DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to the Application filed on May 15, 2023.
Claims 1 - 20 are pending and have been examined.
Claims 1, 9 and 17 are independent.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on May 15, 2023 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Drawings
The drawings filed on May 15, 2023 have been accepted and considered by the Examiner.
Nonstatutory 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 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); 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 nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/eTD-info-I.jsp.
Claims 1, 3 - 9, 11 - 17, and 19 - 20 of the instant Application are provisionally rejected under the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1 - 20 of copending application 18/193,975 (hereinafter ‘975).
Regarding independent claims 1, 9, and 17, the conflicting claims are not identical to corresponding claims 1, 11 and 20 of the copending application because the claims of copending application ‘975 require the additional limitation, not required by claims 1, 9 and 17 of the instant Application. However, the conflicting claims are not patentably distinct from each other because: (1) claims 1, 9 and 17 of the instant Application and claims 1, 11 and 20 of the copending application recite common subject matter, and (2) whereby the elements of claims 1 , 9 and 17 of instant Application are fully anticipated by claims 1, 11 and 20 of the copending application, and anticipation is “the ultimate or epitome of obviousness” (In re Kalm, 154 USPQ 10 (CCPA 1967), also In re Daily, 178 USPQ 293 (CCPA 1973) and In re Pearson, 181 USPQ 641 (CCPA 1974)). This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection.
Dependent claims 3 - 8, 11- 16, and 19 - 20 are also similarly analyzed and rejected over claims 1 - 20 of the copending application ‘975.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection because the patentably indistinct claims have not in fact been patented.
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 17 - 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Regarding Claim 17,
Claim 17 recites “computer readable storage medium”
The broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI) of machine-readable media can encompass non-statutory transitory forms of signal transmission, such as a propagating electrical or electromagnetic signal per se. See in re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 84 USPQ2d 1495 (Fed.Cir. 2007). When the BRI encompasses transitory forms of signal transmission, a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 as failing to claim statutory subject matter would be appropriate. In the Specification, the phrase “computer readable storage medium” is mentioned broadly (open-ended). Under the broadest reasonable interpretation (BRI), “computer readable storage medium” covers forms of transitory propagating signals per se, and therefore would not be patent-eligible.
Claims 18 - 20 which depends upon claim 17 also recite “computer readable storage medium …” and are rejected following the same rationale.
It is recommended to amend Claim 17 to read “non-transitory” computer readable storage medium.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 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.
Claims 1, 9, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Chai et al., (CN112148836A), hereinafter referred to as Chai, in view of Liang et al., (WO2020242567A1), hereinafter referred to as Liang, and Zeng et al., (U.S. Patent 11,573,957), hereinafter referred to as Zeng.
Regarding Claims 1, 9 and 17, Chai teaches:
1. A system, comprising, 9. A computer-implemented method, comprising: training, by a system operatively coupled to a processor, and 17. A computer program product for unified question generation to generate multilingual and multimodal questions, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a processor to cause the processor to:
a memory that stores computer executable components; and [Chai, “A processor and a memory, the memory for storing a computer program (i.e., the claimed “computer executable components”), the processor for calling and running the computer program stored in the memory to perform the methods of any embodiment of this application.” Par. 0012]
a processor that executes the computer executable components stored in the memory, wherein the computer executable components comprise: [Chai, “A processor and a memory, the memory for storing a computer program, the processor for calling and running the computer program stored in the memory to perform the methods of any embodiment of this application.” Par. 0012]
train, by the processor, [Chai, “A processor and a memory, the memory for storing a computer program, the processor for calling and running the computer program stored in the memory to perform the methods of any embodiment of this application.” Par. 0012; “Specifically, each step of the method embodiment (i.e., the claimed “train”) in this application can be completed by the integrated logic circuit in the hardware of the processor,” Par. 0134]
a training component that trains a unified question generation model to generate questions in a language from a first modality in the language using training data comprising one or more second modalities in the language different from the first modality, [Chai, “intelligent question answering,” Par. 0045; “in supervised training, it is necessary to label the data, that is, the data input to the model includes the following two tuples <at least one modal question, multimodal answer>,” Par. 0045; “Obtain at least one first modality information.” Par. 0056; “the first training data includes at lease one second modal information (i.e., the claimed “second modality”);” Par. 0008]
wherein the first modality and the one or more second modalities include at least one of one or more tables, one or more passages, or a combination of the one or more tables and the one or more passages. [Chai, “intelligent question answering,” Par. 0045; “in supervised training, it is necessary to label the data, that is, the data input to the model includes the following two tuples <at least one modal question, multimodal answer>,” Par. 0045; “Obtain at least one first modality information.” Par. 0056; “the first training data includes at lease one second modal information (i.e., the claimed “second modality”);” Par. 0008]
Chai fails to teach different language and one or more tables, one or more passages, or a combination of the one or more tables and the one or more passages.
