DETAILED ACTION
In a communication received on 13 April 2026, the applicants amended claims 1, 8, and 15 and added claims 21-23.
Claims 1, 2, 4-11, 13-16 and 18-23 are pending.
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 Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1, 8, 15, and 21-23 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
With respect to claim 1, the applicants' remarks pertain to whether or not the cited prior art of record teaches the amended biometric-threshold stress determination and keyword-review limitations. The examiner respectfully submits that the applicant arguments are unpersuasive. The cited prior art clearly discloses the claimed features because as a whole Baracaldo Angel discloses collecting various biometric sensor streams and detecting suspicious keywords in a communication transcription in combination with Jain disclosing including analyzing streams of biometric data according to operating threshold parameters.
Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue requires interpreting the claim language, and considering both the invention and the prior art references as a whole (See 2141.02 "Differences Between Prior art and Claimed Invention).
Baracaldo Angel discloses the claimed: receiving biometric information relating to a user, the biometric information indicating a plurality of physiological data points that relate to different physiological conditions of the user (i.e., sensors that can detect blood pressure or other biometric measures to determine stress levels of the user; collects and aggregates multiple inputs while intercepting calls/messages to asses risk of communications in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0044-0045).
In addition to the above, Jain, in order to improve robustness of monitoring and managing a user's stress allowing the determination of stress caused by particular activities (¶0216), discloses the claimed: determining, based on the received biometric information that the user is in a stressed state, the determining including comparing each of the physiological data points to corresponding thresholds (i.e., accessing physiological streams from sensors and analyzing the stream against an operating threshold to identify out of range values in Jain, ¶0061-0062).
With respect to claim 21, Baracaldo Angel discloses: wherein the analyzing the usage information includes reviewing a communication associated with the stressed state for keywords, and wherein the determining is further based on whether any of the keywords were found within the communication (i.e., a keyword extraction model detecting suspicious keywords such as "payment", "money transfer" and "social security number" from a transcription of the communication; the keywords are incorporated into models corresponding to the overall risk metric in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0061-0062, ¶0074-0077).
Clearly, the mapped combination teaches the stress state threshold comparisons along with the keyword review limitations. Similar reasoning applies to claims 8, 15, and 22-23.
The examiner suggests incorporating an amendment that pertains to determining that the stressed state is the unjustified stressed state “based on both” positively recited steps of identifying the communication originates from an unknown source and identifying that the calendar lacks any scheduled calendar activity at the time of the communication that coincides with the stressed state. The applicant's published specification , ¶0016 and ¶0020, support that factors such as communication source and calendar events may be evaluated collectively. Such an amendment would require further search and/or consideration upon filing them in a formal response.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 4-11,13-16, and 18-23 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Baracaldo Angel et al. (US 2018/0240028 A1) in view of Jain et al. (US 2012/0289793 A1), and further in view of Thomas et al. (US 2020/0112636).
With respect to claim 1, Baracaldo Angel discloses: a method for preventing an identity theft attempt using a smart device (i.e., preventing victimization by social engineering tactics in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0044), comprising:
receiving biometric information relating to a user, the biometric information indicating a plurality of physiological data points that relate to different physiological conditions of the user (i.e., sensors that can detect blood pressure or other biometric measures to determine stress levels of the user; collects and aggregates multiple inputs while intercepting calls/messages to asses risk of communications in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0044-0045);
retrieving usage information of the smart device, the usage information (i.e., system collects multi-sensory inputs including intercepted call to perform context extraction of the possible phone scammer in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0047)
indicating one or more activities of the user (i.e., analysis of the person calling the user and the purpose of the intercepted call in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0059, ¶0060);
analyzing the usage information and the biometric information in response to the determining (i.e., correlate the inputs of the biometric measures and the call history, conversation signatures of trusted persons to perform an analysis of the risk of the phone call being a social engineering tactic or suspicious in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0047),
the analysis including identifying from the biometric information one or more stress indicators (i.e., determining emotional distress or stress indicators from corporal sensor devices during an intercepted phone call in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0066, ¶0068)
and comparing those stress indicators to the one or more activities of the user (i.e., integrating all variables including user stress and intercepted call characteristics including identity of caller and user stress and actions to assess an overall risk for the phone call in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0081);
identifying a real-time communication event involving the smart device as the identified activity (i.e., intercepting phone call to the user from the caller in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0035),
the real-time communication event originating from an unknown source (i.e., event corresponds to caller identifying themselves as a family member; detecting that the caller is actually unknown and not matching any trusted voice signatures in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0052, ¶0065);
identifying, in response to the user being in the unjustified stressed state (i.e., a risk assessment for a phone call based on stress and caller identity; the caller identifies themselves as family associated with lower stress but stress is unexpectedly elevated due to the nature of requesting money due to an accident as determined by various machine learning models in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0074, ¶0081, ¶0052)
and the identifying of the real-time communication event as the identified activity, an identity theft attempt associated with the communication event (i.e., identifying a caller as a potential scammer claiming an identity as a trusted family member but the voice signature is not recognized and the detected nature of the call is unexpectedly causing stress to the user in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0052); and
alerting the user of the identity theft attempt in response to the identifying (i.e., providing feedback to the user regarding the phone call risk assessment exceeding the threshold in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0051, ¶0052).
