DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to communication filed on 24 December 2025. Claims 1 and 7-8 are amended. Claims 9-11 have been added. No claim has been cancelled. Claims 1-11 are pending in the application and have been considered below.
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 Arguments
Applicant argues that [“As discussed during the interview conducted on December 23, 2025, the amended claims 1, 7, and 8 can overcome the rejections of record. Applicant respectfully requests withdrawal of rejections of claims 1, 7, and 8, and dependent claims thereof.” (page 5)].
The argument described above has been considered, and are persuasive. Therefore, rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further search and consideration, a new ground of rejection is made, citing the new reference HOU (see claim 1 rejection below).
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 and 7-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JIA et al. (US20110302486A1) in view of HOU et al. (US20200133444A1) and further in view of SINGH et al. (US20190392024A1).
As to claim 1, JIA teaches an information acquisition apparatus comprising:
a memory; and a processor coupled to the memory and configured to perform operations (see figs. 1-5, par. 0105, wherein the apparatus according to one embodiment of the present invention may be a computer system, a server or any other devices which may perform the steps of the above method; as taught by JIA);
comprising: acquiring tree information representing information of a system screen by a plurality of nodes having a tree structure (see par. 0054, wherein in the step S2, the loaded HTML web page is converted into the corresponding HTML DOM tree structure. Because HTML is a format language, the text information is located in HTML labels which provide adorning to the information, such as information location, information showing manner, and so on; as taught by JIA);
determining whether the label component indicates a name of the operable component based on a distance between the operable component and the label component (see par. 0064, wherein if the above match search in the <title> labels fails, a title of the effective contents may be obtained by another method which is to search for an effective text label with the shortest label distance from the <body> labels and to take the texts in the effective text label as a title of a web page (for example, a news page); as taught by JIA).
JIA does not expressly teach classifying the plurality of nodes having the tree structure into an operable component corresponding to an operable element on the user interface and a label component corresponding to a label element on the user interface based on the tree information; and in response to determining that the label component indicates the name of the operable component, registering a correspondence between a text corresponding to the label component and specifying information for specifying the operable component.
In similar field of endeavor, HOU teaches classifying the plurality of nodes having the tree structure into an operable component corresponding to an operable element on the user interface and a label component corresponding to a label element on the user interface based on the tree information (see figs. 1-14, par. 0063, wherein FIGS. 4A and 4B are diagrams illustrating example techniques for grouping nearby elements of existing user interfaces into components, according to some embodiments. In FIG. 4A, clustering module 310 receives one or more DOMs for existing user interfaces. In the illustrated embodiment, based on the DOM, module 310 identifies components by grouping nearby elements. As discussed above with reference to FIG. 2A, in some embodiments, types of elements within the identified components include one or more of the following: a label, text, an image, a link, a video, a button, a selectable shape, a drop-down list, a search input, etc. Note that certain element types (e.g., text) may include multiple other sub-types (e.g., labels, links, etc.) or types may be identified to be mutually exclusive, in some embodiments; see also pars. 0053, 0069, 0074-0076 and 0090-0092; as taught by HOU).
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 JIA apparatus to include the teachings of HOU wherein classifying the plurality of nodes having the tree structure into an operable component corresponding to an operable element on the user interface and a label component corresponding to a label element on the user interface based on the tree information. Such a person would have been motivated to make this combination as these techniques may allow entities to automatically generate user interfaces without requiring knowledge of design or coding techniques. Further, the disclosed techniques may advantageously improve existing user interface technology, including automating design tasks that were previously performed manually, in a new way (e.g., using component-based techniques). These techniques may improve user interface flexibility and functionality, in various embodiments (see HOU, par. 0040).
JIA and HOU do not expressly teach and in response to determining that the label component indicates the name of the operable component, registering a correspondence between a text corresponding to the label component and specifying information for specifying the operable component.
In similar field of endeavor, SINGH teaches in response to determining that the label component indicates the name of the operable component, registering a correspondence between a text corresponding to the label component and specifying information for specifying the operable component (see figs. 1-10, par. 0073, wherein FIG. 7 depicts an example 700 of change HTML action specified via user input 208 to a respective node of a DOM. The illustrated comparison shows original HTML content 702 of the first DOM 202 versus updated HTML content 704 of the second DOM 212 as part of defining a “set HTML” action. In this example, the user inputs 208 are used to test two variations of telephone numbers 706, 708 to be used for placing an order, e.g., at a webpage of a website; see also pars. 0062-0072 and 0075-0078; as taught by SINGH).
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 JIA and HOU apparatus to include the teachings of SINGH wherein in response to determining that the label component indicates the name of the operable component, registering a correspondence between a text corresponding to the label component and specifying information for specifying the operable component. Such a person would have been motivated to make this combination as the content editing operations may be used for delivering personalized digital content with increased efficiency through communication of the content editing operations and not replacement of an entirety of digital content in a container that corresponds to the edit as required in conventional techniques (see SINGH, par. 0005).
Claims 7 and 8 amount to the method performed by the apparatus, and the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing one or more programs configured to be executed by the apparatus of claim 1, respectively. Accordingly, claims 7 and 8 are rejected for substantially the same reasons as presented above for claim 1 and based on the references’ disclosure of the necessary supporting hardware and software.
