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 .
Claims 38-40 are canceled.
Claims 43 is added.
Claims 21-37 and 41-43 are presented for examination.
The claims and only the claims form the metes and bounds of the invention. “Office personnel are to give claims their broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the supporting disclosure. In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054-55, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027-28 (Fed. Cir. 1997). Limitations appearing in the specification but not recited in the claim are not read into the claim. In re Prater, 415 F.2d 1393, 1404-05, 162 USPQ 541, 550-551 (CCPA 1969)” (MPEP p 2100-8, c 2, I 45-48; p 2100-9, c 1, l 1-4). The Examiner has full latitude to interpret each claim in the broadest reasonable sense. The Examiner will reference prior art using terminology familiar to one of ordinary skill in the art. Such an approach is broad in concept and can be either explicit or implicit in meaning.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s remarks/amendment was filed on 19 December 2025.
US Patent 6,044,347 by Abella et al. is introduced for the rejection of the instant claims.
Applicant’s arguments have been considered but they are moot in view of new ground(s) of rejection. However, the Examiner welcomes any suggestion(s) Applicant may have on moving prosecution forward. The Examiner’s contact information is in the Conclusion of this office action.
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.
Claims 21-35 and 43 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US PGPUB 2013/0339380 by Meschkat in view of US Patent 6,044,347 by Abella et al. (“Abella”).
As to Claim 21, Meschkat teaches a method comprising: receiving a first portion of an intended input via a user interface (Meschkat: at least ¶0015; “where the user has entered the search string "new" 110”);
based on determining that the first portion of the intended input is incomplete: (a) generating for display at least a portion of the first portion of the intended input (Meschkat: at least ¶¶0016-0017; “determines a measure of query completeness for the entered search string. If the measure of query completeness is below a threshold, the mapping application provides general query suggestions” and “determined that the measure of query completeness for the search string "new" is below the threshold” and “provided general query suggestions 112-115”; note: Fig. 1B shows, for example, “New England” with at least a portion of “new”);
receiving a second portion of the intended input via the user interface (Meschkat: at least ¶0019; “search string 125 in the text entry field is now "new y,"”); and
based on determining that a combination of the first and the second portions of the intended input is complete: generating for display data based on a search (Meschkat: at least ¶0019; “determined that the measure of query completeness for the search string "new y" is above the threshold”; ¶0024 further discloses “query suggest engine can generate query suggestions by selecting queries stored in a query repository 216”; ¶¶0035-0036 also disclose “to provide specific query suggestions, the system can provide the top N most probable queries that include the entered search string, for example. The number of specific query suggestions, N, can be the number” and “to provide general query suggestions, the system can determine one or more specific query suggestions, e.g., the top N most probable queries that include the entered search string. The system next determines, from the one or more specific query suggestions, one or more general categories. For example, each specific query suggestion can be stored in a query suggestion repository that includes information associating each specific query suggestion to one or more general categories. From the one or more general categories, the system determines one or more general query suggestions. For example, each general category can have an associated general query suggestion stored in the query repository. Alternatively, the system can determine the top N most probable general categories from all queries that include the entered search string”; note: combination of “new” and “y” would be complete when user enters “y”; note 2: a query can be a search) that is based on the first and second portions of the intended input (Meschkat: at least ¶0019; “the search string 125 in the text entry field is now "new y,"” and “determined that the measure of query completeness for the search string "new y" is above the threshold” and “provides specific query suggestions 116-119 for display in the drop down menu below the text entry field”; note: items 116-119 are based on “new y”).
Meschkat does not explicitly disclose, but Abella discloses based on determining that the first portion of the intended input is incomplete: (b) refraining from generating for display any data based on a search that is based on the first portion of the intended input (Abella: at least Col. 6 Line 64 – Col. 7 Line 9; “augmentation is the opposite of relaxation. An under- constrained request may require augmenting the information that the dialogue system possesses in order to select among several possible solutions to the request.
Was Amadeus nominated for an academy award?
Is Amadeus the movie's title? No.
There are several people with the name Amadeus. What is Amadeus’ occupation? Composer.
In this example there was not enough information to answer the initial question”; note: input query that requires augmenting is incomplete; augmenting serves to supplement existing input).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Abella’s feature of based on determining that the first portion of the intended input is incomplete: (b) refraining from generating for display any data based on a search that is based on the first portion of the intended input (Abella: at least Col. 6 Line 64 – Col. 7 Line 9) with Meschkat’s method.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to process under-constrained (incomplete) query requests (Abella: at least Col. 6 Line 64-67).