Baracaldo Angel discloses "The context and risk assessment unit 240 is configured to: (1) collect multi-sensory inputs for an intercepted phone call/voice message by aggregating data from the voice and context analyzer 220 and the external monitoring unit 230, (2) perform context extraction to integrate and correlate the inputs and call history, if available, and (3) perform risk assessment to determine an overall risk assessment metric for the phone call/voice message based on multi-sensory signature comparison"; risk assessment of a phone call based on the voice context and external monitoring that includes biometric data of the user such as sweat and heartrate corresponding with stress reactions (¶0045, ¶0047). Baracaldo Angel do(es) not explicitly disclose activity corresponding to the stressed state. Jain, in order to improve robustness of monitoring and managing a user's stress allowing the determination of stress caused by particular activities (¶0216), discloses:
determining, based on the received biometric information that the user is in a stressed state, the determining including comparing each of the physiological data points to corresponding thresholds (i.e., accessing physiological streams from sensors and analyzing the stream against an operating threshold to identify out of range values in Jain, ¶0061-0062);
identifying an activity from among the one or more activities of the user as corresponding to the stressed state (i.e., contextualize sensor data and identify correlations between accelerometer data, heart-rate, mood data thereby correlating stress with a particular activity in Jain, ¶0260).
Baracaldo Angel discloses "wearable sensor devices include ... corporal sensor devices that monitor body temperature, sweat, heartbeat, blood pressure, and other biometric measures ... the system 200 may analyze ... in determining an overall risk assessment metric for an intercepted phone call/voice message" (¶0030). Baracaldo Angel do(es) not explicitly disclose expected stress baseline by identified activity. Jain, in order to improve robustness of monitoring and managing a user's stress allowing the determination of stress caused by particular activities (¶0216), discloses:
determining, based on the identifying and the analyzing, whether the stressed state of the user is a justified stressed state (i.e., contextualizing and correlating stress to an activity based on a comparison of levels of activity that produce abnormal heart-rate spikes in the user; a justified stressed state being an elevated heart-rate that coincides with increased activity in Jain, ¶0140)
or an unjustified stressed state (i.e., spike in heart-rate that coincides with a marginal elevated physical activity in Jain, ¶0140).
Baracaldo Angel discloses a caller identifying themselves as family but the system does not recognize their voice therefore correlating stress with an unknown caller (¶0081). Baracaldo Angel do(es) not explicitly disclose absence of a known event such as in calendar data to correlate with the stress. Jain, in order to improve robustness of monitoring and managing a user's stress allowing the determination of stress caused by particular activities (¶0216), discloses:
the unjustified stressed state being a stressed state of the user that results from the identified activity that is not known or not expected to cause the stressed state (i.e., see activity that may be marginally physical yet producing a spike in heart-rate, ¶0140; as an example, determine correlation with stress and the user's calendar data - "may map a heart-rate data stream against the activity data stream from an electronic calendar, showing that the user's heart-rate peaked during a particularly stressful activity ( e.g., dinner with the in-laws)", ¶0057; contextualizing physiological sensor data and another data stream such as environmental data to identify causes of stress in Jain, ¶0266).