However, Liang teaches:
a training component that trains a unified question generation model to generate questions in a language from a first modality in the language using training data comprising one or more second modalities in the language different from the first modality, [Liang, “trained cross-lingual model can process the particular task, such as question answering task,” Par. 0030; “first language,” Par. 0057; “training the cross-lingual encoder using the first premise sentence in the second language (i.e., the claimed “language different”),” Par. 0057]
Chai in view of Liang fails to teach one or more passages, or a combination of the one or more tables and the one or more passages.
However, Zeng teaches:
wherein the first modality and the one or more second modalities include at least one of one or more tables, one or more passages, or a combination of the one or more tables and the one or more passages. [Zeng, “Further, because translatability depends on database information 150, the same natural language question 140 may be translated into query 160 given one database information 150 and may not be translated given another database information. For example, text to database query translation module 130 may receive natural language question 140 that is “What is the alliance of airline United Airlines?” and database information 150 that includes a schema with a table that has the “Airline”, “Airline Name”, “Alliance”, and “Fleet size”, and translate the natural language question 140 in query 160 that is “SELECT Alliance FROM Airlines Name=‘United Airlines’.” In another example, text to database query translation module 130 may receive natural language question 140 that is “What is the code of airline United Airlines?” and database information 150 that includes a schema with a table that has the “Airline”, “Airline Name”, “Country”, “Alliance”, and “Fleet size”.” Col. 3, Ln. 55-67 - Col. 4, Ln. 1-4]
Chai, Liang and Zeng pertain to question answer systems and are analogous to the instant application. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the question answer systems art to modify Chai’s teachings of “first modality” and “second modality” (Chai, Par. 0008, Par. 0056) with the teachings of “first language” and “second language” (Liang, Par. 0057) taught by Liang and the teachings of “table” (Zeng, Col. 3, Ln. 55-67 - Col. 4, Ln. 1-4) taught by Zeng in order to improve “plurality of multi-lingual tasks” (Liang, Par. 0025) and “synthesizing a database query, such as a structured language query (SQL) from a natural language question to help users.” (Zeng, Col. 1, Ln. 64-66).
Claims 2, 10 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Chai in view of Liang and Zeng as applied in claim 1 above, and in further view of Zhang et al., (CN111626059A), hereinafter referred to as Zhang.
Regarding Claims 2, 10 and 18, Chai in view of Liang and Zeng has been discussed above. The combination further teaches:
a generation component that generates a unified graph representation of data comprised in the one or more second modalities, [Chai, see mapping applied to claim 1, Liang, see mapping applied to claim 1; Zeng, see mapping applied to claim 1]
wherein a controlled subgraph of the unified graph representation acts as an input to the unified question generation model for generating a question. [Chai, see mapping applied to claim 1, Liang, see mapping applied to claim 1; Zeng, see mapping applied to claim 1]
The combination fails to teach graph representation and graph representation acts as an input.
