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 .
The amendments were received on 1/13/2026. Claims 1, 4-7, 11-13, 16-19, 23, and 24 are pending where claims 1, 4-7, 11-13, 16-19, 23, and 24 were previously presented and claims 2, 3, 8-10, 14, 15, and 20-22 were cancelled.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 1/13/2026 has been entered.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 4-7, 12, 13, 16-19, and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Barth et al [US 2007/0100962 A1] in view of Taylor et al [US 2010/0306213 A1] and Talyansky et al [US 2018/0276302 A1].
With regards to claim 1, Barth teaches a method, comprising: at an aggregator, storing historical data including: (i) a plurality of previous search requests received at the aggregator (see paragraph [0030] and [0198]; the server system can store previous search requests),
receiving, at the aggregator from a client subsystem, a search request containing a set of client search parameters (see paragraphs [0029] and [0051]-[0052]; the system can receive a search request from a user that contains search parameters);
in response to receiving the search request, determining, based on the search request and the historical data, a likelihood of the supplier subsystem generating search results
Barth teaches historical data and being able to predict the likelihood of a supplier providing a relevant result (see paragraph [0227] and [0292]) but does not appear to explicitly teach:
(ii) for each previous search request, an outcome indicator defining whether a supplier subsystem generated previous search results meeting a relevance threshold in response to the previous search request;
in response to receiving the search request, determining, based on the search request and the historical data, a likelihood of the supplier subsystem generating search results meeting the relevance threshold by:
selecting a subset of the plurality of previous search requests, the previous search requests in the subset having attributes matching the search parameters of the search request;
retrieving the corresponding outcome indicators of the subset of previous search requests;
and determining the likelihood based on the retrieved outcome indicators; and
selecting a routing action for the search request by:
when the likelihood meets the threshold, sending the search request to the supplier system;
when the likelihood fails to meet a threshold, selecting, according to at least one of a frequency or a randomly selected time, between (i) suppressing sending of the search request to the supplier subsystem, and (ii) sending the search request.
Taylor teaches (ii) for each search request, an indicator defining whether a supplier subsystem generated previous search results (see paragraph [0041]; the system can keep track of how many results are received from each supplier/source).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify the historical information stored by the server of Barth by storing information about the number of search results from each source as taught by Taylor in order to help increase the accuracy of the prediction process when determining whether a supplier should be searched with respect to the user’s query/request such that suppliers with low number of results is likely not worth the time to spend network resources to query thereby helping to preserve bandwidth and increase system responsiveness without losing quality of relevant results to present to the user by allowing the system to search less suppliers and still achieve high-quality and relevant results for the user while limiting the occurrences of the initial search having results judged inadequate and having to spend more time sending additional queries to other suppliers.
Barth in view of Taylor teach (ii) for each previous search request, an outcome indicator defining whether a supplier subsystem generated previous search results meeting a relevance threshold in response to the previous search request (see Taylor, paragraphs [0037] and [0041]; see Barth, paragraph [0203], [0110], [0227], [0203], and [0198]; the system can make a determination of total number of results sent to the user where a relevance threshold is used to decide if a result should be sent where this information can be part of the historical information about the supplier including results received from the supplier and click history of that result; results can include a relevance score too).
Barth in view of Taylor teach filtering suppliers prior to querying including based on likelihood but do not appear to explicitly teach:
in response to receiving the search request, determining, based on the search request and the historical data, a likelihood of the supplier subsystem generating search results meeting the relevance threshold by:
selecting a subset of the plurality of previous search requests, the previous search requests in the subset having attributes matching the search parameters of the search request;
retrieving the corresponding outcome indicators of the subset of previous search requests;
and determining the likelihood based on the retrieved outcome indicators; and
selecting a routing action for the search request by:
when the likelihood meets the threshold, sending the search request to the supplier system;
when the likelihood fails to meet a threshold, selecting, according to at least one of a frequency or a randomly selected time, between (i) suppressing sending of the search request to the supplier subsystem, and (ii) sending the search request.
Talyansky teaches in response to receiving the request, a likelihood of the supplier subsystem generating search results meeting the relevance threshold (see paragraphs [0020], [0038]-[0040], and [0062]; the system can utilize a threshold that evaluates the likelihood of that search provider being relevant to a request associated with a user).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify the supplier prediction and selection process of Barth in view of Taylor by utilizing a threshold and ranking scheme to determine the most likely suppliers to provide results to a user as taught by Talyansky in order to not only limit the number of suppliers to search but to be able to evaluate the suppliers to determine which suppliers are most relevant/related to the user’s query and then use those suppliers while also being able to limit the number of suppliers to some determined number of highest ranked suppliers even when many suppliers are above the relevance threshold.
Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky teach in response to receiving the search request, determining, based on the search request and the historical data, a likelihood of the supplier subsystem generating search results meeting the relevance threshold (see Barth, paragraphs [0227], [0232], [0203], and [0198]; see Talyansky, paragraphs [0020], [0038]-[0040], and [0062]; see Taylor, paragraph [0037]; the system can utilize the search request and past search information/historical data to determine likelihood of a supplier to generate relevant results) by:
selecting a subset of the plurality of previous search requests, the previous search requests in the subset having attributes matching the search parameters of the search request; retrieving the corresponding outcome indicators of the subset of previous search requests; and determining the likelihood based on the retrieved outcome indicators (see Barth, paragraphs [0110], [0198], [0201], [0227], [0232], and [0292]; see Taylor, paragraph [0041]; the system make determinations utilizing various information from the historical data including previous search requests of similar types and the respective number of results returned from various suppliers);
and selecting a routing action for the search request by: when the likelihood meets a threshold, sending the search request to the supplier system (see Barth, paragraphs [0227] and [0229]; see Talyansky, paragraph [0020]; the queries/requests can be sent to those suppliers above a threshold value);
when the likelihood fails to meet a threshold, selecting, according to at least one of a frequency or a randomly selected time, between (i) suppressing sending of the search request to the supplier subsystem, and (ii) sending the search request (see Barth, paragraphs [0203], [0227], and [0229]; see Talyansky, paragraph [0020]; Taylor, paragraph [0041]; even when the supplier is not initially selected for searching, based on a statistical parameter such as frequency of results, the system can decide which suppliers to send the query/request to the supplier).
With regard to claim 4, Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky teach wherein the historical data includes classifier configuration parameters derived from (i) a set of the previous search requests, and (ii) respective outcome indicators for the previous search requests (see Taylor, paragraph [0041]; see Barth, paragraph [0203], [0110], [0227], and [0198]; the system can make a determination of total number of results sent to the user where a relevance threshold is used to decide if a result should be sent where this information can be part of the historical information about the supplier and be utilized in other processes/modules of the system).
With regard to claim 5, Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky teach wherein determining the likelihood includes: providing the search request to a classifier configured according to the classifier configuration parameters; and receiving the likelihood from the classifier (see Barth, paragraph [0203], [0210], [0214], [0110], [0227], and [0198]; various modules of the system can be used for various processes/tasks including decision making such as likelihood determination for various suppliers based on information associated with similar types of queries from the historical data).
With regard to claim 6, Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky teach wherein the relevance threshold is whether at least one of the corresponding previous search results was returned from the aggregator to the client subsystem (see Talyansky, paragraph [0203]; a relevance threshold can be used by the aggregator to determine if a result should be sent to the client).
With regard to claim 7, Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky teach wherein the relevance threshold is whether the corresponding previous search result was selected at the client subsystem (see Taylor, paragraph [0037]; see Barth, [0201]; the system can also keep track of click history of the result items).
With regard to claim 12, Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky teach selecting the routing action based on the likelihood and a request-handling capacity corresponding to the supplier subsystem (see Barth, paragraphs [0227] and [0229] and [0231]; see Taylor, paragraph [0020]; the system can perform the routing to particular suppliers based on the request-handling capacity of the supplier and the respective predicted likelihood of the supplier having relevant results).
With regard to claims 13 and 16-19 and 24, this claim is substantially similar to claims 1, 4-7, and 12 and are rejected for similar reasons as discussed above.
Claims 11 and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Barth et al [US 2007/0100962 A1] in view of Taylor et al [US 2010/0306213 A1] and Talyansky et al [US 2018/0276302 A1] in further view of Stemeseder et al [US 2009/0089296 A1].
With regard to claim 11, Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky teach all the claim limitations of claim 1 as discussed above.
Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky teach wherein determining the likelihood includes: comparing the score to the scores for the at least one other supplier subsystem (see Talyansky, paragraph [0029]; see Barth, paragraph [0227], [0229], and [0292]; the system can compare the scores via ordering/ranking the scores in order to select the highest ranked suppliers as being determined to generate search results with respect to the user query).
Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky teach that the system can determine sources that users prefer (see Taylor, paragraph [0037]) but do not appear to explicitly teach determining (i) a score corresponding to the supplier subsystem based on the search request and the historical data, and (ii) respective scores for at least one other supplier subsystem.
