DETAILED ACTION
This Office Action is in response to the Notice to Withdrawal From Issue filed on 03/16/2026.
Claims 1-19 are unchanged; therefore claims 1-19 are pending in the application, of which, claims 1, 3, 10, 12, and 19 are presented in independent form.
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 .
Examiner’s Note
Upon further review, this application is a 371 of PCT/IN2020/050299 filed on 03/28/2020. Therefore, the restriction to application was improper in light of the Unity of Invention rule and is withdrawn. Previously withdrawn claims are now pending and are examined on their merits
While no prior art rejection is given by the examiner at this time (see rationale below), the claims 1-3 and 10-12 are not allowable as the claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) and claims 12-18 are not allowable as the claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 “software per se”.
Claim Objections
Claim 5 is objected to because of the following informalities:
In claim 5, line 2 "…comprises" should read as "… further comprises" as comprises alone makes it seem as if the identifying of topics in claim 2 is no longer based on the content of the N files but only the loss function and the objective function.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-3 and 10-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claims 1-3 and 10-12 recite similar limitations of “obtaining a set of N files, wherein each file included in the set of files is assigned to one of M different categories” and “for each one of the N files, based on a particular category to which the file is assigned… adding the file to the knowledge base” which render the claims indefinite. The limitation “obtaining a set of N files, wherein each file included in the set of files is assigned to one of M different categories” indicates that each file of N when obtained is assigned to one category within M different categories. The limitation “for each one of the N files, based on a particular category to which the file is assigned… adding the file to the knowledge base” indicates that each file of N is added to the knowledge base based on “a particular category to which the file is assigned”. The introduction of the phrase “a particular category” render the claims indefinite, as it is unclear if the recited “a particular category” is the same category as the one category within M that was assigned when the file was obtained or a completely different assigned category. Therefore, one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. Therefore, for examination purposes “a particular category” has been construed to be the same as the one category that was assigned when the file was obtained.
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 12-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claims do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claims recite an apparatus for retrieving information using a knowledge base. The claim fails to define any structure or hardware. While the applicant’s specification [0066] does disclose embodiments of the apparatus that are entirely hardware or combination of hardware and software, applicant’s specification [0066] discloses that “…features of the embodiments described herein may be implemented in hardware and/or software.” and specification [0067] discloses that the “…various embodiments are described herein, it should be understood that they have been presented by way of example only, and not limitation. Thus, the breadth and scope of this disclosure should not be limited by any of the above-described exemplary embodiments. Moreover, any combination of the above-described elements in all possible variations thereof is encompassed by the disclosure unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context.” Therefore, the embodiments of the apparatus does not exclude the possibility of a virtual apparatus (i.e. software-only apparatus) Therefore, the invention can be implemented as only software. These intangible media such as software or other programs are incapable of being touched or perceived absent the tangible medium through which they are conveyed. Accordingly, the claims become nothing more than sets of software instructions which are “software per se”. Therefore, claims 12-18 recite non-statutory subject matter and are rejected accordingly.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-19 are allowed over the prior art.
The prior art of record does not render obvious, nor anticipate the combination of claimed elements recited in the independent claims, in particular, the prior art does not teach “retrieving information using a knowledge base, the method comprising: receiving a search query entered by a user; based on the received search query, using a first model to identify a category corresponding to the received search query, wherein one or more files are assigned to the identified category and further wherein the first model is a categorization model that functions to map an input to one of M different categories, where M is greater than 1; based on the received search query, a loss function of the first model, and an objective function of a second model, identifying T topics corresponding to the received search query, where T is greater than or equal to 1; using the identified category and the identified topics, performing a search for the received search query only on a part of the knowledge base that is associated with the identified category and/or the identified topics; and based on the performed search, retrieving one or more files associated with the identified category and/or the identified topics, the method further comprising constructing the knowledge base, wherein constructing the knowledge base comprises: obtaining a set of N files, wherein each file included in the set of files is assigned to one of the M different categories. where N is greater than 1:based on content of the N files, the loss function of the first model, and the objective function of the second model, identifying a set of topics, where each topic is a group of one or more keywords; generating the knowledge base using the identified topics; and for each one of the N files, based on a particular category to which the file is assigned and keywords included in the file, adding the file to the knowledge base, wherein identifying the set of topics comprises identifying said group of one or more keywords of each topic using a sum of the loss function of the first model and the objective function of the second model, and wherein the second model is Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model.” or “constructing a knowledge base, the method comprising: obtaining a set of N files, wherein each file included in the set of files is assigned to one of M different categories, where N and M are greater than 1; based on (i) content of the N files, (ii) a loss function of a first model, and (iii) an objective function of a second model, identifying a set of T topics, where T is greater than 1 and each topic is a group of one or more keywords; generating the knowledge base using the identified topics; and for each one of the N files, based on a particular category to which the file is assigned and keywords included in the file, adding the file to the knowledge base, wherein the first model is a categorization model that functions to map an input sentence to one of the M categories.” (in combination with the other limitations of the independent claims).
The prior arts of record do not teach details about identifying topics corresponding to a received search query based on the received search query, a loss function of a first model, and an objective function of a second model to be used along with identified category corresponding to the received search query to retrieve files from a knowledge base; nor do the prior arts of record do not teach details about constructing the knowledge base utilizing the loss function of the first model, the objective function of the second model, and the content of the files to identify topic keywords after assigning obtained files to categories, as being claimed and argued by the applicant. The absence of details does not allow for proper hindsight reconstruction of obviousness.
Claims 1-19 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, and the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 101 “software per se”, set forth in this Office action.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EDDY CHEUNG whose telephone number is (571)272-9785. The examiner can normally be reached MON-TH 8:00AM-4:00PM EST.
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/Eddy Cheung/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2165
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