DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action in response to Application Serial 17/565,613. In response to the Examiner’s action mail dated, September 18, 2025, Applicant submitted arguments and amendments mail dated January 20, 2026. Applicant amended claims 1, 12, and 17. The claims 1 - 20 are pending in this application and have been rejected below.
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 . 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.
Information Disclosure Statement
The Applicant did not submit information disclosure statement (IDS) for consideration.
Response to Amendments
Claims 1 -20 are pending in this application. The claim(s) 1, 12, and 17 are amended.
Regarding the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection, Applicant’s amendments and arguments are persuasive. The claims 1 -20 are patent eligible.
Regarding the 35 U.S.C. 103 rejection, in light of the Applicant’s amendments the claims are rejected using prior art.
Examiner submits, the amendments to the independent claims necessitated the rejection using prior art. The Applicant did not amend the dependent claims. Examiner notated the dependent claims to reflect the newly rejected independent claims prior art and maintaining the prior art rejection used in the previous action.
Applicant is encouraged to request an interview.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed on January 20, 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive and/or are moot in view of the revised rejections. Applicant’s arguments will be addressed herein below.
35 U.S.C. 101 Rejections
On pages 8-12 of the Applicant’s 35 U.S.C. 101 arguments, the Applicant traverses, the amended claims 1 (and similarly claims 12 and 17) are patent eligible. Applicant traverses amended claims 1 recites additional elements that integrate the judicial exception or abstract idea into a practical application under Step 2A prong 2. Assignee submits that amended claims 1, when evaluated as a whole, recites an improvement over existing technology for issue tracking systems including retrieving, presenting, and updating multi-platform data using a backend instance and external data fragment to determine a completeness of at least one operation associated with the issue. Assignee submits that independent claim 1 is found integrates the judicial exception into a practical application. Assignee further submits that even if amended independent claim 1 is found to recite an abstract idea, and the abstract ideas was fond not to be integrated into a practical application when amended independent claim 1 was considered as a whole, amended independent claim 1 nevertheless recites an inventive concept that is significantly more than the alleged abstract idea itself under Step 2B. Thus, independent claim 1 provides an inventive concept under Step 2B.
Assignee submits dependent claims 2-11, 13-16, and 18-20 dependent from respective one of independent claims 1, 12, and 17 and are believed to be patent eligible and allowable for at least the reason that they depend from an allowable and patent eligible base claim.
Assignee request withdrawal od the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection of claims 1-20.
Examiner finds Applicant’s amendments persuasive when analyzed under 35 U.S.C. 101. Examiner submits claim 1 (and similarly claim 12 and 17) recite an issue tracking method at Step 2A prong one. The method of issue tracking is a mental concept - evaluation and a certain method of organizing human activity – commercial activities and managing personal behavior.
At Step 2A prong two, Examiner evaluates the additional elements within the limitations to determine if the judicial exception is integrated into a practical application. Examiner determined the “display of the GUI including the project tracked by the issue tracking system, the GUI including multiple sets of objects managed by external applications distinct from the issue tracking system, each set of objects displayed in a group corresponding to a respective category, wherein causing display of the GUI including the multiple sets of objects comprises integrating in the GUI, for each object of the multiple sets of objects, an external data fragment corresponding to the respective object; receiving, at a backend instance of the issue tracking system from the external platform, an application programming interface (API) call, the API call comprising: an issue identifier corresponding to an issue of the project tracked by the issue tracking system; and a structured data object comprising:[[an]] a first external data fragment corresponding to a first object of the multiple sets of objects that is associated with the issue; and an authentication token; authenticating, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, a source of the API call based, at least in part, on the authentication token; determining, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, a permission level associated with the authenticated source of the API call based, at least in part, on a stored permission level reference; and in accordance with the determined permission level satisfying a permission level criteria: extracting, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, an attribute of the first external data fragment, the attribute of the first external data fragment including at least one of: a title of the first object, a branch associated with the first object, a commit events associated with the first object, a build event associated with the first object, a deployment event of the first object, or one or more links associated with the first object;” discloses a practical application. The combination of elements such as the issue tracking system, objects managed by external applications, api call, data fragments, links, and backend instance are integrated into abstract idea, and therefore, are a practical application at Step 2 prong two. The claims are patent eligible.
