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 .
Response to Amendment
With respect to Applicant’s amendment of Claims 7 with regards to minor informalities, the claim objection with respect to the same has been withdrawn.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(d):
(d) REFERENCE IN DEPENDENT FORMS.—Subject to subsection (e), a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, fourth paragraph:
Subject to the following paragraph [i.e., the fifth paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112], a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
Claims 3 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(d) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, 4th paragraph, as being of improper dependent form for failing to further limit the subject matter of the claim upon which it depends, or for failing to include all the limitations of the claim upon which it depends. Claims 3 and 15 recite issuing the notification “based on the degree of change” which does not further limit the independent claims from which they depend since, for example, Claim 1 recites that the notification is issued based on “the severity level” which itself is based on the “degree of change”, i.e. “determining a severity level based on the degree of change; and issuing a notification when the severity level satisfies one or more predefined criteria”. Applicant may cancel the claim(s), amend the claim(s) to place the claim(s) in proper dependent form, rewrite the claim(s) in independent form, or present a sufficient showing that the dependent claim(s) complies with the statutory requirements.
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 1-3, 5-10, 13, 15, 17 and 19-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Duneau et al. (US PGPUB 2014/0282125; hereinafter “Duneau”) in view of Kogan et al. (US PGPUB 2018/0060222; hereinafter “Kogan”) and Freivald et al. (US Patent 5,898,836; hereinafter “Freivald”).
Claim 1: (Currently Amended)
Duneau teaches a computer-implemented method for detecting changes in one or more application programs that are utilized by a software robot, the method comprising:
forming a software robot that utilized at least one application program, wherein the software robot initiates interactions with the at least one application program on behalf of a user ([0019] “the system and method captures a program interaction as a re-playable simulation.” [0058] “Once the capturing session is ended at step 122, the captured template and instantiation data… and possibly further simulation script data… can be stored as a simulation of the target application.” [0060] “at step 200, a processor obtains a simulation script for a simulation selected for playback,” wherein the “simulation script” is the “software robot”.);
generating a design-time fingerprint associated with an application screen of the at least one application program that occurs during the forming of the software robot ([0051] “FIG. 1 shows steps for defining sub-screens of a captured display screen in addition to the steps for converting the captured data,” wherein Fig. 1 includes the above-discussed “Step 122” which forms the “simulation script”, i.e. the “software robot”. [0057] “at step 110, the processor stores the captured data defining the captured sub-screen as a new display screen template.” [0089] “the system and method generate, based on the characteristics of a, for example, newly captured display screen or sub-screen, a signature representative of the contents of the display screen or sub-screen, and further similarly generates a signature for the display screens or sub-screens of the stored templates,” wherein the generating of a “signature” associated with a captured “display screen” during the steps of Fig. 1 is equivalent to “generating a design-time fingerprint”.);
saving the design-time fingerprint associated with the application screen ([0089] “ The generation of the signatures for the templates… can be stored with the templates.”);
subsequently starting execution of the software robot ([0059] “FIG. 2 is a flowchart that illustrates an example method for executing a stored simulation.” [0060] “at step 200, a processor obtains a simulation script for a simulation selected for playback.”);
detecting presentation of an application screen of the at least one application program during the execution of the software robot ([0060] “For each display screen, the processor, at step 202 obtains a display screen data structure which includes data for one or more sub-screens.”);
generating an execution-time fingerprint associated with the application screen of the at least one application program during the execution of the software robot; comparing the execution-time fingerprint with the saved design-time fingerprint ([0018] “during the running of a target application, the system and method analyzes a display screen that is displayed or is about to be displayed to determine its sub-screen makeup. Each of the sub-screens is compared by a loose matcher to the template with which the EPSS object is associated. For example, according to an example embodiment, the system and method create a signature for each of the sub-screens of the running application based on its contents, e.g., user interface elements, and compare the signature to a signature of the template to determine if there is a match,” wherein the “signature of the template” is the “design-time fingerprint” as discussed above.),
wherein the application screen includes a plurality of elements, and one or more of the elements includes element properties ([0066] “The editing environment, according to an example embodiment, includes a property editing frame, e.g., frame 610 in FIG. 6, in which the user can enter and/or modify properties of a selected object of a display screen,” wherein the “object” is the “element”.), and
wherein the generating of the execution-time fingerprint comprises:
determining a subset of the elements for the application screen; and forming the execution-time fingerprint based on the determined subset of the elements for the application screen ([0018] “the system and method create a signature for each of the sub-screens of the running application based on its contents, e.g., user interface elements, and compare the signature to a signature of the template to determine if there is a match,” wherein the “signature”, i.e. “fingerprint”, for a determined “sub-screen”, i.e. “a subset of the elements for the application screen”, is “based on its contents”, i.e. based on the determined “subset of elements” ).