Claim 26 (a system claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 21, and is similarly rejected.
Claim 31 (a non-transitory computer readable medium claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 21, and is similarly rejected.
As to Claim 22, Meschkat and Abella teach the method of claim 21, wherein the intended input comprises a phrase (Meschkat: at least ¶¶0015, 0019; “the user has entered the search string "new" 110” and “search string 125 in the text entry field is now "new y,"; note: search string comprises a phrase); wherein the first portion comprises a first portion of the phrase (Meschkat: at least ¶0015; “the user has entered the search string “new” 110””; note: “new” as first portion); and wherein the second portion comprises a second portion of the phrase sequentially following the first portion (Meschkat: at least ¶0019; “search string 125 in the text entry field is now "new y,"; note: “y” as second portion sequentially following “new”).
Claim 27 (a system claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 22, and is similarly rejected.
Claim 32 (a non-transitory computer readable medium claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 22, and is similarly rejected.
As to Claim 23, Meschkat and Abella teach the method of claim 21, wherein the intended input comprises a keyword (Meschkat: at least ¶¶0015, 0019; “the user has entered the search string "new" 110” and “search string 125 in the text entry field is now "new y,"; note: search string comprises search keyword);
wherein the first portion comprises a first portion of the keyword, and the second portion comprises a second portion of the keyword (Meschkat: at least ¶¶0015, 0019; “the user has entered the search string "new" 110” and “search string 125 in the text entry field is now "new y,"; note: “new” and “y” as first portion and second portion of keyword).
Claim 28 (a system claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 23, and is similarly rejected.
Claim 33 (a non-transitory computer readable medium claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 23, and is similarly rejected.
As to Claim 24, Meschkat and Abella teach the method of claim 21, wherein the determining that the first portion of the intended input is incomplete is based on a length of the first portion of the intended input (Meschkat: at least ¶¶0017, 0019; “the measure of query completeness for the search string "new" is below the threshold” and “the search string "new y" is above the threshold”; note: “new” has shorter length than “new y” and is below threshold).
Claim 29 (a system claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 24, and is similarly rejected.
Claim 34 (a non-transitory computer readable medium claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 24, and is similarly rejected.
As to Claim 25, Meschkat and Abella teach the method of claim 21, wherein the generating for display data based on a search that is based on the first and second portions of the intended input further comprises: comparing the first and the second portions with metadata associated with the data based on a search that is based on the first and second potions of the intended input (Meschkat: at least ¶0018; “provide specific query suggestions 150 associated with the category referred to by the selected general query suggestion”; ¶¶0003, 0029 also disclose “comparing the measure of query completeness to a threshold measure of query completeness” “each query suggestion can include information at various levels of specificity, ranging from general categories and sub-categories to more particular information such as names, addresses, telephone numbers, and operating hours. The amount of information revealed for a given query suggestion can be based on the measure of query completeness, such that more information is revealed for a given query suggestion when the measure of query completeness is higher”; ¶0036 further discloses “system can determine the top N most probable general categories from all queries that include the entered search string”).
Claim 30 (a system claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 25, and is similarly rejected.
Claim 35 (a non-transitory computer readable medium claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 25, and is similarly rejected.
As to Claim 43, Meschkat and Abella teach the method of claim 21, further comprising: performing a first search that is based on the first portion of the intended input (Abella: at least Col. 6 Line 64 – Col. 7 Line 9; “augmentation is the opposite of relaxation. An under- constrained request may require augmenting the information that the dialogue system possesses in order to select among several possible solutions to the request.
Was Amadeus nominated for an academy award?
Is Amadeus the movie's title? No.
There are several people with the name Amadeus. What is Amadeus’ occupation? Composer.
In this example there was not enough information to answer the initial question”); receiving first search results from the performed first search (Abella: at least Col. 6 Line 64 – Col. 7 Line 9; “augmentation is the opposite of relaxation. An under- constrained request may require augmenting the information that the dialogue system possesses in order to select among several possible solutions to the request.
Was Amadeus nominated for an academy award?
Is Amadeus the movie's title? No.
There are several people with the name Amadeus. What is Amadeus’ occupation? Composer.
