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 .
2. A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 01/24/2025 has been entered.
3. Claims 21-40 are pending in this office action. Claims 1-20 have been canceled. No claims have been amended . This action is responsive to Applicant’s application filed 01/24/2025.
Response to Arguments
4. Applicant's arguments with respect to amended features in claims 21, 29, and 35 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
Information Disclosure Statement
5. The references listed in the IDS filed 03/13/2025 has been considered. A copy of the signed or initialed IDS is hereby attached.
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Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); and In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the conflicting application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement.
Effective January 1, 1994, a registered attorney or agent of record may sign a terminal disclaimer. A terminal disclaimer signed by the assignee must fully comply with 37 CFR 3.73(b).
6. Claims 21-40 are rejected on the ground of no statutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent No. 11,609,952. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because they are substantially similar in scope and they use the same limitations.
Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because they are substantially similar in scope and they use the same limitations.
After analyzing the language of the claims, it is clear that claims 21-40 are merely an obvious variation of claims 1-20 of US Patent No. 11,609,952. It is clear that under the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claims. Therefore, these two sets of claims are not patentably distinct.
Claim Objection
The following is a quotation of the second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112:
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.
7. Regarding claims 21, 22, 24, 29, 30, 32, 35, 36, and 38, the wording "if" renders the claim indefinite because it is unclear whether the limitations following the phrase are part of the claimed invention when the “IF” condition not happened. See MPEP § 2173.05(d).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims under 35 U.S.C. 103(a), the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned at the time any inventions covered therein were made absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and invention dates of each claim that was not commonly owned at the time a later invention was made in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 103(c) and potential 35 U.S.C. 102(e), (f) or (g) prior art under 35 U.S.C. 103(a).
8. Claims 21-40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Jain (US Patent Publication No. 2010/0077152 A1, hereinafter “Jain”) in view of Erera et al. (US Patent No. 8,078,628 B2 hereinafter “Erera”) and Savelli et al. (US Patent Publication No. 2015/0095137 A1, hereinafter “Savelli”).
. As to claim 21, Jain teaches the claimed limitations:
“A data processing system, comprising: a computation network configured to:” as a system to maintain scores usable by a behavioral targeting service, comprising: an event indication detector that processes event indications, wherein the event indications being processed are indicative of interaction by users generally with at least one online service (claim 11, paragraph 0004).
“receive, with a server communicative with a distributed streaming data pipeline for communication with asynchronous event processing services, user identification data and an indication of a data source” as a scoring center processes the events affecting scores used for advertisement targeting, and an advertisement targeting center 406 determines how to target users with advertisements. More particularly, a data highway off-ramp of the data center receives data highway events with various parameters that characterize the events. Stream and forward components are co-located with the data highway off-ramps, collecting the user activity data from the off-ramps and forwarding the user activity data to a data distributor of the scoring data center (paragraphs 0006, 0025).
“determine, based on the indication of the data source, an inquiry rule, wherein the inquiry rule defines an inquiry threshold” as each of the detected event indications is provided to a separate one of a plurality of scoring engine partitions of a scoring engine, each scoring engine partition is provided detected events for at least one of the particular non-overlapping subsets of the users, and at least one scoring engine partition also being provided detected events for at least an additional one of said particular non-overlapping subsets of the users (paragraph 0007). Each of the plurality of scoring engine partitions processing the detected event indications provided to that scoring engine partition to determine, based at least in part thereon, updated scoring data indicative of behavior of the users represented by the detected events relative to the at least one online service (paragraph 0008).
“compare, with the server, an inquiry count to the inquiry threshold, wherein the inquiry count is indicative of a number of inquiries recently transmitted to the user” as scoring engine may then use the "behavioral events" to generate scores for particular users in particular categories, where the generated scores are representative of the behavior of the particular users with respect to those particular categories (paragraph 0021).