With further regard to Claim 1, Duneau does not teach the following, however, Kogan teaches:
forming the execution-time fingerprint based on a plurality of element fingerprints from the determined subset of the elements ([0045] “FIG. 4 is a flow chart 400 of an example process for building a signature, identifying the application flow, combining a plurality of signatures, comparing signatures, and displaying elements to prompt a user... multiple signatures can be combined together to provide a broad perspective of the application, via a combined signature. Such a combined signature can still exclude various other possible screens/elements, if those are not relevant to a given application flow/path.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau with the fingerprint based on a plurality of element fingerprints as taught by Kogan for purposes of “enabling more efficient handling of both the capturing and the testing of application runs” (Kogan [0010]).
With further regard to Claim 1, Duneau in view of Kogan does not teach the following, however, Freivald teaches:
determining a degree of change of at least a portion of the at least one application program based on the comparison (Col. 6 ll. 36-38: “ Comparison is made of the stored or archived CRC… and a fresh CRC… The CRC is a condensed signature or fingerprint,” wherein the “CRC” is the “signature” as taught above by Duneau in view of Kogan. Col. 12 ln. 33: “The percentage of the sections changed can be reported.” See also Freivald Claim 13: “the degree of change for the document being a function of a number of CRC's from the database that do not have a matching recent CRC,” and Claim 14: “ wherein the degree of change is expressed as the number of CRC's from the database that do not have a matching recent CRC, as a percentage of a total number of CRC's.”),
determining a severity level based on the degree of change (Col. 12 ll. 43-46: “When more than 50% of the sections change, the subject ‘Major Change Detected’ is reported, while ‘Minor change detected’ is reported when less than 10% of the sections change.”); and
issuing a notification when the severity level satisfies one or more predefined criteria (Col. 12 ll. 48-52: “The change-detection software can also have a minimum threshold of changes to generate a report. The user can set preferences so that changes affecting less than 10% of the document are not reported at all. Thus minor changes can be filtered out.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Kogan with the notifying based a determined degree of change as taught by Freivald in order “to reduce the number of change notifications sent to the user” (Freivald Col. 3 ll. 52-53).
Claim 2: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Duneau in view of Kogan does not teach the following, however, Freivald teaches:
wherein the notification is issued based on a change in the at least one application program (Col. 12 ll. 48-52: “The change-detection software can also have a minimum threshold of changes to generate a report. The user can set preferences so that changes affecting less than 10% of the document are not reported at all. Thus minor changes can be filtered out.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Kogan with the notifying based a change as taught by Freivald in order “to reduce the number of change notifications sent to the user” (Freivald Col. 3 ll. 52-53).
Claim 3: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 2 as described above. Duneau in view of Kogan does not teach the following, however, Freivald teaches:
wherein the notification is issued based on the degree of change (Col. 12 ll. 48-52: “The change-detection software can also have a minimum threshold of changes to generate a report. The user can set preferences so that changes affecting less than 10% of the document are not reported at all. Thus minor changes can be filtered out.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Kogan with the notifying based a determined degree of change as taught by Freivald in order “to reduce the number of change notifications sent to the user” (Freivald Col. 3 ll. 52-53).