Based on Baracaldo Angel in view of Jain, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize the teachings of Jain to improve upon those of Baracaldo Angel in order to improve robustness of monitoring and managing a user's stress allowing the determination of stress caused by particular activities.
Baracaldo Angel discloses collect information from external sources in order to analyze the context of an intercepted phone call such as call history (¶0045, ¶0047). Baracaldo Angel and Jain do(es) not explicitly disclose the following. Thomas, in order to reduce frustration and nuisance of unwanted incoming calls by evaluating more context associated with the call (¶0002-0003), discloses: and not at a time of any scheduled activity recorded in a user calendar (i.e., attempting correlating the incoming calling party information to an entered calendar item; if no matching calendar entry, then divert unknown/unwanted call to voicemail or reject in Thomas, ¶0081, ¶0100).
Based on Baracaldo Angel in view of Jain, and further in view of Thomas, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize the teachings of Thomas to improve upon those of Baracaldo Angel in order to reduce frustration and nuisance of unwanted incoming calls by evaluating more context associated with the call.
With respect to claim 2, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the biometric information is received from a wearable device (i.e., the device is wearable as suggested by the device is a corporeal sensor that measures blood pressure and other biometric measures for determining stress levels in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0044).
With respect to claim 4, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the usage information (i.e., external data sources can be combined with sensor data to further assess context of a phone call, the data source including a call history in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0047)
and [includes] a call log (i.e., combining sensor and external data sources including a call history to assess the risk of a phone call that is suspicious and relies on social engineering tactics in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0047)
whether the call log includes a call received from an unknown number at the time of the stressed state (i.e., assessing risk of the call / voicemail based on referencing trusted phone numbers and voice samples of trusted individuals to determine the risks corresponding to stress during a call in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0034).
Baracaldo Angel discloses a caller identifying themselves as family but the system does not recognize their voice therefore correlating stress with an unknown caller (¶0081). Baracaldo Angel do(es) not explicitly disclose absence of a known event such as in calendar data to correlate with the stress. Jain, in order to improve robustness of monitoring and managing a user's stress allowing the determination of stress caused by particular activities (¶0216), discloses:
includes calendar information (i.e., calendar event data may be used to correlate stress with calendared events in Jain, ¶0057), and
wherein the determining includes determining whether the calendar information includes a known calendar event at a time of the stressed state (i.e., determining a correlation with the user stress data with corresponding calendar event - "may map a heart-rate data stream against the activity data stream from an electronic calendar, showing that the user's heart-rate peaked during a particularly stressful activity (e.g., dinner with the in-laws)" in Jain, ¶0057; and querying user for more information possibly with regards to an event determination in a calendar requiring explicit query of user for their current activity - "a sensor 112 may query a user at a dynamic rate ... based on ... prior input into the sensor 112, data streams from other sensors 112 or nodes 114 in sensor array 110, output from analysis system 180, or other suitable factors ... if a heart-rate monitor in sensor array 110 indicates an increase in the user's heart-rate, a user-input sensor may immediately query the user to input his current activity" in Jain, ¶0060).
Based on Baracaldo Angel in view of Jain, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize the teachings of Jain to improve upon those of Baracaldo Angel in order to improve robustness of monitoring and managing a user's stress allowing the determination of stress caused by particular activities.
With respect to claim 5, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the method of claim 4, wherein the analyzing includes comparing a telephone number included in the call log to telephone numbers included in a contact list associated with the smart device (i.e., context aware fraud and abuse prevention system utilizes trusted phone numbers and the call history to analyze and assess the risk of a phone being from a scammer in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0033-0034, ¶0047).
With respect to claim 6, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the analyzing includes providing the usage information and the biometric information to a machine-learning algorithm (i.e., the machine learning models that may be trained based on the risk assessment unit’s operation may be trained offline or on the device itself in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0055).
With respect to claim 7, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the alerting includes at least one of transmitting a text message to the user of the smart device or causing an alert to be displayed on the smart device (i.e., the monitoring and action device may be a smartphone that can provide the feedback as a text to the user with its screen and network connectivity in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0024, ¶0051).
With respect to claim 8, the limitation(s) of claim 8 are similar to those of claim(s) 1. Therefore, claim 8 is rejected with the same reasoning as claim(s) 1.
