DETAILED ACTION
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 5/20/2026 has been entered.
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 .
Response to Amendment
This communication is responsive to the applicant’s amendments dated 5/20/2026. The applicant amended claims 1, 5-6, 9, 13-15, 19-21, 27, and 34-35. Claims 2, 4, 7-8, 10, 12, 16, 18, 22-26, and 28-33 have been cancelled. Lastly, the applicant has added new claims 36-37.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to 35 U.S.C. 101 (see Remarks, pg. 9, line 17 – pg. 11, line 28) filed 5/20/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
First, the applicant believes that by stating the generating limitations is done through a trained machine learning model, the claims overcome the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection. The applicant points to example 39 from the USPTO memo titled “Reminders on evaluating subject matter eligibility of claims under 35 U.S.C. 101”. The examiner disagrees with the applicant’s argument. Simply incorporating a trained machine learning model is not sufficient. The applicant should provide greater detail of how the model is trained in order to overcome the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection. Next, the applicant believes the independent claims realizes an improvement in topic modeling by converting sentiment-oriented topic labels to sentiment-neutral topic labels in response to user queries for topic labels without sentiment. The applicant made similar arguments in the non-final office action response from 12/4/2025. The examiner addressed these arguments in the final rejection dated 2/23/2026. The applicant additionally mentions the amendments of downloading software and metering usage, however the examiner interprets these as business oriented, insignificant post solution activity/processing and fails to show a practical application or a technical improvement. Therefore, the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection in maintained.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to 35 U.S.C. 103, see Remarks (pg. 12, line 1 – pg. 15, line 17), filed 5/20/2026, with respect to claims 1, 3, 5-6, 9, 11, 13-15, 17, 19-21, 27 and 34-37 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The 35 U.S.C. 103 rejection of claims 1, 3, 5-6, 9, 11, 13-15, 17, 19-21, 27 and 34-37 has been withdrawn.
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 1, 3, 5-6, 9, 11, 13-15, 17, 19-21, 27 and 34-37 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Independent claims 1, 9, and 15 recites “downloading, from a remote data processing system and to one or more computers, software configured to perform operations of: generating, by a trained machine learning model, a plurality of topic labels corresponding to a plurality of documents clustered into a plurality of topics, wherein the plurality of topic labels includes a sentiment-oriented topic label and a sentiment-neutral topic label”; “generating a converted corresponding sentiment-neutral topic label corresponding to the sentiment-oriented topic label using a sentiment dictionary associating sentiment- neutral tokens and sentiment-oriented tokens for similar topics”, “calculating term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) values for respective topic labels and corresponding pluralities of documents”, “receiving a neutral sentiment polarity from a user device”, “identifying a subset of the plurality of topic labels that satisfy the neutral sentiment polarity including the converted corresponding sentiment-neutral topic label”, “transmitting the converted corresponding sentiment-neutral topic label of the subset of the plurality of topic labels to the user device, wherein the converted corresponding sentiment-neutral topic label has a higher TF-IDF value than other topic labels in the subset of the plurality of topic labels, wherein the higher TF-IDF value is a term frequency (TF) multiplied by an inverse document frequency (IDF), wherein the TF is a first quotient of a number of times a token occurs in a topic divided by a sum of all tokens related to the topic, and wherein the IDF is a log of a second quotient of a total count of topics divided by a total count of topics containing the token”, “metering a usage of the software based on a number of converted corresponding sentiment-neutral topic labels generated by the software”, and “generating an invoice based on metering the usage”
These steps, as drafted, is a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “one or more computer readable storage media storing program instructions; and one or more processors which, in response to executing the program instructions” and “A computer program product comprising one or more computer readable storage media, and program instructions collectively stored on the one or more computer readable storage media, the program instructions comprising instructions configured to cause one or more processors”, nothing in the claim element precludes the steps from practically being achievable by a human using a pen and paper by categorizing documents by giving them topic labels based off their sentiment; changing the labels to a neutral labels; performing calculations based off the topic labels for the documents; receiving document sentiment feedback from a user; picking a topic label that matches with the sentiment; returning that information to the user that shows the calculations with the highest correlation between the sentiment and the topic label, and tracking the usage of a software based on the number of converted sentiment-neutral topic labels generated. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the “Mental Process” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the claims recite the additional elements of “one or more computer readable storage media storing program instructions; and one or more processors which, in response to executing the program instructions” and “A computer program product comprising one or more computer readable storage media, and program instructions collectively stored on the one or more computer readable storage media, the program instructions comprising instructions configured to cause one or more processors”. These elements are recited at a high level of generality such that they would amount to no more than mere instructions to implement the abstract idea on conventional computer equipment. The claims does not point to a specific improvement in computers in their communication role or provide specific improvements in the way computers operate. The claims, as a whole, looking at the additional elements individually and in combination, does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. See MPEP 2106.04(d).