Claim 5: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Duneau in view of Freivald does not teach the following, however, Kogan teaches:
wherein the comparing the execution-time fingerprint with the design-time fingerprint is performed on an element-by-element basis ([0016] “a given application screen 143 can appear several times in the application flow 142, but with different elements 144 highlighted/selected, depending on the test execution application flow 142. A given one of such application screen(s) 143, in a sequence of the application flow 142, can be compared to another screen, e.g., by comparing based on a per-element basis (or at a lower granularity, e.g., checking whether a given element from the signature 140 is present).”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Freivald with the element-by-element comparison as taught by Kogan in order to “provide indications of visual regression in the context of specific application flows 142, features, and/or user stories, rather than broadly referencing an entire application or application screen” (Kogan [0030]).
Claim 6: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Duneau in view of Freivald does not teach the following, however, Kogan teaches wherein the determining whether the at least one application program has changed based on the comparison comprises:
determining whether one or more of the elements from the application screen has been added to or removed from the application screen of the application program ([0016] “a given application screen 143 can appear several times in the application flow 142, but with different elements 144 highlighted/selected, depending on the test execution application flow 142. A given one of such application screen(s) 143, in a sequence of the application flow 142, can be compared to another screen, e.g., by comparing based on a per-element basis (or at a lower granularity, e.g., checking whether a given element from the signature 140 is present),” wherein “checking whether a given element from the signature 140 is present” determines whether or not an element has been removed.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Freivald with the element comparison as taught by Kogan in order to “provide indications of visual regression in the context of specific application flows 142, features, and/or user stories, rather than broadly referencing an entire application or application screen” (Kogan [0030]).
Claim 7: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Duneau further teaches wherein the subset of the elements are determined based on one or more supported elements table for the elements of the application screen ([0025] “the system and method store a newly captured screen as a data structure including one or more pointers to display screen templates (which may include sub-screen templates). If the newly captured display screen includes a sub-screen for which the system and method do not determine there to be a previously stored template, the system and method store the newly captured sub-screen as a new display screen template, and store a pointer thereto in the data structure corresponding to the newly captured display screen,” wherein the “data structure” is the “supported elements table”. [0060] “For each display screen, the processor, at step 202 obtains a display screen data structure which includes data for one or more sub-screens.” [0086] “the system and method is programmed with a list of object types which are to be set as sub-screens. For example, a tabsheet object, for example, an object corresponding to one of the tabs shown at the lower portions of the display screens in FIGS. 6-8, is an example of an object which the system and method can be programmed to set as a sub-screen. Additionally or alternatively, the system and method, according to an example embodiment, is programmed with object types to never be considered sub-screens, e.g., buttons.”).
Claim 8: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 7 as described above. Duneau further teaches wherein the comparison indicates whether one or more of the element properties corresponding to at least one of the elements have changed, and wherein each of the element fingerprints are determined in part on at least a plurality of the element properties associated with the corresponding element ([0093] “comparison of included objects and their characteristics, with pre-programmed difference allowances, e.g., acceptable distances between control or field positions, acceptable differences in control or field size, acceptable differences in number and type of included controls or fields, acceptable differences in other property definitions, such as whether an included button is enabled or disabled in the display screen, etc.”).
Claim 9: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Duneau in view of Freivald does not teach the following, however, Kogan teaches:
wherein the comparing the execution-time fingerprint with the design-time fingerprint is performed on an element-by-element basis ([0016] “a given application screen 143 can appear several times in the application flow 142, but with different elements 144 highlighted/selected, depending on the test execution application flow 142. A given one of such application screen(s) 143, in a sequence of the application flow 142, can be compared to another screen, e.g., by comparing based on a per-element basis (or at a lower granularity, e.g., checking whether a given element from the signature 140 is present).”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Freivald with the element-by-element comparison as taught by Kogan in order to “provide indications of visual regression in the context of specific application flows 142, features, and/or user stories, rather than broadly referencing an entire application or application screen” (Kogan [0030]).
