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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) received on November 7, 2022 has been considered by examiner.
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 1-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claims are not directed to patent eligible subject matter.
Claims 1-18 do fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claims recite a machine (i.e., computer useable medium1 and system) and process (i.e., a method).
Although claims 1-18 fall under at least one of the four statutory categories, it should be determined whether the claim wholly embraces a judicially recognized exception, which includes laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas, or is it a particular practical application of a judicial exception (See MPEP 2106 I and II).
Claims 1-18 are directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea) without significantly more.
Part I: Step 2A, Prong One: Identify the Abstract Idea
Under step 2A, Prong One of the Alice framework, the claims are analyzed to determine if the claims are directed to a judicial exception. MPEP §2106.04(a). The determination consists of a) identifying the specific limitations in the claim that recite an abstract idea; and b) determining whether the identified limitations fall within at least one of the three subject matter groupings of abstract ideas (i.e., mathematical concepts, mental processes, and certain methods of organizing human activity).
The identified limitations of independent claim 11 (representative of independent claims 1 and 18) recite:
a) an organ ontology comprising of organs, tissues, cells and its associated keywords;
b) a plurality of disease datasets comprising of information indicative of the disease;
c) a plurality of publication datasets comprising of plurality of abstract of publications;
at least one server communicably coupled with the organ ontology, the plurality of disease datasets, and the plurality of publication datasets, comprising one or more processors configured to:
d) Identify one or more organs associated with a disease from one or more categories, wherein the one or more categories comprises of an organ ontology, one or more information indicative of the disease, plurality of abstract of publications,
e) Assign weights to each of the one or more categories and the identified one or more organs, wherein the weights are assigned to the identified one or more organs based on one or more of- frequency of the keywords appearing the one or more categories, and one or more location of the keywords appearing the plurality of abstracts of publications,
f) Normalize and sum the assigned weights to determine a probability and association indicative of the one or more organ being associated with the disease, and
g) Generate a graph neural network of the one or more organs associated with the disease, wherein the graph neural network is based on the probability and the association indicative of the one or more organ being associated with the disease.
The identified limitations of a), b), c), and d) under their broadest reasonable interpretation, cover performance of the limitations in the mind (including observation, evaluation, judgement or opinion). That is, other than reciting a server and processor, nothing in the claim elements precludes the steps form practically being performed in the mind. For example, the identified limitations encompass a user reviewing organ ontologies and publications to identify an organ associated with a disease. The identified limitations fall within the Mental Processes groupings of abstract ideas. The identified limitations of e), f), and g) under their broadest reasonable interpretation, covers mathematical relationships, formulas, equations, or calculations. Assigning weights, normalizing and summing the assigned weights to determine a probability and generate a graph neural network uses a series of mathematical calculations. The identified limitations fall within the Mathematical Concepts groupings of abstract ideas. Thus, the claimed invention recites a judicial exception.
Part I: Step 2A, prong two: additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application
Under step 2A, Prong Two of the Alice framework, the claims are analyzed to determine whether the claims recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. In particular, the claims are evaluated to determine if there are additional elements or a combination of elements that apply, rely on, or use the judicial exception in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception, such that the claims are more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the judicial exception.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. As a whole, the server and processor in the steps are recited at a high-level of generality such that it amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, this additional element does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Dependent claims 2-10 and 12-17, when analyzed as a whole are held to be patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the additional recited limitations fail to establish that the claims are not directed to an abstract idea:
Mathematical concepts—claims 2 and 12, generating disease similarity score for one or more diseases based on the graph neural network for one or more organ associated with one or more disease.
Mathematical concepts—claims 3 and 13, wherein the disease similarity score is generated based on implementing a CNN Model architecture for comparing the graph neural network of the one or more organs associated with one or more diseases.
Mental Processes—claim 4, the method as claimed in claim 1, comprises creating, by one or more processors, the organ ontology, wherein the organ ontology comprises organs, tissues, cells and its associated keywords.
Mental Processes—claims 5 and 14, a wherein creating the organ ontology comprises parsing plurality of organ datasets.
Mental Processes—claim 6, the method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the method comprises extracting information indicative of the disease from a plurality of disease datasets.
Mental Processes—claim 7, the method as claimed in claim 1, wherein the method comprises extracting plurality of abstract from a plurality of publication datasets.
Mental Processes—claims 8 and 15, wherein the one or more locations in the abstract of the publication comprising introduction, methods & materials, and conclusion.
Mathematical concepts—claims 9 and 16, wherein a higher weightage is assigned to the identified one or more organs for higher frequency of the keywords appearing in the one or more information indicative of the disease, and methods & materials location of the one or more location in the abstract.
Mathematical concepts—claims 10 and 17, wherein the probability output denotes a probability of the said organ being associated with the respective disease, and the association indicative of the one or more organ being associated with the disease specifies a combination of the one or more organs extracted from each of the abstract of the publication.
Since these claims are directed to an abstract idea, the Office must determine whether the remaining limitations “do significantly more” than describe the abstract idea.
Part II. Determine whether any Element, or Combination, Amounts to“Significantly More” than the Abstract Idea itself
Under Part II, the steps of the claims, when considered individually and as an ordered combination, do not improve another technology or technical field, do not improve the functioning of the computer itself, and are not enough to qualify as "significantly more". For example, the steps require no more than a conventional computer to perform generic computer functions. As stated above, the server and processor in the steps are recited at a high-level of generality such that it amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Therefore, based on the two-part Mayo analysis, there are no meaningful limitations in the claim that transform the exception into a patent eligible application such that the claim amounts to significantly more than the exception itself. Claims 1-18, when considered individually and as an ordered combination, are rejected as ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Dependent claims 2-10 and 12-17 when analyzed as a whole are held to be patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the additional claims do no recite significantly more than an abstract idea.
Conclusion
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/CHINYERE MPAMUGO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3685
1 Claim interpretation affects the evaluation of both criteria for eligibility. For example, in Mentor Graphics
v. EVE-USA, Inc., 851 F.3d 1275, 112 USPQ2d 1120 (Fed. Cir. 2017), claim interpretation was crucial to
the court’s determination that claims to a “machine-readable medium” were not to a statutory category. In
Mentor Graphics, the court interpreted the claims in light of the specification, which expressly defined the
medium as encompassing “any data storage device” including random-access memory and carrier
waves. In this case, Paragraph [0058] of Applicant’s specification discloses, “the database may be or contain a computer-readable medium, such as a hard disk device, an optical disk device, or a tape device, a flash memory or other similar solid state memory device, or an array of devices, including devices in a storage area network or other configurations. A computer program product may be tangibly embodied in an information carrier. The information carrier may be a computer-readable or machine-readable medium, such as database” The specification discloses non-transitory storage devices only. Thus, claim 18 is not directed to a transitory signal per se.
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