DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Remarks
2. This Office action is responsive to the Request for Continued Examination (RCE) filed under 37 CFR §1.53(d) for the instant application on December 17, 2025. Applicants have properly set forth the RCE, which has been entered into the application, and an examination on the merits follows herewith.
Claims 1-2, 4-10, 12-18, and 20 have been examined and rejected. This Office action is responsive to the amendment filed on November 17, 2025, which has been entered in the above identified application.
Claim Objections
3. The corrections to claims 8 and 16 have been approved, and the objections to the claims are withdrawn.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
4. 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.
5. Claims 1-2, 4-7, 9-10, 12-15, 17-18, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kulkarni (U.S Patent No. 10,942,251) in view of Mohan et al (Pub. No. US 2014/0222493).
5-1. Regarding claims 1, 9, and 17, Kulkarni teaches the claim comprising: receiving workflow trigger sources from the HVAC equipment, the workflow trigger sources including one or more of (i) predictions or actionable insights, (ii) planned service requests, (iii) alarms, (iv) failures and (v) customer complaints, by disclosing a Bluetooth Low Energy enabled asset management system (BLEATS) that provides real time location and condition monitoring of assets [column 2, lines 42-44; column 3, lines 3-19]. A workflow management system assists an enterprise or other user in managing a workflow, such as a workflow involving one or more assets [column 12, lines 1-8]. An asset includes physical assets such as equipment [column 20, line 65 to column 21, line 6]. Leaf nodes monitor and communicate information regarding the assets [column 21, lines 39-43]. The BLEATS works in conjunction with an HVAC control system to control multiple different heating, cooling and ventilation elements, connected to and controlled by the leaf nodes [column 90, lines 23-27]. A given leaf node traversing the system generates a sequence of events and the system analyzes multiple such sequences and attempts to extract patterns from these events, which then represents workflows [column 86, lines 63-67]. Meaningful data aggregations and triggers may be established to provide desired data for different events corresponding to various industrial workflows [column 3, lines 30-33].
Kulkarni teaches generating two or more disparate workflow systems in response to the workflow trigger sources, wherein the two or more disparate workflow systems are configured for one or more of (i) improving comfort, health, and/or safety for an end user, (ii) improving performance of the HVAC equipment, (iii) reducing energy usage for the HVAC equipment and (iv) reducing maintenance cost for the HVAC equipment, by disclosing generating workflows based on extracted patterns from events of leaf nodes [column 86, line 62 to column 87, line 23]. An application may be used to control various system components, such as to instruct reader nodes or leaf nodes to undertake certain actions, to provide certain data, or the like [column 27, lines 26-29]. BLEATS may be used in a wide variety of contexts, such as to control the temperature of an asset’s environment [column 88, lines 38-44], alert emergency responders [column 89, lines 10-13], control operation of an air conditioner based on user preferences [column 89, lines 31-37], control the power use of an appliance [column 89, lines 48-51, 57-67], and control multiple heating, cooling, and ventilation elements [column 90, lines 23-32].
Kulkarni does not expressly teach translating each of the two or more disparate workflow systems into a common uniform process nomenclature; transforming the two or more disparate workflow systems into a single unified workflow; and performing the unified workflow for the equipment. Mohan discloses grouping a plurality of workflow steps into a particular track [paragraph 95; figure 12]. Tracks are defined based on any assignable entity attribute, and can include any number of attributes including entity name, unique entity identifier, and entity job title, etc. [paragraph 97]. A unified workflow object is created by combining steps of at least two workflows [paragraph 95]. A workflow execution algorithm 1600 based on a workflow object executes the workflow [paragraph 132; figure 16]. This would increase efficiency by eliminating repetitive tasks. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine steps from at least two workflows to create a unified workflow, as taught by Mohan. This would increase efficiency by eliminating repetitive tasks.
5-2. Regarding claims 2, 10, and 18, Kulkarni-Mohan teach all the limitations of claims 1, 9, and 17 respectively, wherein transforming the two or more disparate workflow systems into the single unified workflow further comprises: removing any aspects of the two or more disparate workflow systems that are duplications, by disclosing eliminating repetitive tasks to reduce duplicative work and streamline the unified workflow [Mohan, paragraph 94].
5-3. Regarding claims 4, 12, and 20, Kulkarni-Mohan teach all the limitations of claims 1, 9, and 17 respectively, further comprising: categorizing each of the two or more disparate workflow systems, by disclosing grouping a plurality of steps into a particular track [Mohan, paragraph 95; figure 12]. Tracks are defined based on any assignable entity attribute [Mohan, paragraph 97].