With further regard to Claim 9, Duneau further teaches wherein the determining whether the at least one application program has changed based on the comparison comprises:
determining whether at least one of the element properties of the elements have changed ([0093] “comparison of included objects and their characteristics, with pre-programmed difference allowances, e.g., acceptable distances between control or field positions, acceptable differences in control or field size, acceptable differences in number and type of included controls or fields, acceptable differences in other property definitions, such as whether an included button is enabled or disabled in the display screen, etc.”).
Claims 10, 13 and 15:
With regard to Claims 10, 13 and 15, these claims are equivalent in scope to Claims 1, 5, and 3, respectively, as rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claims 10, 13 and 15 are rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claims 1, 3 and 5.
Claim 17:
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 10 as described above. Duneau in view of Freivald does not teach the following, however, Kogan teaches:
wherein the application program is a web-based application ([0016] “an example system can compare the signatures 140 of the test run as performed on various different web browsers. If the signature 140 corresponding to the test run using a particular one of the web browsers is different from the other signatures, there is potential problem with the implementation of the application being tested for that particular web browser.” [0044] “block 320, an element identification engine is to identify at least one element corresponding to a given screen of the at least one screen. For example, the element identification engine can identify what underlying element of a webpage corresponds to the coordinates of the mouse click.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Freivald with the testing of web applications as taught by Kogan for purposes of “enabling more efficient handling of both the capturing and the testing of application runs” (Kogan [0010]).
Claim 19: (Currently Amended)
With regard to Claim 19, this claim is equivalent in scope to Claim 1 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claim 19 is rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claim 1.
With further regard to Claim 19, the claim recites additional elements not specifically addressed in the rejection of Claim 1. The Duneau reference also anticipates these additional elements of Claim 19, for example Duneau teaches:
A non-transitory computer readable medium including at least computer program code tangible stored therein for detecting changes in an application program being utilized by a software robot during execution of the software robot ([0042] “An example embodiment of the present invention is directed to one or more hardware computer-readable media, e.g., as described above, on which are stored instructions executable by a processor to perform the methods and/or provide the user interface features described herein.”).
Claim 20: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 19 as described above. Duneau in view of Freivald does not teach the following, however, Kogan teaches:
wherein the saved application fingerprint pertains to an application screen that is presumptively the same application screen as the application screen of the application program during execution of the software robot ([0026] “A test run 146 can represent a specific flow or feature of a given application, containing a subset of features of the application flow 142 as represented by the identified screens and/or elements 143, 144. The visual signature 140 accordingly captures the context of a specific application flow 142 and/or corresponding feature or user story. Thus, if a given captured signature 140 does not match a baseline signature representing a desired application flow 142, it is possible to identify many aspects of what may have gone wrong.” [0027] “to automate visual verification for regression testing, an exemplary test run 146 can be chosen as the baseline, to which subsequent test runs 146 of the same application test can be verified against automatically, by comparing the signature 140 corresponding to the current test run 146, to the signature 140 corresponding to the baseline test run 146.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the computer readable medium as disclosed by Duneau in view of Freivald with the saved signature, i.e. fingerprint, pertaining to the same application screen as the application screen during execution of the testing as taught by Kogan since “Such usage of signatures 140 can be valuable for regression testing, where it is common practice to compare new versions of an application to previous versions” (Kogan [0026]) and for purposes of “enabling more efficient handling of both the capturing and the testing of application runs” (Kogan [0010]).
Claim 21: (Currently Amended)
With regard to Claim 21, this claim is equivalent in scope to Claim 1 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claim 21 is rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claim 1.
Claim 18 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald as applied to Claim 10 above, and further in view of Liu et al. (US PGPUB 2020/0394235; hereinafter “Liu”).
