DETAILED ACTION
This action is responsive to the following communications: Original Application filed on December 29, 2022. All references to this application refer to the U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2023/0124188 A1.
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claims 1-18 are pending in this case. Claims 1, 7, and 13 are the independent claims. Claims 1-18 are rejected.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55. Applicant has perfected priority to CN 202111592599.9, filed on December 23, 2021.
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 4, 10, and 16 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.
Each of dependent claims 4, 10, and 16 recite “obtaining a path representing an industry chain containing the keyword from a knowledge graph for industry chain according to the keyword; and encoding the path into the knowledge-enhanced vector.” The term “industry chain” is not defined in the claims nor the Specification. Paragraphs 0034-0037 describe using industry chains (or industry chain knowledge), but fail to define what an industry chain actually is. Further, the only example provided—actually a path representing an industry chain—appears in paragraph 0035, and recites “breeding and slaughtering, food processing, distribution/logistics, brand promotion.” There is no context provided to clarify what an industry chain actually is.
Accordingly, dependent claims 4, 10, and 16 are rendered 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.
For the purposes of examination, an industry chain is interpreted as reciting a chain of keywords associated with the identified industry, and a path representing an industry chain is interpreted as reciting a path from a root node to a leaf node extracted from the knowledge graph. To overcome these rejections, the Examiner recommends amending the claims to explicitly define the term “industry chain” and “path representing an industry chain.”
To expedite a complete examination of the instant application, the claims rejected above under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention, are further rejected as set forth below in anticipation of amendments to these claims to correct the failure.
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 claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
With regard to claim 1,
Step 2A, Prong 1
This part of the eligibility analysis evaluates whether the claim recites a judicial exception. As explained in MPEP 2106.04, subsection II, a claim “recites” a judicial exception when the judicial exception is “set forth” or “described” in the claim.
Claim 1 recites:
A method, comprising:
obtaining a text;
inputting the text and a first question into a first machine reading comprehension model to obtain a first round of answer, wherein the first question inquires about cause of a causal relationship in the text, and the first round of answer comprises at least one cause; and
inputting the text and a second question into a second machine reading comprehension model to obtain a second round of answer, wherein the second question inquires about effect of the causal relationship in the text, and the second round of answer comprises at least one effect of the at least one cause.
The broadest reasonable interpretation of the bolded limitations above are directed to a mental process able to be performed in the human mind or by a human using pen and paper. A human can perform reading comprehension tasks to ascertain causal relationships between questions and answers and effects of causal relationships in a text sample mentally or with pen and paper.
Step 2A, Prong 1 (Yes).
Step 2A, Prong 2
This part of the eligibility analysis evaluates whether the claim as a whole integrates the recited judicial exception into a practical application of the exception or whether the claim is “directed to” the judicial exception. This evaluation is performed by (1) identifying whether there are any additional elements recited in the claim beyond the judicial exception, and (2) evaluating those additional elements individually and in combination to determine whether the claim as a whole integrates the exception into a practical application. See MPEP 2106.04(d).
The additional elements in this claim are “first machine reading comprehension model” and “second machine reading comprehension model.” These element are recited at a high level of generality and thus is a generic computer component performing computer functions. Thus these are mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. See MPEP 2106.05(f).
Even when viewed in combination the additional element does not integrate the recited judicial exception into a practical application.
Step 2A, Prong 2 (Yes).
Step 2B
This part of the eligibility analysis evaluates whether the claim as a whole amounts to significantly more than the recited exception i.e., whether any additional element, or combination of additional elements, adds an inventive concept to the claim. See MPEP 2106.05.
As explained with respect to Step 2A, the additional elements are the “first machine reading comprehension model” and the “second machine reading comprehension model.” These additional elements are at best mere instructions to apply the abstract ideas and cannot provide an inventive concept, even when considered in combination. See MPEP 2106.05(f).
Step 2B (Yes).
Claim 1 is ineligible.
With respect to independent claims 7 and 13,
These claims are similar in scope to Claim 1 and are rejected under a similar rationale. The processors, memory, and non-transitory computer-readable storage medium recited in these claims are also generic computing components.
Claims 7 and 13 are ineligible.
Dependent Claims:
Claims 2-6 and 14-18: These claims only recite further abstract ideas (mental processes: generating initial answer vector, generating knowledge enhanced vector, extracting keywords, obtaining a path from a knowledge graph, encoding the path into the knowledge-enhanced vector, performing vector fusion, decoding the fused vector) and thus are ineligible.
Claims 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18: These claims recite further generic computer components (“initial machine reading comprehension model”), (“knowledge graph”), and (“attention mechanism”), and as explained above these do not provide a practical application or inventive concept and thus are ineligible.
