DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to the Amendments and Arguments filed on 09/08/2025. Claims 1-10 are pending and have been examined.
Any objections/rejections not mentioned in this Office Action has been withdrawn by the Examiner.
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 Amendments and Arguments
With respect to the 35 USC 112(b) rejections, objections to the Specification and Claim objections, these have been withdrawn based on the amendments made by the Applicant.
With respect to the 35 USC 101 abstract rejections, the Applicant cites to several limitations of the claims such as “perform natural language processing on a plurality of inputs, each of the plurality of inputs comprising at least one word … abstract the plurality of inputs based on the plurality of inputs by referring to concept information stored in a data storage, the concept information showing a connection of words and groups of words … on a basis of a word that is a target of interest set in advance, the word being one of words included in the plurality of inputs, and the result of the selection, generate a sentence with the word that is the target of interest as a subject.” The applicant notes that as a result of these limitations that these features/limitations cannot be practically performed in a human mind.
The Examiner respectfully disagrees. The Applicant has not provided reasons as to how each of the limitations pointed out by the Applicant cannot be performed in the human mind. As noted in the previous Office Action (non-final), how a human can perform each limitation was clearly noted. More specifically, with respect to the newly added limitation of “perform…” such limitation relates to a human processing each received input where each input may be a sentence with plural words such as receiving a sentence query from another user and determining broad topics for each word, where the broad topics are known in advance and associated with each word and relate to hypernyms/hyponyms. Then, creating another sentence using the hypernyms/hyponyms to create a sentence.
With respect to the 35 USC 102 rejections, the Applicant’s arguments are moot in view of new grounds for rejections. A new reference has been applied to teach the newly added limitations. Specifically, the limitation of “on a basis of a word that is a target of interest set in advance, the word being one of words included in the plurality of inputs, and the result of the selection, generate a sentence with the word that is the target of interest as a subject.” raises new grounds for rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The independent claims 1, 9, and 10 recites a system, method and CRM thus relating to a statutory category. The claims further recite “perform natural language processing on a plurality of inputs, each of the plurality of inputs comprising at least one word; abstract the plurality of inputs based on the plurality of inputs by referring to concept information stored in a data storage, the concept information showing a connection of words and groups of words; select a common concept that is an abstract concept common to the plurality of inputs; generate output data including the common concept based on a result of the selection; and on a basis of a word that is a target of interest set in advance, the word being one of words included in the plurality of inputs, and the result of the selection, generate a sentence with the word that is the target of interest as a subject.”
The limitation of “performing…”, “abstracting…”, “generating…”, “generate…” as drafted covers mental activities. More specifically, a human receiving a query in the form of a sentence, the human then determining broader topics/hypernym/hyponym of each input word in order to generalize the input query for each word. Then, selecting the most suitable topic and providing an output in the form of a sentence using the found broader topics to the person .
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, claims 1, 9 and 10 and recites the additional elements of “information processing apparatus” (claim 9), processor (claim 1 and 10), and memory (claim 1 and 10) in the independent claims. For example, paragraph [0026], [0060], [0061] of the as filed specification, there is description of CPU and storage but is provided as exemplary language which is interpreted to include all known CPU/Storage elements available. Such devices amount to general purpose computing devices. Accordingly, these additional elements does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to the integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element of using a computer is noted as a general computer as noted. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. Further, the additional limitation in the claims noted above are directed towards insignificant solution activity. The claims are not patent eligible.
With respect to claim 2, the claim relates to “wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to: acquire a plurality of words based on the plurality of inputs; perform abstraction processing to associate the acquired plurality of words with an abstract concept that is a word with different abstraction level from the word; select a common concept common to the plurality of words based on a result of processing; and generate a sentence based on a result of the selection”. This reads on a human receiving each word of a query, associate each word with a generalized concept, select a common concept and then creating a sentence based on the common concepts. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claim 3, the claims relate to “wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to generate a sentence based on a target of interest set in advance and the result of the selection.” This relates to a human generating a sentence based on another person’s objectives.. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claim 4, the claim relates to “wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to select a common concept, an abstract concept common to the word that is the target of interest and is the subject in the generated sentence and another word different from the word that is the target of intertest, among a plurality of words acquitted by segmenting the plurality of inputs.” This relates to a human selecting a word that is common to the word and continuing the process for each word in the sentence. No additional limitation is present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claim 5, the claim relates to “wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to generate a word cloud sentence in which the word is associated with the abstract concept that is the word with different abstraction level from the word”. This relates to a human breaking down each word into different layers of generalization and creating a cloud for each word in the query. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claim 6, the claim relates to “wherein a value of the abstraction level increases as a number of connected words indicating a number of words and groups of words connected to a word and a group of words increases.” This relates to a relationship that is set in advance to show the correlation of abstraction level to number of connected words. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claim 7, the claim relates to “wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to: accept input of a plurality of sentences as the plurality of inputs; and acquire a word by performing natural language processing on the input sentences.” This relates to an initial step of data gathering which is a human listening to various sentences and then determining a word based on each sentence. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claim 8, the claim relates to “wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to: generate search information including the extracted abstract concept as output data, data; and search the search information using the abstract concept acquired based on input information.” This relates to a human generating search results by looking up the query provided by the user based on the generalization made and providing the information to a user. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
These claims further do not remedy the judicial exception being integrated into a practical application and further fail to include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claim(s) 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Colledge (US 2007/0136251) in view of Tian (CN 103927358 A)
As to claim 1, 9, and 10, specifically for clam 9, Colledge teaches an information processing method by an information processing apparatus, the method comprising:
performing natural language processing on a plurality of inputs, each of the plurality of inputs comprising at least one word (see [0058], where query is in sentence form and each word is processed into word senses and for disambiguation see [0060]);
abstracting a plurality of inputs based on the plurality of inputs by referring to concept information stored in a data storage, the concept information showing a connection of words and group of words (see [0066]-[0070], and [0078], where query input is expanded to various senses that relate to the word as a hypernym, meronym, or hyponym) and
selecting a common concept that is an abstract concept common to the plurality of inputs (see [0064], various semantic relationships are used to determine senses such as hypernyms, meronyms, hyponyms, and see [0078], where disambiguated query is expanded and see [0071], various disambiguation methods);
generating output data including the common concept based on a result of the selection (see [0078], where disambiguated query is expanded to include keyword senses which are semantically related to the specific keyword senses in the query; and
on a basis of a word that is a target of interest set in advance, the word being one of words included in the plurality of inputs, and the result of the selection (see [0058], where the query sentence is the plurality of words which undergoes word sense analysis for expansion and therefore is a target of interest),
Colledege does specifically teach generation of an expanded query but not specifically in the form of a sentence.