Examiner withdraws the pending 35 U.S.C 101.
Claim Rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103
On pages 12-13 of the Applicant’s arguments, Applicant traverses the pending 35 U.S.C 103 rejection. Assignee submits the independent claim 1 (and similarly claims 12 and 17) have been amended to include limitations that are allowable. Applicant submits, the pending references Smith, Costentino, and Wall do not correct deficiencies. Assignee requests that the U.S.C. 103 rejections of dependent claims 7, 10, 11, 13-16, and 19 be withdrawn.
Examiner respectfully disagrees with the Applicant’s prior art arguments. The Applicant’s amendments to the independent claims necessitate grounds for a new rejection. See prior art rejection below.
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.
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1-5, 7-14, 17, 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over by Costentino (2017, A Systematic Mapping Study of Software Development With GitHub) in view of Smith (US 2021/0,081,605 A1) and in further view of Rolf (US 2021/0,306,316 A1).
Regarding Claim 1, (Currently Amended)
A method for operating an issue tracking system configured to display information received from an external platform within a graphical user interface (GUI) of the issue tracking system, the GUI depicting information in respect of a project tracked by the issue tracking system, the GUI rendered by an instance of a frontend application of the issue tracking system, the method comprising:
Cosentino teaches a social coding platform, especially useful for Open Source Software (OSS), Cosentino [abstract].
Cosentino teaches GitHub comes with many of its own features specially aimed at facilitating the collaboration and social interactions around projects (e.g., issue-tracker, pull request support, watching and following mechanisms, etc.)., Cosentino [p. 7176 column 2 paragraph 1].
causing display of the GUI including the project tracked by the issue tracking system, the GUI including multiple sets of objects managed by external applications distinct from the issue tracking system, each set of objects displayed in a group corresponding to a respective category,
Cosentino discloses as a web-based hosting service for collaborative development projects using the GIT control system, projects and users can be considered the main assets of the platform. Each project keeps track of the submitted issues, pull requests and commits, which are therefore other potential topics of study., Cosentino [p. 7176 column 2].
Categories are submitted issues, pull requests, an commits.
receiving, at a backend instance of the issue tracking system from the external platform, an application programming interface (API) call, the API call comprising:
Cosentino discloses GitHub API guarantees an up-to-date information. Moreover, the GitHub API request limit acts as a barrier to get data from GitHub. This affects, both, curated datasets (that take their data raw also via the GitHub API) and individual researchers accessing directly the API., Cosentino [p. 7178 column 2].
an issue identifier corresponding to an issue of the project tracked by the issue tracking system;
Cosentino discloses each project keeps track of the submitted issues,
pull requests and commits., Cosentino [p. 7176 column 2]
….
extracting, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, an attribute of the first external data fragment,
Cosentino discloses GitHub offers a label mechanism to ease the categorization of
issues, however less than 30% of issues are tagged., Cosentino [p. 7178 column 1].
Smith further teaches:
A method for operating an issue tracking system configured to display information received from an external platform within a graphical user interface (GUI) of the issue tracking system, the GUI depicting information in respect of a project tracked by the issue tracking system, the GUI rendered by an instance of a frontend application of the issue tracking system, the method comprising:
causing display of the GUI including the project tracked by the issue tracking system, the GUI including multiple sets of objects managed by external applications distinct from the issue tracking system, each set of objects displayed in a group corresponding to a respective category,
receiving, at a backend instance of the issue tracking system from the external platform, an application programming interface (API) call, the API call comprising: an issue identifier corresponding to an issue of the project tracked by the issue tracking system;
and a structured data object comprising an external data fragment;
and an authentication token;
authenticating by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, a source of the API call based, at least in part, on the authentication token;
Smith [Figure 26], [Figure 27A], [ Figure 27B] teaches issue tracking and Fragments., See Smith [0140], [0141]
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Smith discloses a merge draft session gesture that will aggregate all of the edits made … the gesture received by the frontend may be processed by the backend and may include the data flows and operations comprising blocks 3006 (merging the draft session), 3008 (remapping and updating table IDs in the mainline causal tree), and 3010 (remapping and updating section IDs in the mainline causal tree). In one embodiment, merging a draft session (block 3006) may include updating applicable fragment IDs and table IDs, and removing or closing the draft session. Once the gesture has been fully processed and the draft branch has been merged into the mainline causal tree, the first user and the other users collaborating on the document may receive a status update 3012. For example, in an embodiment, the document being edited in collaborative will be updated to reflect the edits that were made during the draft session., Smith [0146].