However, Zhang teaches:
a generation component that generates a unified graph representation of data comprised in the one or more second modalities, [Zhang, “KBQA is a knowledge graph (i.e., the claimed graph representation of data”) based question answering system. The basic process is to query the knowledge graph based on the question, and then generate an answer based on the information in the knowledge graph and return it to the user.” Par. n00075]
wherein a controlled subgraph of the unified graph representation acts as an input to the unified question generation model for generating a question. [Zhang, “KBQA is a knowledge graph based question answering system. The basic process is to query the knowledge graph (i.e., the claimed “controlled subgraph”) based on the question (i.e., the claimed “acts as an input”), and then generate an answer based on the information in the knowledge graph and return it to the user.” Par. n0075]
Chai, Liang, Zeng and Zhang pertain to question answer systems and are analogous to the instant application. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the question answer systems art to modify Chai’s teachings of “first modality” and “second modality” (Chai, Par. 0008, Par. 0056) with the teachings of “first language” and “second language” (Liang, Par. 0057) taught by Liang, the teachings of “table” (Zeng, Col. 3, Ln. 55-67 - Col. 4, Ln. 1-4) taught by Zeng, and the teachings of “graph (i.e., the claimed graph representation of data”) based question answering system” (Zhang, Par. n0075) taught by Zhang in order to improve “plurality of multi-lingual tasks” (Liang, Par. 0025), “synthesizing a database query, such as a structured language query (SQL) from a natural language question to help users.” (Zeng, Col. 1, Ln. 64-66), and improve “the accuracy of the subsequent generated questions.” (Zhang, Par. n0002).
Claims 8, 16 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Chai in view of Liang, and Zeng as applied in claim 1 above, and in further view of Jia et al., (CN115470328A), hereinafter referred to as Jia.
Regarding Claims 8, 16 and 20, Chai in view of Liang, and Zeng has been discussed above. The combination further teaches:
wherein the unified question generation model generates the questions without requiring a fixed template and without requiring training specific to one or more domains. [Chai, see mapping applied to claim 2, Liang, see mapping applied to claim 2; Zeng, see mapping applied to claim 2[Li, see mapping applied to claim 2, Liang, see mapping applied to claim 2; Zeng, see mapping applied to claim 2; Zhang, see mapping applied to claim 2]
The combination fails to teach fixed template.
However, Jia teaches:
wherein the unified question generation model generates the questions without requiring a fixed template and without requiring training specific to one or more domains. [Jia, “use of fixed templates and lack of restrictions during path queries result in incomplete path retrieval and the inclusion of many invalid paths, which in turn affects accuracy of question and answer results.” Par. n0002; “In view of this, the purpose of this application is to propose an open-domain question and answering method (i.e., the claimed “without requiring fixed template and without requiring training specific to one or more domains”),” Par. n0003]
Chai, Liang, Zeng and Jia pertain to question answer systems and are analogous to the instant application. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the question answer systems art to modify Chai’s teachings of “first modality” and “second modality” (Chai, Par. 0008, Par. 0056) with the teachings of “first language” and “second language” (Liang, Par. 0057) taught by Liang, the teachings of “table” (Zeng, Col. 3, Ln. 55-67 - Col. 4, Ln. 1-4) taught by Zeng, and the teachings of open-domain question and answering method (i.e., the claimed “without requiring fixed template and without requiring training specific to one or more domains”) (Jia, Par. n0003) taught by Jia in order to improve “plurality of multi-lingual tasks” (Liang, Par. 0025), “synthesizing a database query, such as a structured language query (SQL) from a natural language question to help users.” (Zeng, Col. 1, Ln. 64-66), and improve “accuracy of question and answer results” (Jia, Par. n0002).
Subject Matter to be Novel and Nonobvious
Claims 3 - 7, 11 - 15 and 19 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 and also resolving rejection under the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting.
Regarding Claim 3, Perez, et al., (U.S. Patent Application Publication 2022/0222436), hereinafter referred to as Perez, is the closest prior art that teaches neural reasoning path retrieval for multi-hop text comparison. However, “neural reasoning path” taught by Perez and the claimed “neutral reasoning path” are completely different approaches. Earliest non-patent literature publication of “neutral reasoning path” for question generation is 2025. None of the combination teach the claimed “neutral reasoning path” for “generating the question”.
Claim 11 is recited similar to Claim 3 and also contain similar subject matter to be novel and nonobvious.
Claim 19 is recited similar to Claim 3 and also contain similar subject matter to be novel and nonobvious.
Claims 4 - 7 and 12 - 15 depend on Claims 3 and 11, respectively, and therefore disclose subject matter to be novel and nonobvious by virtue of dependency.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Wang et al., (CN113656540A) teaches question answering system based on SQL tables.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EUNICE LEE whose telephone number is 571-272-1886. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM.
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, Bhavesh Mehta can be reached on 571-272-7453. 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.
/EUNICE LEE/Examiner, Art Unit 2656
/BHAVESH M MEHTA/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2656
Prosecution Insights