5-4. Regarding claims 5 and 13, Kulkarni-Mohan teach all the limitations of claims 1 and 9 respectively, wherein transforming the two or more disparate workflow systems into the single unified workflow further comprises: arranging the two or more disparate workflow systems into a sequence having a beginning and an end that bookends the single unified workflow and defines in what order the unified workflow will operate, by disclosing that the unified workflow comprise a plurality of steps of at least two workflows, where arrows between the steps indicate execution dependency [Mohan, paragraphs 95-96; figures 12, 17].
5-5. Regarding claims 6 and 14, Kulkarni-Mohan teach all the limitations of claims 1 and 9 respectively, further comprising: determining an effectiveness of the unified workflow, by disclosing that during execution of the workflow, the conditions that caused each step to trigger, the conditions that caused each step to terminate, the assignee, and other information can be logged into a database for later auditing [Mohan, paragraph 140]. An administrative entity may track and compare statuses of the onboarding workflows to recognize where some tasks or series of tasks are being executed more slowly or quickly in some regions than others, and may initiate measures to fix and/or improve the workflows in each region by eliminating at least one task or similar tasks in one or more regions and consolidating a plurality of tasks into a single task [Mohan, paragraph 94].
5-6. Regarding claims 7 and 15, Kulkarni-Mohan teach all the limitations of claims 6 and 14 respectively, further comprising: reorganizing the unified workflow based on the effectiveness of the unified workflow, by disclosing that an administrative entity may track and compare statuses of the onboarding workflows to recognize where some tasks or series of tasks are being executed more slowly or quickly in some regions than others, and may initiate measures to fix and/or improve the workflows in each region by eliminating at least one task or similar tasks in one or more regions and consolidating a plurality of tasks into a single task [Mohan, paragraph 94].
7. Claims 8 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kulkarni et al (U.S. Patent No. 10,942,251), in view of Mohan et al (Pub. No. US 2014/0222493), and further in view of Hatfield et al (Pub. No. US 2023/0153711).
7-1. Regarding claims 8 and 16, Kulkarni-Mohan teach all the limitations of claims 1 and 9 respectively. Kulkarni-Mohan do not expressly teach the claim further comprising: learning from historical data and feedback received from the ecosystem to predict scope and objective failure; and providing recommendations with respect to additional workflow triggers and resource group reallocation requirements. Hatfield discloses receiving data regarding a workflow of a user completing a task, and assessing the data to identify attributes of the workflow that is expressed in a series of steps, analyzing the steps of the workflow to identify areas of improvement, generating augmentations from a plurality of technology fitments matched to the areas for improvement in the steps of the workflow, and sending the augmentations to a user device for communicating to the user [paragraph 3]. This would help optimize a workflow. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to assess the workflow of Kulkarni-Mohan using artificial intelligence, as taught by Hatfield. This would help optimize the workflow.
Response to Arguments
8. The Examiner acknowledges the Applicant’s amendments to claims 1, 9, and 17.
Regarding independent claim 1, Applicant alleges that Mohan et al (Pub. No. US 2014/0222493) does not expressly teach "receiving workflow trigger sources from the HVAC equipment, the workflow trigger sources including one or more of (i) predictions or actionable insights, (ii) planned service requests, (iii) alarms, (iv) failures and (v) customer complaints; generating two or more disparate workflow systems in response to the workflow trigger sources, wherein the two or more disparate workflow systems are configured for one or more of (i) improving comfort, health, and/or safety for an end user, (ii) improving performance of the HVAC equipment, (iii) reducing energy usage for the HVAC equipment and (iv) reducing maintenance cost for the HVAC equipment," as has been amended to the claim, because Mohan does not disclose receiving or managing workflows that are generated by physical HVAC equipment, nor does it teach any HVAC-specific machine domain. Examiner has rejected claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kulkarni (U.S Patent No. 10,942,251) in view of Mohan et al (Pub. No. US 2014/0222493). Applicant’s arguments have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection.
Similar arguments have been presented for claims 9 and 17 and thus, Applicant’s arguments are not persuasive for the same reasons.
Applicant states that dependent claims 2, 4-8, 10, 12-16, 18, and 20 recite all the limitations of the independent claims, and thus, are allowable in view of the remarks set forth regarding independent claims 1, 9, and 17. However, as discussed above, Kulkarni in view of Mohan are considered to teach claims 1, 9, and 17, and consequently, claims 2, 4-8, 10, 12-16, 18, and 20 are rejected.
Conclusion
9. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALVIN H TAN whose telephone number is (571)272-8595. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10AM-6PM.
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/ALVIN H TAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2118