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of “one or more computer readable storage media storing program instructions; and one or more processors which, in response to executing the program instructions” and “A computer program product comprising one or more computer readable storage media, and program instructions collectively stored on the one or more computer readable storage media, the program instructions comprising instructions configured to cause one or more processors” to perform the claimed steps (“generating…”, “calculating…’, “receiving…”, identifying…”, “transmitting…”, and “metering”) amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. The claims are not patent eligible.
Dependent claims 3, 5-6, 11, 13-14, 17, 19-20, 27, and 34-37 are also rejected for the same reasons provided in the rejection to the independent claims above. The dependent claims, including the further recited limitation, does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application and the additional elements, taken individually and in combination do not contribute to an inventive concept. In other words, the dependent claims are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Regarding independent claim 21, the claim recites “downloading, from a remote data processing system and to one or more computers, software configured to perform operations of: generating a sentiment-neutral topic label for a first plurality of documents clustered into a first topic”, “generating a sentiment-oriented topic label for a second plurality of documents clustered into a second topic”, “receiving a selected sentiment polarity from a user device, wherein the selected sentiment polarity is a neutral sentiment polarity”, “generating a converted corresponding sentiment-neutral topic label corresponding to the sentiment-oriented topic label using a sentiment dictionary associating sentiment-neutral tokens and sentiment-oriented tokens for similar topics”, “transmitting the sentiment-neutral topic label and the converted corresponding sentiment- neutral topic label to the user device, wherein the sentiment-neutral topic label and the converted corresponding sentiment-neutral topic label are ranked by term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) values”, “metering a usage of the software based on a number of converted corresponding sentiment-neutral topic labels generated by the software”, and “generating an invoice based on metering the usage”.
These steps, as drafted, is a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind. Nothing in the claim element precludes the steps from practically being achievable by a human using a pen and paper by categorizing a document with a first sentiment neutral topic label; categorizing a document with a second sentiment-oriented topic label; receiving a document sentiment neutral feedback from a user; changing that feedback from a sentiment-neutral to sentiment-oriented topic label; returning that information to the user that shows the calculations showing the highest correlation between sentiment and topic label; and tracking the usage of a software based on the number of converted sentiment-neutral topic labels generated. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance limitation in the mind, then it falls within the “Mental Process” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the claim does not recite any additional elements to perform the steps of the claim. The claim, as a whole, does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, no additional elements are recited to perform the claimed steps (“generating…”, “generating…”, “receiving…”, “generating…”, “transmitting…”, and “metering”) and amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception. Mere instructions to apply an exception cannot provide an inventive concept. The claim is not patent eligible.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 3, 5-6, 9, 11, 13-15, 17, 19-21, 27 and 34-37 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101, set forth in this Office action. There are no pending prior art rejections.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance in terms of the prior art:
The closest piece of prior the examiner found was Sommer et al. (US 20100262454 A1) which teaches features such as generating a plurality of topic labels corresponding to a plurality of documents clustered into a plurality of topics, wherein the plurality of topic labels includes a sentiment-oriented topic label and a sentiment-neutral topic label, however upon further search and consideration the examiner deems the prior art of record whether taken alone or in combination fails to teach “metering a usage of the software based on a number of converted corresponding sentiment-neutral topic labels generated by the software” and “generating an invoice based on metering the usage” in combination with the other claim features, therefore the claims as a whole are allowable in terms of the prior art. The applicant still needs to overcome the pending 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection for the claims to be completely allowable.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZEESHAN SHAIKH whose telephone number is (703)756-1730. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7:30AM-5:00PM.
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/ZEESHAN MAHMOOD SHAIKH/Examiner, Art Unit 2658
/RICHEMOND DORVIL/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2658
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