Smith teaches block 2304, the backend may create a draft session. In one embodiment, creating a draft session (block 2304) may include adding the first user to the draft session (e.g., giving the first user permission to edit the section of the document in draft mode), and updating any applicable fragment IDs and table IDs. Once the gesture has been fully processed and a draft of the section of the document has been created, the first user and the other users collaborating on the document may receive a status update 2310. For example, in an embodiment, the first user may be presented with an indication that the section of the document can be edited in the draft mode while the other users may be notified that the section of the document is currently locked for editing., Smith [0135]
Smith discloses FIG. 26 shows an example sequence for when a second user (e.g., user 122) who is not part of the draft session created for the section of the document that is currently being edited in draft mode by the first user attempts to edit the section of the document, in an embodiment. For example, the second user may attempt to edit 2602 the section of the document in collaborative mode. When the second user attempts to make an edit 2602 to the section, the frontend checks with the backend to determine whether the second user is a part of the draft session at block 2604. When it is determined that the second user is not part of the draft session at block 2604, the edits attempted by the second user are rejected 2606, in an embodiment., Smith [0140]
extracting, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, an attribute of the first external data fragment,
Smith [Figure 26], [Figure 27A] and [Figure 27B] teaches issue tracking and fragments., See Smith [0140], [0141].
Smith [0146] discloses the gesture received by the frontend may be processed by the backend and may include the data flows and operations comprising blocks 3006 (merging the draft session), 3008 (remapping and updating table IDs in the mainline causal tree), and 3010 (remapping and updating section IDs in the mainline causal tree). In one embodiment, merging a draft session (block 3006) may include updating applicable fragment IDs and table IDs, and removing or closing the draft session.
analyzing, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, the external data fragment to determine a completeness of at least one operation associated with the issue; generating, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, a graphical indication of the completeness of the at least one operation; causing to be displayed in the GUI, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system; the issue of the project tracked by the issue tracking system including the attribute of the external data fragment, the attribute displayed with a respective set of objects associated with the category within the GUI, and the graphical indication of the completeness of the at least one operation. causing to be displayed in the GUI, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system; the issue of the project tracked by the issue tracking system including the attribute of the external data fragment, the attribute displayed with a respective set of objects associated with the particular category within the GUI; and the graphical indication of the completeness of the at least one operation.
Smith teaches FIGS. 27A and 27B are example flow diagrams for when the first user, who is part of the draft session (e.g., created in the sequence shown in FIGS. 23A and 23B) for the section of the document being edited in draft mode, attempts to edit the section of the document, in an embodiment. For example, the first user may make edits 2702 to the section of the document in draft mode. When the first user edits the section of the document, the section ID for the section may be remapped to the drafted section ID at block 2704. The edits made by the first user may be aggregated at block 2706 and returned to the first user 2708. At block 2710, the draft branch of the causal tree may be updated to reflect the edits 2702 made by the first user to the draft section. In at least one embodiment, the first user may be provided with a status update 2712 reflecting that edits were made to the draft section of the document.
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Rolf further teaches:
receiving, at a backend instance of the issue tracking system from the external platform, an application programming interface (API) call, the API call comprising: an issue identifier corresponding to an issue of the project tracked by the issue tracking system; and a structured data object comprising an external data fragment; and an authentication token; authenticating by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, a source of the API call based, at least in part, on the authentication token;
….
determining, by the backend instance of the issue tracking system, a category based on the attribute of the external data fragment;
Rolf discloses the build information is identified by a pipelineID and buildNumber. In response to a valid get build by key call, the issue tracking RS 102 identifies and returns the build information associated with the specified build (for example using the submit build update schema described above)., Rolf [0328], [0111]
Rolf teaches Submit Build Data (i.e., Accept, My Project Build, Label, provider MetaData)., Rolf [0297], [Table 1]. The build data are attributes used in the issue tracking system.
