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 .
Notice for all US Patent Applications filed on or after March 16, 2013
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.
Status of the Claims
This communication is in response to communications received on 2/5/26. Claim(s) 1, 7, 8-12, 21, and 22-26 is/are amended, claim(s) none is/are cancelled, claim(s) none is/are new, and applicant does not provide any information on where support for the amendments can be found in the instant specification. Therefore, Claims 1-13 and 21-27 is/are pending and have been addressed below.
Claims Without Prior Art Rejections
Claim(s) 1-13 and 21-27 do/does not have prior art rejections. The remaining rejections are 101 as noted below.
Closest prior art to the invention claims without rejections include
Bhatia et al. (US 2020/0104395 A1) in view of Chauhan et al. (US 2022/0108334 A1), Shrivastava et al. (US 2021/0365965 A1), and M et al. (US 2018/0096052 A1) for claim(s) 1-12, 13, and 21-27.
Bhatia in view of Chauhan and Shrivastava teaches the first-third generate and assign steps.
The new determine (now 2nd determine) and sending steps are taught by Chauhan and M.
Chauhan discloses sending, to the user over a network, targeted content associated with the one or more user segments [see at least [claim 1] and for at least one user: a) “identifying a plurality of precursor events causally related to an observable target interaction”, b) “predicting a probability for each of the precursor events … for the observable target interaction”, and c) “performing the marketing event directed to the at least one user based at least in part on the predicted probabilities”].
M discloses
determining one or more user segments to which a user of the plurality of users is assigned [see at least [0039] “The clustering module 102 clusters (304) the data separately based on each of the views defined. The clustering module 102 can use a non-parametric clustering method that discovers the natural clusters in data, or any traditional clustering method, to cluster the customer data in each of the views. The non-parametric clustering method can use a pre-defined distance ‘lambda’ that controls the cluster creation process. The clustering module 102 starts with a single cluster, whose mean is the global centroid. The clustering module 102 forms a new cluster whenever a point is farther than ‘lambda’ away from every existing cluster centroid. The clustering module 102 refines the clusters through multiple iterations, until it converges. After clustering the customers in each view separately, a customer can belong to multiple clusters, one in each view.”; additionally Fig. 3 and [0037];
[0025] “The clustering module 102 can define views by grouping relevant segmentation attributes based on at least one customer trait/behavior/attribute to be represented. For example, in the context of a Communication Service Provider (CSP), a usage view could be defined based on attributes (such as outgoing minutes of usage, data usage, SMS (Short Messaging Service) usage, and so on) whereas a profile view could be defined based on attributes (such as subscriber age, average revenue per subscriber, age on network, and so on). In an embodiment herein, the users can define the views. In an embodiment herein, the clustering module 102 can automatically determine the views. The clustering module 102 can use density based approaches to find groupings in different feature subsets. The clustering module 102 can use these groupings to automatically generate views for clustering. The clustering module 102 can use feature subspace selection techniques such as MAFIA for determining the views.”;
[0027] “The consolidation module 103 can combine the multiple groupings of clusters in different views to generate a hierarchical structure. The visualization engine 104 can enable the hierarchical representation of the multiple clustering results in multiple perspectives of customer behavior in arriving at target segments. The visualization engine 104 enables the interactive exploration of the hierarchical structure by enabling the hierarchical structure to be drilled down into segments that are of interest based on the requirements. The visualization engine 104 can provide an interactive onion-peeling experience for visual exploration of the summarized segmentation results using visualization schemes suitable for representation of hierarchical data such as a sunburst diagram, tree-map, and so on.”;
[0029] “As an example, consider a scenario where a marketer wants to analyze the usage and recharge behaviors associated with mobile subscribers of various levels of profitability (such as subscribers with high margin, medium margin, low margin, and so on). The marketer first defines three views: revenue view, usage view and recharge view; where the revenue view describes profitability of subscribers and is defined based on attributes such as Margin and Gross ARPU (Average Revenue per User). The usage view describes the service usage behavior of subscribers, and is defined based on attributes such as Outgoing Call Minutes (OG_MOU), SMS Count, Data Usage, STD Contribution and On_net_share. The recharge view describes recharge behavior of subscribers, and is defined based on attributes such as Average Recharge, Count of Recharge, and so on.”;
[0048] “Thus, the marketer in our example is able to analyze the prominent usage patterns associated with subscribers belonging to different margin clusters. By drilling down a level deeper, the various recharge patterns associated with a particular usage behavior could also be studied. Our system thus facilitates a multi-perspective analysis of customer segments by combining different groupings representing various facets of customer behavior.”].
The combined arts do not teach (the new generating step and amended determining step {now 1st determining step} ):
generating combined observed-unobserved representations by combining the observed embeddings with the combined observed-unobserved embeddings according to an observed analytics data weight and according to a combined observed-unobserved analytics data weight;
determining, utilizing a neural network selector and based on combined observed-unobserved representations, probability distributions for users of the plurality of users over a number of user segments.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see applicant’s remarks, filed 2/5/26, with respect to rejections under 35 USC 103 for claim(s) 1-13 and 21-27 and are persuasive. The Examiner respectfully withdraws rejections under 35 USC 103 for claim(s) 1-13 and 21-27, see Claims Without Prior Art Rejections above.
Applicant’s arguments, see applicant’s remarks, filed 2/5/26, with respect to rejections under 35 USC 101 for claim(s) 1-13 and 21-27 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive as far as they apply to the amended 101 rejection(s) below.
Applicant respectfully traversed the rejection on pg. 14-18.