Claim 18: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 10 as described above. Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald does not teach the following, however, Liu teaches wherein the method comprises:
determining if a change has occurred to the application screen of the application program based on the comparison data ([0054] “Further during operation of the components shown in FIG. 2, one or more of the target hash values in Target Data 208 may be compared (e.g. by Hash Value and Screenshot Comparison Logic 130) to one or more corresponding baseline hash values in Baseline Data 134.”); and
displaying an indication on the application screen where the change to the application screen has been determined ([0060] “The difference notification generated by Hash Value and Screenshot Comparison Logic 130 may include a graphical indication that visually indicates the difference between the target screenshot and the baseline screenshot. Generating such a graphical indication of the difference between the target screenshot and the baseline screenshot may include identifying and highlighting the pixels in the target screenshot that differ from the corresponding pixels in the baseline screenshot, and then storing the result as a modified version of the target screenshot that serves as the difference notification, and that may later be displayed (e.g. to the user).”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald with the displayed indication of a change location as taught by Liu since “it is desirable to be able to effectively and efficiently determine whether the user interface of one version of the Web product is different from the user interface of another version of the Web product” (Liu [0002]).
Claims 11 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald as applied to Claim 10 above, and further in view of Nychis et al. (US PGPUB 2016/0259717; hereinafter “Nychis”).
Claim 11: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 10 as described above. Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald does not teach the following, however, Nychis teaches wherein the method further comprises:
sending a notification to a user associated with the software robot that the software robot is at least at risk for not executing correctly when interacting with the application program ([0002] “Aspects of the technology described herein relate to monitoring software robots that programmatically control one or more computer program(s) to perform a task.” [0330] “when an error has been detected, process 2100 proceeds to act 2116, where the log and contextual information generated during process 2100 are presented to a user so that the user may take corrective action to address the error.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald with the error notification as taught by Nychis in order “to determine the nature of the error and identify actions that he/she should take to resolve it” (Nychis [0310]).
Claim 16: (Currently Amended)
Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald teaches all the limitations of claim 10 as described above. Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald does not teach the following, however, Nychis teaches:
wherein the detecting presentation of an application screen of the application program during execution of the software robot comprises detecting a window event with respect to the application program being run by execution of the software robot ([0303] “One non-limiting example of a WaitFor instruction is the following instruction: WaitFor(‘@obj_name>Button::text(‘View Processing Report’)’). This illustrative instruction, when executed, would cause the software robot to wait and pause execution until an object of type ‘Button’… The system executing the software robot automatically detects when this object is added to the hierarchy and, in response to detecting that the object has been added to the hierarchy, allows the software robot to proceed with execution.” [0109] “An object in an object hierarchy may correspond to any of numerous types of graphical user interface elements… Examples of a GUI element include, but are not limited to, a container element (e.g., a window, … a text terminal window… pop-up window, a message window… etc.).”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Duneau in view of Kogan and Freivald with the ability to detect of a window event as taught by Nychis for purposes of “improving the speed of searching for objects in the object hierarchy will result in more efficient execution of software robots and completion of the tasks that the software robots were designed to automate” (Nychis [0281]).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments, see Pages 9-15 of the Remarks, with respect to the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 of Claims 1-3, 5-11 and 13-21 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
With respect to the Applicant’s arguments, Pages 9-11 of the Remarks, that the newly amended language of Claims 1 and 10 is not taught by the previously cited prior art, these arguments has been fully considered but are moot in view of the newly cited Freivald et al. (US Patent 5,898,836) reference as discussed above in the respective rejections. The remaining Independent Claims 19 and 21 recite similar subject matter as Claim 1 and as such the Freivald reference has been used to reject those claims as well.
With respect to the Applicant’s next argument regarding Claim 1, Page 12 of the Remarks, that the rejection was improper due to “Improper Dissection and Failure to Consider the Claimed Limitation as a Whole,” the Office respectfully disagrees. The Office notes that the Duneau reference was cited to show that it was known in the art to “[determine] a subset of the elements for the application screen” and further to “[form] the execution-time fingerprint based on the determined subset of the elements for the application screen” as Duneau discloses the following:
[0018] “the system and method create a signature for each of the sub-screens of the running application based on its contents, e.g., user interface elements, and compare the signature to a signature of the template to determine if there is a match.”