Rolf discloses determining a particular API associated with the event message; determining whether the sending system is permitted to use the particular API; and in response to determining that the sending system is permitted to use the particular API. The event message may be processed., Rolf [0235]
Rolf discloses determining that the sending system is not permitted to use the particular API, the method comprises foregoing processing the event message. In some cases, prior to receiving the event message from the sending system, the method further comprises: receiving, at the receiving system, an attempt by the sending system to establish a connection with the receiving system using credentials; determining, by the receiving system, if the credentials are valid. In response to determining that the credentials are not valid: refusing the connection with the sending system; and not receiving the event message. In some cases, the receiving system is an issue tracking system and the particular receiving system data is an issue maintained by the receiving system., Rolf [0236]
Rolf discloses [0267] at 752, the user directory component 108 receives the integrations credentials query (or queries) and responds. For each integration, the user directory component 108 retrieves and returns the integration's credentials: e.g. for each integration the OAuth credentials for the specific integration user account initially created at 316., Rolf [00267]
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Rolf teaches integration mechanism by which a receiving system and a sending system can communicate data using an API. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, implementing an integrations management component for issue tracking and managing user as taught in Rolf, to reduc[e] the number of queries required to access/retrieve integration data reduce[s] communications, processing, and improve[s] the response time. Rolf [0279].
Regarding Claim 2, (Previously Presented)
The method of claim 1, wherein the attribute of the external data fragment comprises a status of a remote operation, and the attribute is displayed proximate to a status header associated with the category.
See Claim 1 - Costentino
Smith Figure 27B teaches a Table Manager.
Smith teaches the productivity software 101 manages permissions to the various data items and to documents., Smith [0110]
Smith [0135] teaches for example, at block 2304, the backend may create a draft session. In one embodiment, creating a draft session (block 2304) may include adding the first user to the draft session (e.g., giving the first user permission to edit the section of the document in draft mode), and updating any applicable fragment IDs and table IDs. Once the gesture has been fully processed and a draft of the section of the document has been created, the first user and the other users collaborating on the document may receive a status update 2310. For example, in an embodiment, the first user may be presented with an indication that the section of the document can be edited in the draft mode while the other users may be notified that the section of the document is currently locked for editing.
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Regarding Claim 3, (Previously Presented)
The method of claim 1, wherein the attribute of the external data fragment comprises a link to a file associated with the external data fragment, and the attribute is displayed proximate to a link header associated with the category.
See above Claim 1- Costentino and Smith [0110], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B] teaches issue tracking; Smith [0121] teaches a user is able to create new links between a draft portion of a document and a collaborative portion of the document, a user is able to create new destination links (also sometimes referred to herein as “usage” links or “consumers”).
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Regarding Claim 4, (Original)
The method of claim 3, wherein the file comprises: a log file; a document; or a multimedia file.
See above Claim 1- Costentino and Smith [0110], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B] and
Smith [0121], [0135], [Figure 33] teach drafting a document.
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Regarding Claim 5, (Previously Presented)
The method of claim 1, wherein the project includes a plurality of issues, each issue of the plurality of issues corresponding to a respective unique issue identifier.
See above Claim 1- Costentino and Smith [0110], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B] and Smith [004] discloses wherein the mainline causal tree structure comprises a sequence of nodes and each node comprises an editing instruction and an identifier unique to the editing., Smith [004], [094].
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Regarding Claim 7, (Original)
The method of claim 1, wherein the external platform is a third-party system.
Cosentino discloses third-party system. GitHub offers a label mechanism to ease the categorization of issues, however less than 30% of issues are tagged., Cosentino [p. 7178 column 1]. Cosentino discloses GitHub API guarantees an up-to-date information. Moreover, the GitHub API request limit acts as a barrier to get data from GitHub. This affects, both, curated datasets (that take their data raw also via the GitHub API) and individual researchers accessing directly the API., Cosentino [p. 7178 column 2].
Cosentino discloses as a web-based hosting service for collaborative development projects using the Git control system, projects and users can be considered the main assets of the platform. Each project keeps track of the submitted issues, pull requests and commits, which are therefore other potential topics of study., Cosentino [p. 7176 column 2].
Regarding Claim 8, (Original)
The method of claim 1, wherein the API call traverses a public network.
See Claim 1- Costentino
Regarding Claim 9, (Previously Presented)
The method of claim 1, wherein the backend instance of the issue tracking system causes to be displayed, within the GUI, a visual indication of status of a remote process of the external platform based, at least in part, on the attribute of the external data fragment.