However, Colledge does not specifically teach generate a sentence with the word that is the target of interest as a subject.
Tian does teach generate a sentence with the word that is the target of interest as a subject (see [0080], [0084], where expansion query sentence is generated based on generating an expanded semantic key semantic concept, where such is based on the query sentence received which is the target input).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed inventions to have modified the generation of output data based on common concepts as taught by Colledge with the generation of a sentence as taught by Tian in order to effectively carry out and use domain knowledge to extract text content (see Tian [0006]).
As to claims 1 and 10, apparatus claims 1 and 10 and method claim 9 are related as apparatus and the method of using same, with each claimed element's function corresponding to the claimed method step. Accordingly claims 1 and 10 are similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to method claim.
As to claims 1 and 10, Colledge teaches at least one memory configured to store instructions, and at least one processor configured to execute the instructions (see [0055], processor and storage medium described) and teaches a non-transitory computer readable recording medium (see [0043], various memory described).
As to claim 2, Colledge in view of Tian disclose all of the limitations as in claim 1.
Furthermore, Colledge teaches wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to:
acquire a plurality of words based on the plurality of inputs (see [0077], query is received as an input);
perform abstraction processing to associate the acquired plurality of words with an abstract concept that is a word with different abstraction level from the word (see [0078], where search engine expands the disambiguated query to include keyword senses which are semantically related);
select a common concept common to the plurality of words based on a result of processing (see [0078], where expansion is performed on the basis if word sense and produces a list of word senses related to the meaning of the query and see [0065], where example provided such that expanding “financial institution” sense of bank will not expand the other senses such as “river bank” or “to save”); and
generate a sentence based on a result of the selection (see [0097], where question is provided to the user to determine if “programming language” was intended by word “JAVA”)
As to claim 3, Colledge in view of Tian disclose all of the limitations as in claim 2.
Furthermore, Colledge teaches wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to generate the sentence based on a target of interest set in advance and the result of the selection (see [0175], where system tracks the word meanings a user intends by referring to previous queries to determine a preference of sense when selecting the proper sense).
As to claim 4, Colledge in view of Tian disclose all of the limitations as in claim 1.
Furthermore, Colledge teaches wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to select as the common concept an abstract concept common to the word that is the target of interest and is the subject in the generated sentence and another word different from the word that is the target of interest, among a plurality of words acquired by segmenting the plurality of inputs (see [0175], where senses are determined based on previous queries and see [0078], where senses which are semantically related to the specific senses are used and see [0064], [0071], where these senses can be synonyms, meronyms, hyponyms, hypernyms, etc. and where each word in the input query is analyzed in similar fashion).
Furthermore, as cited in Tian in claim 1, Tian teaches the generation of expanded sentence.
As to claim 5, Colledge in view of Tian disclose all of the limitations as in claim 2.
Furthermore, Colledge teaches wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to generate a word cloud sentence in which the word is associated with the abstract concept that is the word with different abstraction level from the word (see [0065], where expanding a query causes list of related senses and see [0066]-[0068], where adding a sense and its associated senses to the disambiguated keyword sense and transforming it into other semantically equivalent queries) (e.g. The Examiner interprets the list of senses for the word to be the word cloud and the query as a whole to be the sentence).
As to claim 6, Colledge in view of Tian disclose all of the limitations as in claim 2.
Furthermore, Colledge teaches wherein a value of the abstraction level increases as a number of connected words indicating a number of words and groups of words connected to a word and a group of words increases (see Figure 3A, where both top and bottom relationships show connections between words and where abstract level increases the more branches are present if going from bottom to top).
As to claim 7, Colledge in view of Tian disclose all of the limitations as in claim 2.
Furthermore, Colledge teaches wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to: accept input of a plurality of sentences as the plurality of inputs (see [0166], where words and word senses from prior queries are used as additional context for the current query); and
acquire a word by performing natural language processing on the input sentences (see [0166], where disambiguation is performed to determine sense of words for the word in the text segment).
As to claim 8, Colledge in view of Tian disclose all of the limitations as in claim 2.
Furthermore, Colledge teaches wherein the at least one processor is configured to execute the instructions to:
generate search information including the abstract concept as output data (see [0078]m where search engine expands the disambiguated query to include keyword senses which are semantically related to the specific keyword senses); and
search the search information using the abstract concept acquired based on input information (see [0079], where search engine compares the disambiguated and expanded query to word to a database and then returns results to the client).
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 PARAS D SHAH whose telephone number is (571)270-1650. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 7:30AM-2:30PM, 5PM-7PM (EST), Friday 8AM-noon (EST).
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/Paras D Shah/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2653
11/21/2025