“applying a time-based rule to determine whether to suppress the inquiry, and if the inquiry is not suppressed, transmitting with the server the inquiry to the data source” as a timeline showing, over time, how the TTL parameters for a cache for scores determined from "primary" events may be controlled independently of TTL parameters for scores determined from "secondary" events (paragraph 0016). TTL parameters govern the amount of time that the cached data may be used in processing, until the data is stored persistently in the corresponding memory. In the scoring application, besides that it could be come unwieldy to keep too many scores in cache, due to the typically limited size of this expensive resource, if the cache contents are lost (e.g., due to a failure of the corresponding computing device), then the corresponding value stored in the persistent store may not be sufficiently up to date. Operationally, in determining the TTL parameters, it may be a tradeoff between the risk of losing updated scoring values that have been cached and the increased cost of storing updated values to memory (paragraph 0034).
Jain does not explicitly teach the claimed limitation “a distributed streaming data pipeline for communication with asynchronous event processing services”.
Erera teaches systems and methods for streaming faceted search are provided. The output stream providing the plurality of sets corresponding to the filtered or sortable search results generated information for display, in response to finding matching search results that correspond to the facet value range for each set as respective search results become available that match a respective facet value or facet range; and asynchronously generating one or more sets associated with first facet information corresponding to the search results (abstract). Browser may be configured to support a streaming faceted search, for example, with a search request mechanism that allows browser to communicate with server using asynchronous calls. A search request may comprise an attribute that queries whether data is ready to be displayed. The data may comprise search results or facet information, corresponding to a search query submitted by the user. Browser may differentiate between search results and facet information by having server prefix the data with identifiers. Asynchronous calls are used so that the user may continue working while the search query is being processed in the background (column 4, lines 43-55). Logic code is not related, or limited to any particular programming language, and may comprise of one or more modules that execute on one or more processors in a distributed, non-distributed or multiprocessing environment (column 6, line 66 to column 7, line 7).
Jain does not explicitly teach the claimed limitation “if the inquiry count is less than the inquiry threshold, send, using the server, an inquiry for the user to the data source, wherein sending the inquiry for the user comprises: comparing, using the server, a plurality of indications of expected utility that each correspond to one or more of a plurality of potential inquiries, wherein one of the plurality of indications of expected utility is calculated by an event processing service based on at least one datum from the group consisting of: the utility of a potential inquiry response, the probability that the user will respond to the potential inquiry, the user's expected response to the potential inquiry, and utility sharing percentage; transmitting to a remote server a verification request, wherein the verification request includes at least a portion of the user identification data; receiving a response to the verification request from the remote server”.
Savelli teaches a system with thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or millions of entities, the rate limits imposed by the various online sites can create processing bottlenecks when accessing social media or other data. Additionally, these rate limits may cause data associated with various entities to become stale, thus tempering the efficacy or usefulness of such data. To limit the effect of the rate limits and to effectively deal with the different rate limits that may be imposed by different sites while minimizing the impact on the freshness of the data used by a social media analytics platform. If the number of requests using twitter's API has reached or exceeded a capacity or rate limit for a given timeframe, the data from another online site may be gathered until a request rate for twitter falls below the threshold rate limit imposed by twitter. This results in increased efficiencies in time and expense. The analytics platform can spread out requests over time and fully utilize parallel update processes in a way that respects the rate limiting while still achieving near real-time tracking of systems. Moreover, by applying these rate limiting techniques maximum use can be made of the free access granted by such online sites, allowing operators of social media analytics platform to avoid being charged a fee for accessing such data or obtaining a higher rate limit with respect to a particular online site (paragraph 0010). The data services modules and the analytics client application module can utilize a single master or multiple slave database servers that maintain a primary record of state across the entire system (not shown). Query service module may allow specific user queries received through an interface provided by analytics client application module to be run against scoring data store to return results to analytics client application module (paragraph 0070).
An athlete database management application can be configured to allow authorized users to view and manage the athletes through interaction of the database management application with the database service application. According to one embodiment, the authorized user can be able to perform various actions (paragraph 0328). Verify the data points gathered for each social account for each entity (paragraph 0333).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Jain, Erera and Savelli before him/her, to modify Jain streaming data pipeline for communication with asynchronous event processing services because that would provide users with a user-friendly mechanism for filtering search results and fast response times to search queries as taught by Erera (column 1, lines 47-54). Or comparing, using the server, a plurality of indications of expected utility that each correspond to one or more of a plurality of potential inquiries because schedule data retrieval across the online sites such that the data pulled from each site can be effectively maximized given imposed rate limits without slowing or idling a social media analytics platform, while simultaneously limiting the number of errors received from the online sites as taught by Savelli (paragraph 0009).