To expedite a complete examination of the instant application, the claims rejected above under 35 U.S.C. 101, as relating to judicial exceptions without significantly more, are further rejected as set forth below in anticipation of amendments to these claims to place them within the four statutory categories of invention.
Examiner’s Note
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.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-3, 5, 7-9, 11, 13-15, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0257855 A1, filed by Minami et al., as a U.S. National Stage Entry on April 23, 2020, and published on August 13, 2020 (hereinafter Minami).
With respect to independent claim 1, Minami discloses a method, comprising:
Obtaining a text; Minami discloses obtaining a text input (see paragraphs 0075 [describing step S110 of Fig. 5, in which a cause-effect sentence is extracted from a document for analysis, which includes obtaining the text from which the sentence is extracted]).
Inputting the text and a first question into a first machine reading comprehension model to obtain a first round of answer, wherein the first question inquires about cause of a causal relationship in the text, and the first round of answer comprises at least one cause; Minami discloses inputting the text and a first question into an MRC model to obtain an answer concerning a causal relationship in the text/sentence (see paragraphs 0049-0050 [describing examples of cause-effect sentences broken down into components of cause expressions and effect expressions presenting in Fig. 3], 0052 [the cause-effect extraction unit is a ML model], 0056 [describing the query acquisition unit which acquires a query based on the document]).
Inputting the text and a second question into a second machine reading comprehension model to obtain a second round of answer, wherein the second question inquires about effect of the causal relationship in the text, and the second round of answer comprises at least one effect of the at least one cause; Minami discloses inputting the text and a second question into a second model to obtain effect of the cause (see paragraphs 0053-0054 [describing how to determine relevant cause-effect pairs by scoring the extracted data and ensuring that the cause-effect pairs meet/exceed an importance threshold] and 0059-0060 [describing how similarity (degrees of similarity) between causes and effects are ascertained]; see also, paragraphs 0049-0050, 0052, and 0056, described supra).
With respect to dependent claim 2, Minami discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the inputting the text and the second question into the second machine reading comprehension model to obtain the second round of answer comprises:
Inputting the text and the second question into an initial machine reading comprehension model of the second machine reading comprehension model to obtain an initial answer vector; Minami discloses inputting the text and second question into an initial MRC model of the second MRC model to obtain an initial answer vector (see paragraphs 0049-0050, 0052-0054, 0056, and 0059-0060, described supra, claim 1).
Extracting a keyword in the text through the second machine reading comprehension model; Minami discloses extracting a keyword from the text using the second MRC model (see paragraphs 0055 [describing the keyword extraction unit which extracts keywords or phrases including in the text to be used to extract causes and effects]).
Generating the second round of answer according to the initial answer vector and the keyword; Minami discloses generating the second answer (effect) according to the initial answer vector and the keyword (see paragraph 0055, described supra; see also, paragraphs 0049-0050, 0052-0054, 0056, and 0059-0060, described supra, claim 1).
With respect to dependent claim 3, Minami discloses the method of claim 2, wherein the generating the second round of answer comprises:
Generating a knowledge-enhanced vector according to the keyword; Minami discloses generating a knowledge-enhanced vector according to the keyword (see paragraph 0055, described supra, claim 2).
Generating the second round of answer according to the initial answer vector and the knowledge-enhanced vector; Minami discloses generating the second round of answer (effect) based on the initial answer vector and the knowledge-enhanced vector (see paragraph 0055, described supra, claim 2; see also, paragraphs 0049-0050, 0052-0054, 0056, and 0059-0060, described supra, claim 1).
With respect to dependent claim 5, Minami discloses the method of claim 3 wherein the generating the second round of answer comprises:
Performing vector fusion on the initial answer vector and the knowledge-enhanced vector to obtain a knowledge-enhanced answer vector; Minami discloses performing vector fusion of the answer vector and knowledge-enhanced vector to obtain a knowledge-enhanced answer vector (see paragraph 0055, described supra, claim 2; see also, paragraphs 0049-0050, 0052-0054, 0056, and 0059-0060, described supra, claim 1).
Decoding the knowledge-enhanced answer vector to obtain the second round of answer; Minami discloses decoding the knowledge-enhanced vector to obtain the second round of answer (effect) (see paragraph 0055, described supra, claim 2; see also, paragraphs 0049-0050, 0052-0054, 0056, and 0059-0060, described supra, claim 1).
Independent claim 7, and its respective dependent claims 8, 9, and 11, recites an electronic device, comprising: a processor; and a memory communicatively connected to the processor, wherein the memory stores instructions executable by the processor, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor, are configured to cause the processor to perform operations comprising the method of independent claim 1, and its respective dependent claims 2, 3, and 5. Accordingly, independent claim 7, and its respective dependent claims 8, 9, and 11, are rejected under the same rationales used to reject independent claim 1, and its respective dependent claims 2, 3, and 5, which are incorporated herein.