The Examiner respectfully disagrees because the claims here are not like those the Federal Circuit (Court) found patent eligible in Finjan because the claims here are not directed to performing a "behavior-based" virus to produce the security profile was a specific improvement over the traditional "code-matching" virus scans.
Thus, the argument(s) are unpersuasive.
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.
Claim(s) 1-13 and 21-27 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter as noted below.
The limitation(s) below for representative claim(s) 1, 7, and 21 that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, is directed to generating user segments or predictions of future user actions.
Step 1: The claim(s) as drafted, is/are a process (claim(s) 1-6 recites a series of steps) and system (claim(s) 7-13 and 21-27 recites a series of components).
Step 2A – Prong 1: The claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim(s) recite(s) (emphasis added):
Claim 1: generating unobserved analytics data for a plurality of users by sampling observed analytics data with an observation rate below a threshold observation rate from observed analytics data;
generating combined observed-unobserved vectors from observed analytics data and the unobserved analytics data for the plurality of users, wherein the combined observed-unobserved vectors encode both observed and unobserved attributes or behaviors of the plurality of users;
generating, using a first neural network encoder trained to generate embeddings from observed data, observed embeddings from the observed analytics data;
generating, using a second neural network encoder trained to generate embeddings from observed-unobserved data, combined observed-unobserved embeddings from the combined observed-unobserved vectors;
generating combined observed-unobserved representations by combining the observed embeddings with the combined observed-unobserved embeddings according to an observed analytics data weight and according to a combined observed-unobserved analytics data weight;
determining, utilizing a neural network selector and based on combined observed-unobserved representations, probability distributions for users of the plurality of users over a number of user segments;
assigning the users of the plurality of users to one or more of the number of user segments based on the probability distributions;
determining one or more user segments to which a user of the plurality of users is assigned; and
sending, to the user over a network, targeted content associated with the one or more user segments.
Claim 7 and 21: the same analysis as claim(s) 1.
Dependent claims 2-6, 8-13 and 22-27 recite the same or similar abstract idea(s) as independent claim(s) 1, 7, and 21 with merely a further narrowing of the abstract idea(s): .
The identified limitations of the independent and dependent claims above fall well-within the groupings of subject matter identified by the courts as being abstract concepts of:
a method of organizing human activity (commercial or legal interactions including advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors, or business relations) because the invention is directed to economic and/or business relationships as they are associated with generating user segments or predictions of future user actions.
Step 2A – Prong 2: The claims are found to clearly be directed to the abstract idea identified above because the claims, as a whole, fail to integrate the claimed judicial exception into a practical application, specifically:
The additional elements unencompassed by the abstract idea include first and second neural network encoder, neural network selector (claim(s) 1, 7, 21), non-transitory computer-readable medium, processor (claim(s) 7), memory, and processor (claim(s) 21), neural network encoder (claim(s) 6), neural network predictor(s) (claim(s) 8-9, 12, 22-23, 26).
Thus the additional elements as described above with respect to Step 2A Prong 2 merely amount to (as additionally noted by instant specification [0143-0146, 0148]) invoked as a tool and/or general purpose computer to apply instructions of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment, and/or mere application of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment and merely limiting the use of an abstract idea to a particular technological field do not integrate an abstract idea into a practical application (MPEP 2106.05(f)&(h)).
The identified limitations of the independent and dependent claims above fall well-within the groupings of subject matter identified by the courts as being abstract concepts of:
a method of organizing human activity (commercial or legal interactions including advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors, or business relations) because the invention is directed to economic and/or business relationships as they are associated with generating user segments or predictions of future user actions.
Step 2A – Prong 2: This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because:
The additional elements unencompassed by the abstract idea include neural network encoder, neural network selector, neural network (claim(s) 1, 7, 21), non-transitory computer-readable medium, processor (claim(s) 7), memory, and processor (claim(s) 21), neural network encoder (claim(s) 6), neural network predictor(s) (claim(s) 8-9, 12, 22-23, 26).
The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements as described above with respect to Step 2A Prong 2 fails to describe:
Improvements to the functioning of a computer, or to any other technology or technical field - see MPEP 2106.05(a)
Applying or using a judicial exception to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition – see Vanda Memo
Applying the judicial exception with, or by use of, a particular machine – see MPEP 2106.05(b)
Effecting a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing - see MPEP 2106.05(c)
Applying or using the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception - see MPEP 2106.05(e) and Vanda Memo.
Thus the additional elements as described above with respect to Step 2A Prong 2 are merely (as additionally noted by instant specification [0143-0146, 0148]) invoked as a tool and/or general purpose computer to apply instructions of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment, and/or mere application of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment and merely limiting the use of an abstract idea to a particular technological field do not integrate an abstract idea into a practical application (MPEP 2106.05(f)&(h)).
Step 2B: The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. Thus the additional elements as described above with respect to Step 2A Prong 2 are merely (as additionally noted by instant specification [0143-0146, 0148]) invoked as a tool and/or a general purpose computer to apply instructions of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment, and/or mere application of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment and merely limiting the use of an abstract idea to a particular technological field do not integrate an abstract idea into a practical application and thus similarly the combination and arrangement of the above identified additional elements when analyzed under Step 2B also fails to necessitate a conclusion that the claims amount to significantly more than the abstract idea for the same reasons as set forth above (MPEP 2106.05(f)&(h)).
Conclusion
When responding to the office action, any new claims and/or limitations should be accompanied by a reference as to where the new claims and/or limitations are supported in the original disclosure.
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JAMES WEBB whose telephone number is (313)446-6615. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 10-3.
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/J.W./Examiner, Art Unit 3624
/Jerry O'Connor/Supervisory Patent Examiner,Group Art Unit 3624