See above.
See Costentio, Smith [0110], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B] and Rolf [0235]-[0236].
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Rolf teaches integration mechanism by which a receiving system and a sending system can communicate data using an API. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, implementing an integrations management component for issue tracking and managing user as taught in Rolf, to reduc[e] the number of queries required to access/retrieve integration data reduce[s] communications, processing, and improve[s] the response time. Rolf [0279].
Regarding Claim 10, (Previously Presented)
The method of claim 1, wherein the backend instance causes to be displayed a preview of a remote file of the external platform.
See above. Smith [0110], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B] and Cosentino [p. 7178 column 2].
Smith teaches document collaboration. Cosentino teaches web-based collaborative platforms. It would have been obvious to combine before the effective filing date, using productivity software that manages permissions to the various data items and to documents that include such items), as taught by Smith, with using GitHub and API’s, as taught by Cosentino, to guarantees an up-to-date information., Cosentino [p. 7189].
Regarding Claim 11, (Previously Presented)
The method of claim 10, wherein the preview is generated at least in part by one of: the instance of the frontend application; the backend instance; or the external platform.
See claim 1 and
Smith [0110], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B].
Within claim 11, Smith discloses frontend and backend, and thus, Smith discloses the instance of the frontend application; the backend instance. Claim 11 a "Markush" claim recites a list of alternatively useable members. In re Harnisch, 631 F.2d 716, 719-20, 206 USPQ 300, 303 (CCPA 1980); Ex parte Markush, 1925 Dec. Comm'r Pat. 126, 127 (1924). The listing of specified alternatives within a Markush claim is referred to as a Markush group or a Markush grouping. Abbott Labs v. Baxter Pharmaceutical Products, Inc., 334 F.3d 1274, 1280-81, 67 USPQ2d 1191, 1196 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (citing to several sources that describe Markush groups)- See MPEP 706.03.
Smith teaches document collaboration. Cosentino teaches web-based collaborative platforms. It would have been obvious to combine before the effective filing date, using productivity software that manages permissions to the various data items and to documents that include such items), as taught by Smith, with using GitHub and API’s, as taught by Cosentino, to guarantees an up-to-date information., Cosentino [p. 7189].
Regarding Claim 12, (Currently Amended)
A client device configured to render a graphical user interface (GUI) of a frontend application supporting an issue tracking system, the client device comprising: a display; a memory allocation; and a processor allocation configured to cooperate with the memory allocation to instantiate an instance of the frontend application, the frontend application configured to: display the GUI including a project tracked by the issue tracking system, the GUI including multiple sets of objects managed by external applications distinct from the issue tracking system, each set of objects displayed in a group corresponding to a respective category, receive, from a user of the client device, an instruction to access a page corresponding to the project and associated with the issue tracking system; submit a request to a backend application supporting the issue tracking system for the page in response to the instruction; receive, from the backend application, information corresponding to a state of data stored by [[an]] the external system, the information extracted from [[an]] tie API call received at the backend application from the external system, the API call comprising: an issue identifier associated with the project; and an external data fragment including the information; a graphical indication generated by the backend application and indicating a completeness of at least one operations associated with the issue, the external data fragment analyzed by the backend application to determine the completeness of at least one operation associated with the issue; and automatically updating the rendering of the page on the graphical user interface to display the state of data stored by the external system based on the information, the display proximate a respective set of objects associated with a particular category; and the graphical indication of the completeness of the at least one operation.
Claim 12 is similar to claim 1. Therefore, claim 12 is rejected for similar reasons as claim 1.
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Rolf teaches integration mechanism by which a receiving system and a sending system can communicate data using an API. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, implementing an integrations management component for issue tracking and managing user as taught in Rolf, to reduc[e] the number of queries required to access/retrieve integration data reduce[s] communications, processing, and improve[s] the response time. Rolf [0279].
Regarding Claim 13, (Previously Presented)
The client device of claim 12, wherein the information comprises a link to a remote file of the external system.
Similar to claim 3. See above.
Cosentino teaches GitHub is the external system, Cosentino [p. 7189].
Smith [0110], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B] teaches issue tracking; Smith [0121] teaches a user is able to create new links between a draft portion of a document and a collaborative portion of the document, a user is able to create new destination links (also sometimes referred to herein as “usage” links or “consumers”) .