Independent claim 13, and its respective dependent claims 14, 15, and 17, recites a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer instructions, wherein the computer instructions are configured to enable a computer to perform operations comprising the method of independent claim 1, and its respective dependent claims 2, 3, and 5. Accordingly, independent claim 13, and its respective dependent claims 14, 15, and 17, are rejected under the same rationales used to reject independent claim 1, and its respective dependent claims 2, 3, and 5, which are incorporated herein.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 4, 6, 10, 12, 16, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Minami, in view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0300831 A1, filed by Friede et al., on August 3, 2021, and published on September 22, 2022 (hereinafter Friede).
With respect to dependent claim 4, Minami discloses the method of claim 3, wherein the keyword comprises a keyword for industry; Minami discloses the keyword comprises a keyword for an industry (see Minami, paragraph 0055, described supra, claim 2).
Minami fails to expressly disclose the method wherein the generating a knowledge-enhanced vector according to the keyword comprises:
Obtaining a path representing an industry chain containing the keyword from a knowledge graph for industry chain according to the keyword; and
Encoding the path into the knowledge-enhanced vector.
However, Friede teaches using knowledge graphs and extracted paths of nodes within those knowledge graphs to determine cause-effect pairs within documents (see Friede, paragraph 0068 [describing the use of KG paths as tokens that can receive their own embedding]).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Minami and Friede before him before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the method of Minami to incorporate knowledge graphs and knowledge graph paths as taught by Friede, in order to extract causal relationships. One would have been motivated to make such a combination because this helps to provide contextual information that may be missing from knowledge graphs as taught by Friede (see Friede, paragraph [“Two key problems to solve when handling general context within a self-attention based model are the following: (1) How can the model differentiate between different types of context while still recognizing connected information? (2) How can the useful context information that the model used for its decision-making be uncovered?”]).
With respect to dependent claim 6, Minami discloses the method of claim 5, as described above.
Minami fails to expressly disclose the method wherein the performing vector fusion on the initial answer vector and the knowledge-enhanced vector comprises: performing vector fusion on the initial answer vector and the knowledge-enhanced vector using an attention mechanism.
However, Friede teaches ML models that use attention mechanisms to extract casual relationships based on vectors and combined vectors (see Friede, paragraphs 0018 [describing the use of ML models with self-attention layers within the neural network framework], 0062 [the context transformer is an attention-based ML model], 0074 [describing how the primary content token, type number, and group number vectors can be added up to form a fused vector], and 0090-0091 [data is converted into vectors which are then added up to create a fused/combined vector]).
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, having the teachings of Minami and Friede before him before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the method of Minami to incorporate using attention mechanisms as taught by Friede. One would have been motivated to make such a combination because this helps to provide contextual information that may be missing from knowledge graphs as taught by Friede (see Friede, paragraph 0005, described supra).
Dependent claims 10 and 12 recite an electronic device, comprising: a processor; and a memory communicatively connected to the processor, wherein the memory stores instructions executable by the processor, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor, are configured to cause the processor to perform operations comprising the method of independent claim 1, and its respective dependent claims 4 and 6. Accordingly, dependent claims 8 and 10 are rejected under the same rationales used to reject dependent claims 4 and 6, which are incorporated herein.
Dependent claims 16 and 18 recite a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer instructions, wherein the computer instructions are configured to enable a computer to perform operations comprising the method of dependent claims 4 and 6. Accordingly, dependent claims 16 and 18 are rejected under the same rationales used to reject dependent claims 4 and 6, which are incorporated herein.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to Applicant's disclosure.
This includes Machine Translations for Foreign References and the Gu reference (NPL) listed on the Information Disclosure Statements
This includes PCT equivalents of certain Foreign References listed on the Information Disclosure Statements
See PTO-892.
It is noted that any citation to specific pages, columns, figures, or lines in the prior art references any interpretation of the references should not be considered to be limiting in any way. A reference is relevant for all it contains and may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably suggested to one having ordinary skill in the art. In re Heck, 699 F.2d 1331-33, 216 USPQ 1038-39 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (quoting In re Lemelson, 397 F.2d 1006, 1009, 158 USPQ 275, 277 (CCPA 1968)).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the Examiner should be directed to ERIC J. BYCER whose telephone number is (571) 270-3741. The Examiner can normally be reached Monday - Thursday 9am-6pm, and alternate Fridays 9am-5pm.
Examiner interviews are available via a variety of formats. See MPEP § 713.01. To schedule an interview, Applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) Form at https://www.uspto.gov/InterviewPractice.
If attempts to reach the Examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the Examiner’s supervisor, MATT ELL can be reached on (571) 270-3264. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ERIC J. BYCER/
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2141
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