Claims 2-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JIA et al. (US20110302486A1) in view of HOU et al. (US20200133444A1) and further in view of SINGH et al. (US20190392024A1) and further view of ZHONG (CN108920434A).
As to claim 2, JIA , HOU and SINGH teach the limitations of claim 1. JIA, HOU and SINGH do not expressly teach wherein determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component includes determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component based on a distance between a position at which the operable component is displayed and a position at which the label component is displayed.
In similar field of endeavor, ZHONG teaches wherein determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component includes determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component based on a distance between a position at which the operable component is displayed and a position at which the label component is displayed (See page 2, ll. 16-19, wherein determining content of the picture node, content of the date node, and the text text node according to a distance between the picture node, the date node, and the text text node respectively from the visible title node Whether the content is the subject content, and extracting the theme content of the target webpage according to the judgment result, the theme content includes a text image, a publishing time, and a body text; as taught by ZHONG).
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 JIA, HOU and SINGH apparatus to include the teachings of ZHONG for wherein determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component includes determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component based on a distance between a position at which the operable component is displayed and a position at which the label component is displayed. Such a person would have been motivated to make this combination as the invention has the beneficial effects that it provides a more optimized semantic-based information extraction method, which identifies the text visual title node of the DOM tree based on the strong association relationship existing on the page structure and the node performs classification and cache, and then uses the distance between other category nodes in the DOM tree and the visible head node of the text as an important basis for determining whether the node belongs to the subject content, thereby improving the accuracy and efficiency of web page information extraction (see ZHONG, page. 1, ll. 21-26).
As to claim 3, JIA, HOU and SINGH teach the limitations of claim 1. JIA, HOU and SINGH do not expressly teach wherein determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component includes determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component based on a distance between a node corresponding to the operable component and a node corresponding to the label component.
In similar field of endeavor, ZHONG teaches wherein determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component includes determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component based on a distance between a node corresponding to the operable component and a node corresponding to the label component (See page 4, ll. 29-36, wherein Step 003: Acquire a picture node whose node count sequence number is located between the text text node and the visible title node, record the interpolated picture node, and then place the node before the visible title node and the distance from the node of the visible title node is lower than the fourth pre- The set picture node is also recorded as an interpolated picture node, and is incorporated into the set of interpolated picture nodes, and the non-interpolated picture nodes are cached at the same time; Step 004: Obtain a distance between each interpolated picture node and a node count number of the visible title node, and sort all the interpolated picture nodes in ascending order according to the distance; see also page 5, ll. 1-5, wherein the extracting module is configured to determine, according to the distance between the picture node, the date node, and the text text node, respectively, the content of the picture node, the content of the date node, or the text Whether the content of the text node is the subject content, and extracting the theme content of the target webpage according to the judgment result, where the theme content includes a text image, a publishing time, and a body text; as taught by ZHONG).
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 JIA, HOU and SINGH apparatus to include the teachings of ZHONG wherein determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component includes determining whether the label component indicates the name of the operable component based on a distance between a node corresponding to the operable component and a node corresponding to the label component. Such a person would have been motivated to make this combination as the invention has the beneficial effects that it provides a more optimized semantic-based information extraction method, which identifies the text visual title node of the DOM tree based on the strong association relationship existing on the page structure and the node performs classification and cache, and then uses the distance between other category nodes in the DOM tree and the visible head node of the text as an important basis for determining whether the node belongs to the subject content, thereby improving the accuracy and efficiency of web page information extraction (see ZHONG, page. 1, ll. 21-26).
Claims 9-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JIA et al. (US20110302486A1) in view of HOU et al. (US20200133444A1) and further in view of SINGH et al. (US20190392024A1) and further view of SAVAGE (US7441200B2).
As to claim 9, JIA , HOU and SINGH teach the limitations of claim 1. JIA, HOU and SINGH do not expressly teach the operable element on the user interface is a text box.
In similar field of endeavor, SAVAGE teaches the operable element on the user interface is a text box (See claim 1, elements a, b and c, wherein method of generating displayed elements in a user interface (UI) … a text component defining text entry objects used to process text entries relating to said displayed elements in said UI … a text field template, if said node is said text component, that allows text to be entered by a user for said element …; as taught by SAVAGE).
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 JIA, HOU and SINGH apparatus to include the teachings of SAVAGE wherein the operable element on the user interface is a text box. Such a person would have been motivated to make this combination as it makes it much easier and more flexible for the UI design where the designers can offer different types of element to be used including elements for text entry that can capture different user inputs (see also SAVAGE, BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION).
Claims 10-11 amount to the method performed by the apparatus, and the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing one or more programs configured to be executed by the apparatus of claim 9, respectively. Accordingly, claims 10-11 are rejected for substantially the same reasons as presented above for claim 9 and based on the references’ disclosure of the necessary supporting hardware and software.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-6 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Publication Number
Filing Date
Title
US11886533B2
2020-01-29
Transferable neural architecture for structured data extraction from web documents
US20200133644A1
2018-10-31
Automatic Classification of User Interface Elements
US20090198725A1
2008-05-13
Visualizing tree structures with different edge lengths
US20140282114A1
2013-03-15
Interactive Elements with Labels in a User Interface
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 KOOROSH NEHCHIRI whose telephone number is (408)918-7643. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 11-7 PST.
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/KOOROSH NEHCHIRI/Examiner, Art Unit 2174
/WILLIAM L BASHORE/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2174
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