In some embodiments the first entity includes one of a space, a piece of equipment, a sensor, a device, or a point. In some embodiments the tag type is a value tag, wherein a value tag further includes a numeric value associated with the first entity.”)
Regarding Claim 20, the combination of Michaels and Ramamurti teaches all of the limitations of parent claim 17,
Michaels further teaches:
wherein auto tagging is applied to the tag dictionary. ([0090] “The automatic tagging of the present disclosure may include adding appropriate direct tags/tag groups as defined in a system library to a device, as well as adding appropriate direct tags/tag groups as defined in the system library to points. The automatic tagging may further provide that when devices are added via a palette (see, e.g., a Johnson Controls TEC3000, electric meters) then tags can be added to the devices and points also utilizing the system library.”)
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Project Haystack – Introduction and Overview of the NHaystack Software Module for Niagara-based Systems (2013), particularly page 5 describing default behavior of the nhaystack:HDict tag dictionary of the Niagara Project Haystack Extension.
Gawrys et al., US Pg-Pub 2020/0097493 – particularly [0037] describing that ontologies (e.g. digital twins) may have pre-defined key:value pairs (i.e. dictionary entries), which may be represented in a “Default” type extension of an object of the digital twin (see [0036])
Piaskowski et al., US Pg-Pub 2015/0293508 – particularly [0098] describing the creation of a station in a BAS model from a default equipment definition based on equipment type at time of import, including point definitions that may be abstractions (e.g. tags, see [0089])
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 JOSHUA T SANDERS whose telephone number is (571)272-5591. The examiner can normally be reached Generally Monday through Friday.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Mohammad Ali can be reached at 571-272-4105. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/J.T.S./Examiner, Art Unit 2119
/MOHAMMAD ALI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2119
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