Smith teaches document collaboration. Cosentino teaches web-based collaborative platforms. It would have been obvious to combine before the effective filing date, using productivity software that manages permissions to the various data items and to documents that include such items), as taught by Smith, with using GitHub and API’s, as taught by Cosentino, to guarantee an up-to-date information., Cosentino [p. 7189].
Regarding Claim 14, (Previously Presented)
The client device of claim 12, wherein the information comprises a status of a code repository of the external system.
See Cosentino – claim 1 and
Smith [0110], [Figure 26], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B].
Cosentino discloses GitHub offers a label mechanism to ease the categorization of issues, however less than 30% of issues are tagged., Cosentino [p. 7178 column 1]. Cosentino discloses GitHub API guarantees an up-to-date information. Moreover, the GitHub API request limit acts as a barrier to get data from GitHub. This affects, both, curated datasets (that take their data raw also via the GitHub API) and individual researchers accessing directly the API., Cosentino [p. 7178 column 2]. Examiner submits GitHub is a code repository.
Smith teaches document collaboration. Cosentino teaches web-based collaborative platforms. It would have been obvious to combine before the effective filing date, using productivity software that manages permissions to the various data items and to documents that include such items), as taught by Smith, with using GitHub and API’s, as taught by Cosentino, to guarantees an up-to-date information., Cosentino [p. 7189].
Regarding Claim 17, (Currently Amended)
A method for operating an issue tracking system, the method comprising: causing display of a graphical user interface (GUI) including a project tracked by the issue tracking system, the GUI including multiple sets of objects managed by external applications distinct from the issue tracking system, each set of objects displayed in a group corresponding to a respective category, receiving, from an external system, a first application programming interface (API) call comprising an authentication token; receiving, from the external system, a second API call comprising a structured data object, the structured data object including [[an]] an external data fragment indicating a status of the external system; extracting from the first API call the authentication token; authenticating, by the issue tracking system, a source of the first and second API call based, at least in part, on the authentication token of the first API call; determining, by the issue tracking system, a particular category based on the external data fragment of the structured data object; and extracting, from the external data fragment of the structured data object of the second API call, a type of the external data fragment, the type associated with the status of the external system; analyzing, by the issue tracking system, the external data fragment to determine a completeness of at least one operation associated with the external system; generation, by the issue tracking system, a graphical indication of the completeness of the at least one operation; and causing to be displayed, in the GUI; a visual representation of the status of the external platform system, the status displayed adjacent to a respective set of objects associated with the particular category; and the graphical indication of the completeness of the at least one operation.
Claim 17 is similar to claim 1. Therefore, claim 17 is rejected for similar reasons as claim 1.
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Rolf teaches integration mechanism by which a receiving system and a sending system can communicate data using an API. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, implementing an integrations management component for issue tracking and managing user as taught in Rolf, to reduc[e] the number of queries required to access/retrieve integration data reduce[s] communications, processing, and improve[s] the response time. Rolf [0279].
Regarding Claim 20, (Previously Presented)
The method of claim 17, wherein the visual representation is generated at least in part by one of: a frontend application instance of the issue tracking system; a backend application instance of the issue tracking system; or the external system.
See claim 1 – Costentino.
Smith [0110], [Figure 26], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B].
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Within claim 20, Smith discloses frontend, backend, and issue tracking, and thus, Smith discloses a frontend application instance of the issue tracking system; a backend application instance of the issue tracking system. Claim 20 a "Markush" claim recites a list of alternatively useable members. In re Harnisch, 631 F.2d 716, 719-20, 206 USPQ 300, 303 (CCPA 1980); Ex parte Markush, 1925 Dec. Comm'r Pat. 126, 127 (1924). The listing of specified alternatives within a Markush claim is referred to as a Markush group or a Markush grouping. Abbott Labs v. Baxter Pharmaceutical Products, Inc., 334 F.3d 1274, 1280-81, 67 USPQ2d 1191, 1196 (Fed. Cir. 2003) (citing to several sources that describe Markush groups)- See MPEP 706.03.
Claims 6, 15, 16, 18, and 19 are rejected by Costentino (2017, A Systematic Mapping Study of Software Development With GitHub) in view of Smith (US 2021/0,081,605 A1) and view of Rolf (US 2021/0,306,316 A1) and in further in view of Wall (US 2009/0083308 A1).