Stemeseder teaches determining (i) a score corresponding to the supplier subsystem based on the search request and the historical data (see paragraph [0030]; the system can determine the topical scope of various suppliers and know which suppliers are most relevant to the topical scope of the query).
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify the supplier selection process of Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky by determining how related the query is to the information associated with the supplier as taught by Stemeseder in order to utilize contextual information to determine topical scope/scores of various suppliers so that the system can determine utilize a semantic comparison of the query/request and its associated context or topical scope to the respective topical scopes/context of the suppliers thereby providing greater understanding of the relevance of the suppliers with respect to particular criteria/parameters versus a generic relevance of number of results for all queries instead of queries of particular related context thus helping to improve system response time by taking into account the user’s query context and the suppliers respective relevance to various contexts/topical scopes.
Barth in view of Taylor and Talyansky in further view of Stemeseder teach wherein determining the likelihood includes: determining (i) a score corresponding to the supplier subsystem based on the search request and the historical data, and (ii) respective scores for at least one other supplier subsystem (see Stemeseder, paragraph [0030]; see Taylor, paragraph [0030]; Talyansky, paragraph [0029]; see Barth, paragraph [0227], [0229], and [0292]; the system can determine a score of a supplier based on historical data indicating known likelihood of suppliers to be relevant to particular topics/parameters and being able to determine a score based the relevance of the supplier to the query’s topical context and then be able to sort/order those scores for every supplier to help determine the top most suppliers that have a determined likelihood greater than some threshold).
With regard to claim 23, this claim is substantially similar to claim 11 and is rejected for similar reasons as discussed above.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments (see the second paragraph on page 6 through the last paragraph on page 9) have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. The applicant argues that the cited prior art references do not teach all the claim limitations including not teaching (a) retrieval of an outcome indicator corresponding a particular subset of previous search results; (b) nor contemplate determining a likelihood based on those outcome indicators; and (c) selection of a supplier for a further search would not be “according to at least one of a frequency or a randomly selected time”. The Examiner respectfully disagrees.
With regard to arguments (a) and (b) about the retrieval of an outcome indicator, the Examiner notes that the rejection is based on the combination of references of at least Barth and Taylor and not the teachings of Barth alone. In response to applicant's arguments against the references individually, one cannot show nonobviousness by attacking references individually where the rejections are based on combinations of references. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981); In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 231 USPQ 375 (Fed. Cir. 1986). As illustrated in the 35 USC 103 rejections, Barth discusses in paragraph [0198] the ability to determine a set of supplies based on a variety of information where Barth does not limit themselves to the type of information to be used and even contemplates information about the history of searches with Taylor providing some information about the historical information such as number of results obtained from each source as well as past click history for result(s). Therefore, as can be seen, the combination teaches an outcome indicator with Barth illustrating the usage of the variety of pieces of information for determining or predicting a likelihood of a supplier providing relevant results including based on prior search system experience which, according to Taylor can include past click history of results (see paragraph 41) as well as user preferences which Taylor indicates at paragraph 37 as including indication/prediction of the source that is preferred by the user.
With regard to argument (c) that selection of a supplier for a further search would not be “according to at least one of a frequency or a randomly selected time”, the Examiner notes that Barth teaches that the system can start their search process with the supplies that “are more likely to return relevant results” with the system adopting a target number of results to return (see Barth, paragraph 203). Barth in view of Talyansky indicate that even with large number of relevant suppliers (see Barth, para 232 and Talyansky, para 20) that some highest number of relevant suppliers are selected with Barth indicating, or fairly suggesting, that new searches of different suppliers can be started. Barth discusses that the system can have threshold determinations with high, medium and low with the medium range relating to the concept of keeping for further consideration (See paragraph 203 of Barth). Additionally, Barth indicates that the system can have a target number of results to return and determine that the average number of results per supplier is below the target, which can indicate that more suppliers are necessary to be searched in order to achieve the target number of results. Therefore, as can be seen, the combination of references teach or fairly suggest the claim limitations as recited.
Examiner Comments
The applicant provided arguments with regard to argument (c) above that relates to teachings of paragraph 59 of applicant’s specification. The respective limitation recites a conditional clause with two potential options where, as noted above in the Response to Arguments section and 35 USC 103 rejections section, at least one of the options is broadly recited and taught, or fairly suggested, by the prior art of record. The Examiner recommends any clarification of what is meant by ‘frequency’ can help differentiate the claim limitations from the prior art of record.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARC S SOMERS whose telephone number is (571)270-3567. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 11-8 EST.
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/MARC S SOMERS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2159 3/18/2026