In this example there was not enough information to answer the initial question”; note: possible solutions as first results); and
wherein the refraining from generating for display any data based on the search that is based on the first portion of the intended input further comprises refraining from generating for display data based on the received first search results (Abella: at least Col. 6 Lines 64-67 & Col. 7 Line 4; “augmentation is the opposite of relaxation. An under-constrained request may require augmenting the information that the dialogue system possesses in order to select among several possible solutions to the request” and “the problem is that there is more than one person with the name Amadeus”).
Claims 36-37 and 41-42 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US PGPUB 2013/0339380 by Meschkat in view of US Patent 6,044,347 by Abella et al. (“Abella”), and further in view of in view of US PGPUB 2014/0297252 by Prasad et al. (“Prasad”), and further in view of NPL “An Empirical Study of the Naïve Bayes Classifier” by Rish.
As to Claim 36, Meschkat and Abella teach the method of claim 21.
Meschkat and Abella do not explicitly disclose, but Prasad discloses wherein the determining that the first portion of the intended input is incomplete is based on a classifier (Prasad: at least ¶¶0047, 0077; “Incomplete Utterance: Incomplete utterances may be produced if the speaker abruptly stops. e.g., if they release a Push-To-Talk (PTT) button. For example, an incomplete utterance is "Can you tell me what these” and “we built an incomplete utterance detector (based on a MaxEnt classifier) that identifies fragments with ungrammatical structure in recognized transcriptions”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Prasad’s feature of wherein the determining that the first portion of the intended input is incomplete is based on a classifier (Prasad: at least ¶¶0047, 0077) with the method disclosed by Meschkat and Abella.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to allow for “active error detection and resolution for interactive linguistic translation” (Prasad: at least ¶¶0003, 0011; “a user may speak a word sequence for which a translation may be incorrect”).
Meschkat, Abella and Prasad do not explicitly disclose, but Rish discloses classifier that is a naïve Bayes classifier (Rish: at least Abstract; “the naive Bayes classifier greatly simplify learning”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Rish’s feature of classifier that is a naïve Bayes classifier (Rish: at least Abstract) with the method disclosed by Meschkat, Abella and Prasad.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to take advantage of a classifier that greatly simplifies learning (Rish: at least Abstract) and produce classification decision that “may often be correct even if its probability estimates are inaccurate” (Rish: at least Conclusion).
Claim 37 (a system claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 36, and is similarly rejected.
As to Claim 41, Meschkat and Abella teach the method of claim 21.
Meschkat and Abella do not explicitly disclose, but Prasad discloses wherein the determining that the combination of the first and the second portions of the intended input is complete is based on a classifier (Prasad: at least ¶¶0047, 0077; “Incomplete Utterance: Incomplete utterances may be produced if the speaker abruptly stops. e.g., if they release a Push-To-Talk (PTT) button. For example, an incomplete utterance is "Can you tell me what these” and “we built an incomplete utterance detector (based on a MaxEnt classifier) that identifies fragments with ungrammatical structure in recognized transcriptions”; note: any word can be a portion).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Prasad’s feature of wherein the determining that the combination of the first and the second portions of the intended input is complete is based on a classifier (Prasad: at least ¶¶0047, 0077) with the method disclosed by Meschkat and Abella.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to allow for “active error detection and resolution for interactive linguistic translation” (Prasad: at least ¶¶0003, 0011; “a user may speak a word sequence for which a translation may be incorrect”).
Meschkat, Abella and Prasad do not explicitly disclose, but Rish discloses classifier that is a naïve Bayes classifier (Rish: at least Abstract; “the naive Bayes classifier greatly simplify learning”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Rish’s feature of classifier that is a naïve Bayes classifier (Rish: at least Abstract) with the method disclosed by Meschkat, Abella and Prasad.
The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to take advantage of a classifier that greatly simplifies learning (Rish: at least Abstract) and produce classification decision that “may often be correct even if its probability estimates are inaccurate” (Rish: at least Conclusion).
Claim 42 (a system claim) corresponds in scope to Claim 41, and is similarly rejected.
Conclusion
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 Huen Wong whose telephone number is (571) 270 3426. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday - Friday (10:30AM EST -6:30PM EST). If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the Examiner's supervisor, Charles Rones can be reached on (571) 272-4085. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571) 273-8300 for regular communications and after final communications.
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/H.W/Examiner, Art Unit 2168 05 February 2026
/CHARLES RONES/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2168