Regarding Claim 6, (Original)
The method of claim 1, wherein the external platform comprises a code repository system.
See above. Smith [0110], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B] and Wall [008] teaches a code repository where changes are tracked.
Wall [021]-[022], [058], [Figure 5] teaches code repository.
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Wall teaches a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time). It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with produc[ing] and work with (commit and revisions or versions 22, as taught by Wall, to provide[s] a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time., Wall [006].
Regarding Claim 15, (Previously Presented)
The client device of claim 14, wherein the status corresponds to a result of a static analysis operation performed…. of a static analysis operation performed by the external system.
Cosentino teaches GitHub is the external system. GitHub is a code repository., Cosentino [p. 7189], Cosentino [p. 7176 column 2] and claim 1.
Smith [0110], [Figure 26], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B].
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Wall further teaches
… static analysis.
Wall’s [018] teaches configuration management; Wall’s [024] … revision manager 25 operates as a tracking tool tracking changes … hence tracking changes of state and corresponding resulting revisions/versions of assets. As such, the revision manager 25 is able to provide (produce) various screen views that are helpful to end users or project team members working on sets of artifacts/assets 15, 19, 21. In one embodiment, there are four particular views generated by the revision manager 25, namely a working copy view 32, a file history view 34, a project view 35 and a repository (or per asset timeline) view 37.
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Wall teaches a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time). It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with produc[ing] and work with (commit and revisions or versions 22, as taught by Wall, to provide[s] a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time., Wall [006].
Regarding Claim 16, (Original)
The client device of claim 15, wherein the static analysis operation corresponds to a code repository associated with the page.
See claim 1 – Costentino.
Smith [0110], [Figure 26], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B]. and Wall [08], [021], [024].
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Wall teaches a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time). It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with produc[ing] and work with (commit and revisions or versions 22, as taught by Wall, to provide[s] a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time., Wall [006].
Regarding Claim 18, (Original)
The method of claim 17, wherein the status corresponds to a result of a static analysis operation executed against a code repository.
See claim 1 – Costentino.
Smith [0110], [Figure 26], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B]. Wall [008] teaches change in state of a given asset and respective resulting revision (version)., Wall [08], [Figure 5].
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Wall teaches a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time). It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with produc[ing] and work with (commit and revisions or versions 22, as taught by Wall, to provide[s] a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time., Wall [006].
Regarding Claim 19, (Original)
The method of claim 17, wherein the status corresponds to metadata describing a remote file.
See claim 1 – Costentino. Cosentino teaches GitHub is the external system. GitHub is a code repository., Cosentino [p. 7189], Cosentino [p. 7176 column 2].
Smith [0110], [Figure 26], [Figure 27A], [Figure 27B].
Wall [021] discloses files and asset revisions. Wall [021]-[022].
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Smith teaches tracking document collaboration. It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with documentation collaboration tracking taught in Smith, to share the edits to the section of the document and, when the section is subsequently made public, merges the draft branch into the original (or “mainline”). Smith [093.]
Costentino teaches open source collaborative platforms. Wall teaches a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time). It would be obvious to combine before the effective filing date, studying social coding platforms like GitHub and how project owners, committers and end-users could optimize their way of collaborating, as disclosed in Costentino, with produc[ing] and work with (commit and revisions or versions 22, as taught by Wall, to provide[s] a revision manager that produces and displays a per asset timeline (changes of a particular asset over time., Wall [006].
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
F. Santos, I. Wiese, B. Trinkenreich, I. Steinmacher, A. Sarma and M. A. Gerosa, "Can I Solve It? Identifying APIs Required to Complete OSS Tasks," 2021 IEEE/ACM 18th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR), Madrid, Spain, 2021, pp. 346-257
Yuekai Huang, Junjie Wang, Song Wang, Zhe Liu, Dandan Wang, and Qing Wang. 2021. Characterizing and Predicting Good First Issues. In Proceedings of the 15th ACM / IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM) (ESEM '21). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 13, 1–12.
Balabhara, N. (2015, Data Fragmentation).
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/THEA LABOGIN/Examiner, Art Unit 3624
/PATRICIA H MUNSON/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3624