[0068] “For example, the screenshot of FIG. 6 shows an editable version of a display screen including a plurality of sub-screens. Two of the sub-screens, sub-screen 604 and sub-screen 602 have been demarcated in FIG. 6. Sub-screen 602 includes a tool bar which can be presented in many display screens whose other sub-screens can greatly vary between the different ones of the many display screens. Similarly, sub-screen 604 includes an order sub-screen which can be included in many different display screens.”
[0078] “The EPSS system includes an analysis engine 402, which, during running of the target application, parses a display screen 502 of the target application into the screen and/or sub-screen data as described with respect to FIG. 1 and determines whether the screen and/or sub-screens match any of the templates 404.”
As such, from at least these citations the Office contends that Duneau does teach “determining a subset of the elements for the application screen,” since Duneau teaches both that a display screen can be parsed to determine sub-screen sets of data and that the sub-screen data comprises data regarding the user interface elements within that sub-screen. Duneau has also been shown to teach “forming the execution-time fingerprint based on the determined subset of the elements for the application screen,” since Duneau teaches that a “signature,” i.e. “fingerprint”, is created for each of the sub-screens based on the user interface element contents of that sub-screen. Regarding the limitations of Claim 1, Duneau does not teach that the “signature”, i.e. “fingerprint”, for the sub-screen, i.e. “the determined subset of elements,” is formed based on a plurality of signatures of the elements in the sub-screen.
As such, the Office notes that Kogan was cited to teach the element of Claim 1 which recites, “forming the execution-time fingerprint based on a plurality of element fingerprints from the determined subset of the elements” as Kogan discloses the following:
[0045] “FIG. 4 is a flow chart 400 of an example process for building a signature, identifying the application flow, combining a plurality of signatures, comparing signatures, and displaying elements to prompt a user... For example, a first screen can be associated with a first series of elements, followed by a second screen associated with a second series of elements. Such screens/elements can represent a test run through a given flow path of an application… multiple signatures can be combined together to provide a broad perspective of the application, via a combined signature. Such a combined signature can still exclude various other possible screens/elements, if those are not relevant to a given application flow/path.”
As such, from at least this citation the Office contends that Kogan has been shown to teach that it is possible to combine multiple element-level signatures, i.e. fingerprints, together to combined signature which represents a certain subset of elements. Therefore the Office maintains that Duneau in view of Kogan does teach and make obvious the limitations of Claim 1 which recite, “determining a subset of the elements for the application screen; and forming the execution-time fingerprint based on a plurality of element fingerprints from the determined subset of the elements for the application screen,” wherein both references are in the same field of endeavor as they are both related to generating signatures of application interface elements for purposes of analyzing the applications.
In response to applicant's argument that the examiner's conclusion of obviousness is based upon improper hindsight reasoning, it must be recognized that any judgment on obviousness is in a sense necessarily a reconstruction based upon hindsight reasoning. But so long as it takes into account only knowledge which was within the level of ordinary skill at the time the claimed invention was made, and does not include knowledge gleaned only from the applicant's disclosure, such a reconstruction is proper. See In re McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 170 USPQ 209 (CCPA 1971).
With respect to the Applicant’s further arguments, Pages 14-15 of the Remarks, that the features of the remaining dependent claims are not taught by the cited prior art, the Office respectfully disagrees. These arguments rely upon the arguments as presented in relation to Claims 1, 10, 19 and 21, and as such the Office directs the Applicant to the response above regarding these arguments.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure is as follows:
Konyshev et al. (US Patent 10,719,432) teaches systems and methods for performing automated software testing on user interface elements, including the use of signatures for user interface elements.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Joanne G. Macasiano whose telephone number is (571)270-7749. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Thursday, 10:30 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Bradley Teets can be reached at (571) 272-3338. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/JOANNE G MACASIANO/Examiner, Art Unit 2197
Prosecution Insights