As to claim 22, Jain teaches the claimed limitations:
“wherein the computation network is further configured to: increment, with the server, the inquiry count; and if the incremented inquiry count is less than or equal to the inquiry threshold, repeat the step of sending an inquiry” as (paragraphs 0034, 0037).
Savelli teaches (paragraph 0010).
As to claim 23, Jain teaches the claimed limitations:
“wherein the inquiry comprises a question for the user to answer or an advertisement” as (paragraph 0006).
As to claim 24, Jain does not explicitly teach the claimed limitation “wherein the computation network is further configured to: calculate a difference between the inquiry count and the inquiry threshold; and if the difference is greater than or equal to a drop-off threshold, determine that the inquiry comprises a question, and if the difference is less than a drop-off threshold, determine that the inquiry may comprise a question or an advertisement”.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Jain, Erera and Savelli before him/her, to modify Jain streaming data pipeline for communication with asynchronous event processing services because that would provide users with a user-friendly mechanism for filtering search results and fast response times to search queries as taught by Erera (column 1, lines 47-54). Or calculate a difference between the inquiry count and the inquiry threshold because schedule data retrieval across the online sites such that the data pulled from each site can be effectively maximized given imposed rate limits without slowing or idling a social media analytics platform, while simultaneously limiting the number of errors received from the online sites as taught by Savelli (paragraph 0009).
Savelli teaches (paragraph 0114).
As to claim 25, Jain teaches the claimed limitations:
“wherein the user's expected response to the inquiry is based on past responses to the inquiry by a plurality of prior users” as (paragraph 0032).
As to claim 26, Jain teaches the claimed limitations:
“wherein the plurality of indications of expected utility comprises an expected drop-off rate based on the rate at which a plurality of prior users discontinued responding to inquiries” as (paragraph 0021).
As to claim 27, Jain teaches the claimed limitations:
“wherein the plurality of indications of expected utility further comprises an indication of the number of inquiries to which a user must respond before any utility is recognized” as (paragraphs 0005, 0025).
As to claim 28, Jain teaches the claimed limitations:
“wherein the inquiry comprises an advertisement; and the plurality of indications of expected utility comprises an expected rate at which the user will take an action upon viewing the advertisement, and wherein the expected rate is based on the rate at which a plurality of prior users took the action upon viewing the advertisement” as (paragraph 0025).
As to claims 29-34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 103(a), the limitations therein have substantially the same scope as claims 21-26. In addition, Jain teaches a computer program instructions with which embodiments of the invention are implemented may be stored in any type of tangible computer-readable media, and may be executed according to a variety of computing models (paragraph 0041). Therefore, these claims are rejected for at least the same reasons as claims 21-26.
As to claims 35-40 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 103(a), the limitations therein have substantially the same scope as claims 21-26. In addition, Jain teaches a method to handle a planned migration of some processes to another server, with respect to caching of data resulting from the processing to be migrated (paragraph 0015). Therefore, these claims are rejected for at least the same reasons as claims 21-26.
Examiner’s Note
Examiner has cited particular columns/paragraph and line numbers in the references applied to the claims above for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings of the art and are applied to specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant in preparing responses, to fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
In the case of amending the Claimed invention, Applicant is respectfully requested to indicate the portion(s) of the specification which dictate(s) the structure relied on for proper interpretation and also to verify and ascertain the metes and bounds of the claimed invention. This will assist in expediting compact prosecution. MPEP 714.02 recites: “Applicant should also specifically point out the support for any amendments made to the disclosure. See MPEP § 2163.06. An amendment which does not comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.121(b), (c), (d), and (h) may be held not fully responsive. See MPEP § 714.” Amendments not pointing to specific support in the disclosure may be deemed as not complying with provisions of 37 C.F.R. 1.131(b), (c), (d), and (h) and therefore held not fully responsive. Generic statements such as “Applicants believe no new matter has been introduced” may be deemed insufficient.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to James Hwa whose telephone number is 571-270-1285 or email address james.hwa@uspto.gov. The examiner can normally be reached on 9:00 am – 5:30 pm EST. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ajay Bhatia can be reached on 571-272-3906. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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03/08/2026
/SHYUE JIUNN HWA/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2156