DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 12/07/2025 has been entered.
Claim Objections
Claim 15 is objected to because of the following informalities: the limitation “the display” on line 22 lacks antecedent basis. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to judicial exception(s) without significantly more.
[STEP 1] The claim recites at least one step. Thus, the claim is to a process, which is one of the statutory categories of invention (Step 1: YES).
[STEP2A PRONG I] The claim 15 recite:
Claim 15:
A computer implemented verb learning method for speaking a foreign language comprising:
connecting a personal digital assistant to a personal terminal through a communication network, wherein the personal terminal has a verb learning function for speaking the foreign language and includes a verb learning program for speaking the foreign language, a member database, a foreign language database, and a meaning filling information database;
connecting a foreign language speaking verb learning system server to the personal digital assistant through the communication network;
receiving, via the connected device a learning request signal from a learner;
searching, by the verb learning program, the foreign language database for at least one foreign language verb corresponding to a mother tongue verb when the mother tongue verb that the learner wants to speak in the foreign language is inputted by an input device of the personal terminal;
discriminating, by a lexical ambiguity problem processing module of the verb learning program, whether a lexical ambiguity problem occurred by determining two or more candidate foreign language verbs corresponds to the mother tongue verb in the foreign language database;
if the lexical ambiguity problem has occurred, selecting from the foreign language database, for each candidate foreign language verb, a meaning explanation in the mother tongue, at least one sample sentence in the mother tongue and a non-textual representation of the meaning as an image, and presenting on the display the meaning explanation, the at least one sample sentence, and the non-textual representation of the meaning as the image for each candidate foreign language verb, thereby enabling the learner to directly select the content which the learner wants to speak by selecting the corresponding non-textual representation;
receiving, via the personal terminal. a selection from the learner of one of the candidate foreign language verbs corresponding to the content the learner wants to speak;
discriminating, by the verb learning program whether an ambiguity in necessary meaning filling information database contains two or more distinct sets of necessary meaning filling information of the mother tongue verb;
if an ambiguity in the necessary meaning filling information exists, presenting on the display, in the mother tongue, each of the sets of necessary meaning filling information of the mother tongue verb, wherein each set comprises one or more necessary sentence components that must be included when constructing a sentence with the mother tongue verb as a predicate;
receiving via the personal terminal a selection from the learner of one of the displayed sets of necessary meaning filling information corresponding to the content the learner wants to speak;
displaying, on the display, the necessary meaning filling information of the mother tongue verb from the meaning filling information database corresponding to the selected set of necessary meaning filling information; and
displaying, on the display the foreign language verb corresponding to the mother tongue verb and the necessary meaning filling information in the foreign language corresponding to the selected necessary meaning filling information of the mother tongue verb, wherein the necessary meaning filling information in the foreign language comprises one or more foreign language sentence components respectively corresponding to the one or more necessary sentence components of the mother tongue verb.
The non-highlighted aforementioned limitation, as drafted, is a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation between people but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “computer”, “personal digital assistant”, “display”, “personal terminal”, “communication network”, “database” and “connected devices” nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed between people. For example, but for the recited language, the step in the context of this claim encompasses a teacher analyzing a student question, thinking of an answer using a table spreadsheet of mother tongue verb, and providing such answer to the student.
If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers managing interactions between people or performed mentally in the teacher’s mind, then it falls within the “Organization of Human Activity” or “Mental Process” grouping of abstract ideas.
Accordingly, the claim recites a judicial exception, and the analysis must therefore proceed to Step 2A Prong Two.
[STEP2A PRONG II] This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claim only recites the additional element(s) – “computer”, “personal digital assistant”, “display”, “personal terminal”, “communication network”, “database” and “connected devices”.
The “computer”, “personal digital assistant”, “personal terminal”, “communication network”, “database” and “connected devices” in the aforementioned steps are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component.
Accordingly, the additional element(s) do(es) not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea and the claim is therefore directed to the judicial exception. (Step 2A: YES).
[STEP2B] The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element of using a processor to perform the aforementioned steps amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component, which cannot provide an inventive concept (for example, see page 26 last paragraph, page 37 first complete paragraph).
As noted previously, the claim as a whole merely describes how to generally “apply” the aforementioned concept in a computer environment. Thus, even when viewed as a whole, nothing in the claim adds significantly more (i.e., an inventive concept) to the abstract idea.
The claim is not patent eligible. (Step 2B: NO).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 11/23/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
The applicant provided several arguments against the rejection of claim 15. The Applicant argued that the amended claim 15 does not encompass a mental process or mere human activity between a teacher and a student. The Applicant argued that the claim now requires a step of “retrieving and displaying a non-textual of the meaning as an image”. The examiner respectfully disagrees. The examiner notes that the MPEP teaches that a claims can still recite a mental process even if they are claimed as being performed on a computer. The Supreme Court recognized this in Benson, determining that a mathematical algorithm for converting binary coded decimal to pure binary within a computer’s shift register was an abstract idea (see MPEP 2106.04(a)(2). In this particular case, the teacher can still perform the stated function while the uses a computer a tool to perform a mental process.
The Applicant also provided argument that the current claim limitation is directed to:
An automated check is performed by a "lexical ambiguity problem processing module" of the program (as described in the specification) rather than by human intuition. The claim also requires analyzing a "meaning filling information database" to determine if multiple distinct sets of necessary sentence components exist for the chosen verb, i.e. to detect a grammatical context ambiguity. Such an operation - querying a database for multiple distinct sets of required sentence components - is a computational analysis, not something a person can do mentally with the same speed or accuracy.
The examiner respectfully disagrees. As the function of “detecting a grammatical context ambiguity” is a function that can be performed as a mental process. While the argument and the claim limitation points to the use of database and processor to automate the mental process; the use of generic computer to automate a mental process is still considered to be an abstract idea (see MPEP 2106.04(a)(1)).
The Applicant also argued that the claim limitation is direct a specific inventive mechanism disclosed in the specification as improvement to overcome limitations of prior approaches. Specifically the Applicant argued that amendment claim limitation provides an improvement that allows the user to speak what they personally want to say, identifies a new process to handle “lexical ambiguity”, “necessary ‘meaning filling information“ when translating from one’s native language. However, these improvements are quite different from the types of improvement identified by the courts and the MPEP where the instruction are directed to the actual improvement of the computing resources itself. For example, reduce network congestion while generating networking accounting data records, Amdocs (Israel), Ltd. v. Openet Telecom, Inc., 841 F.3d 1288, 1300-01, 120 USPQ2d 1527, 1536-37 (Fed. Cir. 2016) or a method that generates a security profile that identifies both hostile and potentially hostile operations, and can protect the user against both previously unknown viruses and "obfuscated code," which is an improvement over traditional virus scanning. Finjan Inc. v. Blue Coat Systems, 879 F.3d 1299, 1304, 125 USPQ2d 1282, 1286 (Fed. Cir. 2018).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ROBERT J UTAMA whose telephone number is (571)272-1676. The examiner can normally be reached 9:00 - 17:30 Monday - Friday.
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/ROBERT J UTAMA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3715