Baracaldo Angel further discloses: a wireless communication device, comprising:
a transceiver configured to communicate with an external device (i.e., a smartphone to monitor and receive calls in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0024);
a memory that stores usage logs of the wireless communication device (i.e., a smartphone to monitor and receive calls and record them in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0024); and
one or more processors (i.e., multiple computing devices in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0024)
configured to: receive information indicating receipt of a communication from an unknown entity (i.e., interception of incoming and outgoing phone calls and/or voice messages associated with scams, warning that the caller does not match voice signature of known persons in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0035, ¶0052, ¶0059).
With respect to claim 9, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the wireless communication device of claim 8, wherein the information indicating receipt of a communication from an unknown entity includes a phone number or email address (i.e., maintaining and referencing known scammer information/signatures and/or comparing to trusted phone numbers for received phone calls in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0033-¶0034).
With respect to claim 10, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the wireless communication device of claim 9, wherein the analyzing includes comparing the received phone number or email address to an address book of known contacts of the user. (i.e., referencing a list of trusted phone numbers of trusted contacts when analyzing the context of received phone calls with unknown phone numbers in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0033-¶0034).
With respect to claim 11, the limitation(s) of claim 11 are similar to those of claim(s) 2. Therefore, claim 11 is rejected with the same reasoning as claim(s) 2.
With respect to claim 13, the limitation(s) of claim 13 are similar to those of claim(s) 4. Therefore, claim 13 is rejected with the same reasoning as claim(s) 4.
With respect to claim 14, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the wireless communication device of claim 8, wherein the biometric data includes at least one of a heart rate, blood pressure, or electrodermal activity (i.e., a biometric sensor that measures the blood pressure of the user to determine stress levels in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0044).
With respect to claim 15, the limitation(s) of claim 15 are similar to those of claim(s) 1. Therefore, claim 15 is rejected with the same reasoning as claim(s) 1.
With respect to claim 16, the limitation(s) of claim 16 are similar to those of claim(s) 2. Therefore, claim 16 is rejected with the same reasoning as claim(s) 1 and 2.
With respect to claim 18, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the method of claim 15, wherein the stress indicator is an indicator that the user is in a stressed state (i.e., sensors that can detect blood pressure or other biometric measures to determine stress levels of the user in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0044).
With respect to claim 19, the limitation(s) of claim 19 are similar to those of claim(s) 4. Therefore, claim 19 is rejected with the same reasoning as claim(s) 4.
With respect to claim 20, the limitation(s) of claim 20 are similar to those of claim(s) 6. Therefore, claim 20 is rejected with the same reasoning as claim(s) 6.
With respect to claim 21, Baracaldo Angel discloses: the method of claim 1, wherein the analyzing the usage information includes reviewing a communication associated with the stressed state for keywords, and wherein the determining is further based on whether any of the keywords were found within the communication (i.e., a keyword extraction model detecting suspicious keywords such as "payment", "money transfer" and "social security number" from a transcription of the communication; the keywords are incorporated into models corresponding to the overall risk metric in Baracaldo Angel, ¶0061-0062, ¶0074-0077).
With respect to claim 22, the limitation(s) of claim 22 are similar to those of claim(s) 21. Therefore, claim 22 is rejected with the same reasoning as claim(s) 21.
With respect to claim 23, the limitation(s) of claim 23 are similar to those of claim(s) 21. Therefore, claim 23 is rejected with the same reasoning as claim(s) 21.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Sylvain (US 2008/0101573 A1) ¶0028, ¶0029, and ¶0035 disclose invoking lookup of calendar entries at the time of receiving a call to determine no blocking scheduled event / free calendar state. The disclosure may suggest improvements in contextually aware call processing based on correlating incoming calls with the recipient's calendar schedule at the time of communication being received. However, Sylvain may not explicitly disclose assessing the risk of the incoming call based on the user not having a corresponding calendar entry for the incoming call.
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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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 mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHERMAN L LIN whose telephone number is (571)270-7446. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM (Eastern).
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Joon Hwang can be reached on 571-272-4036. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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Sherman Lin
7/8/2026
/S. L./Examiner, Art Unit 2447
/JOON H HWANG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2447
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