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 .
This Non-Final Office Action is in response to the application 18/335,478 filed on 06/15/2023.
Status of Claims:
Claims 1-20 are pending in this Office Action.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 06/15/2023 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Independent Claims 1, 8, and 15:
Step 1:
Claim 1 recites “A method …”, the claim recites a series of steps and therefore is process.
Claim 8 recites “A computer program product comprising: one or more computer readable storage media and program instructions collectively stored on the one or more computer readable storage media...”, therefore the claim is a manufacture.
Claim 15 recites “A computer system...”, therefore the claim is a machine.
Step 2A Prong One:
Claims 1, 8, and 15 recite limitations “preprocessing… a corpus of documents of a given subject matter in preparation for performing a similarity assessment on the corpus”; “scanning… each document in the corpus to identify stop words, wherein a stop word is a high occurrence word that appears in at least a first pre-set threshold number of documents in the corpus or a low occurrence word that appears in less than a second pre-set threshold number of documents in the corpus”; “performing… a spellcheck function on the corpus of documents, wherein the spellcheck function takes into consideration the given subject matter for determining whether a word is misspelled or is a unique term known in the given subject matter”; “scanning… each document in the corpus to identify subject matter relevant words based on the given subject matter, wherein a subject matter relevant word is a word that is not on the list of stop words and is not identified by the spellcheck function as a misspelled word”; and “assigning…a weight to each identified subject matter relevant word based on a term frequency, wherein the term frequency equals how many times a word appears in a respective document divided by a total number of words in the respective document”; “performing… a similarity assessment on the corpus using the list of stop words and the list of subject matter relevant words with associated weights”. The limitations are processes that, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “computer program product” , “computer system”, “processor” , nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed in a human mind or with the aid of pen and paper.
For example, limitation “preprocessing… a corpus of documents of a given subject matter in preparation for performing a similarity assessment on the corpus” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing any process to a set of documents. One of ordinary skills in the art can apply any modifications or updates to a set of documents and consider that as preprocessing of documents in preparation for subsequent processing.
Limitations “scanning… each document in the corpus to identify stop words, wherein a stop word is a high occurrence word that appears in at least a first pre-set threshold number of documents in the corpus or a low occurrence word that appears in less than a second pre-set threshold number of documents in the corpus” and “scanning… each document in the corpus to identify subject matter relevant words based on the given subject matter, wherein a subject matter relevant word is a word that is not on the list of stop words and is not identified by the spellcheck function as a misspelled word” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing a judgment or evaluation process on a document. One of ordinary skills in the art can read or scan a document and identify particular words that meet the criteria such as words that are high/low occurrence in threshold number of documents or words that has particular meanings but do not spelled correctly. For example, one of ordinary skills in the art can read documents and determine that the word “the” is found in all documents and consider the word to be high occurrence. Then, one can read the same set of documents and determine the word “apple” is only found in one of all the document and consider the word to be low occurrence. Also, terms such as acronyms or special names can be read and consider them to be subject matter relevant words.
Limitations “performing… a spellcheck function on the corpus of documents, wherein the spellcheck function takes into consideration the given subject matter for determining whether a word is misspelled or is a unique term known in the given subject matter” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing a spelling check for a set of documents. One of ordinary skills in the art can read a set of documents and determine particular words to be either misspelled or words that are unique term known in the given subject matter. For example, one of ordinary skills in the art can read term “SQL” to be a unique term known in database field and read term “ROL” to be misspelled.
Limitations “assigning… a weight to each identified subject matter relevant word based on a term frequency, wherein the term frequency equals how many times a word appears in a respective document divided by a total number of words in the respective document” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing a generic weight determination for word. One of ordinary skills in the art can determine both term count and total word count in a document and determine the weight value for each term by performing a generic division calculation.
Limitations “performing… a similarity assessment on the corpus using the list of stop words and the list of subject matter relevant words with associated weights” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing any similarity operation with available resources. One of ordinary skills in the art can perform generic matching or comparison within the set of documents with the available data such as list of stop words and the list of subject matter relevant words with associated weights.
Step 2A Prong Two:
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the additional elements “adding…the stop words to a list of stop words” and “adding…the identified subject matter relevant words to a list of subject matter relevant words”; these limitations amount to data gathering which is considered to be insignificant extra solution activity (MPEP 2106.05(g).
Claim 1 also recites an additional element “…, by the one or more processors,…”. The limitation merely reciting the words "apply it" (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely using a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea as discussed in MPEP § 2106.05(f).
The one or more hardware processors, one or more computers, and one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media in these steps are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B:
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The limitations “adding…the stop words to a list of stop words” and “adding…the identified subject matter relevant words to a list of subject matter relevant words” and “…, by the one or more processors,…” are recognized by the courts as well-understood, routine , and conventional activities when they are claimed in a merely generic manner (see MPEP 2106.05(g) and MPEP 2106.05(f)).
Dependent claims 2, 9, and 16:
Step 2A Prong One:
Claims 2, 9, and 16 recite limitations “responsive to the spellcheck function identifying a low occurrence word of the low occurrence words is a misspelled word, …replacing… the misspelled word with a correctly spelled word in respective documents in the corpus”. The limitations are processes that, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “computer program product” , “computer system”, “processor” , nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed in a human mind or with the aid of pen and paper.
Limitations “responsive to the spellcheck function identifying a low occurrence word of the low occurrence words is a misspelled word, …replacing… the misspelled word with a correctly spelled word in respective documents in the corpus” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing a spelling correction process. One of ordinary skills in the art can read a document and determine words that are misspelled and correct the spelling of the words correspondingly.
Step 2A Prong Two:
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the additional elements “automatically replacing, by the one or more processors …”. The limitation merely reciting the words "apply it" (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely using a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea as discussed in MPEP § 2106.05(f).
The one or more hardware processors, one or more computers, and one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media in these steps are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B:
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The limitations “automatically replacing, by the one or more processors” is recognized by the courts as well-understood, routine , and conventional activities when they are claimed in a merely generic manner (see MPEP 2106.05(f)).
Dependent claims 3, 10, and 17:
Step 2A Prong One: Claims 3, 10, and 17 recite limitations “responsive to the spellcheck function identifying a respective low occurrence word of the low occurrence words is not a misspelled word, …adding, …the respective low occurrence word to a custom dictionary that can be used to identify and correct future misspellings of the low occurrence word”. The limitations are processes that, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “computer program product” , “computer system”, “processor” , nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed in a human mind or with the aid of pen and paper.
Limitations “responsive to the spellcheck function identifying a respective low occurrence word of the low occurrence words is not a misspelled word, …adding, …the respective low occurrence word to a custom dictionary that can be used to identify and correct future misspellings of the low occurrence word” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing a judgment or evaluation process. One of ordinary skills in the art can read a document and determine whether a word is misspelled or not and add the particular word to a custom dictionary based on the determination.
Step 2A Prong Two:
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the additional elements “automatically adding, by the one or more processors …”. The limitation merely reciting the words "apply it" (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely using a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea as discussed in MPEP § 2106.05(f).
The one or more hardware processors, one or more computers, and one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media in these steps are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B:
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The limitations “automatically adding, by the one or more processors…” is recognized by the courts as well-understood, routine , and conventional activities when they are claimed in a merely generic manner (see MPEP 2106.05(f)).
Dependent claims 4, 11, and 18:
Step 2A Prong One: Claims 4, 11, and 18 recite limitations “determines whether each respective word matches within a preset spelling threshold or is a common misspelling of a known word of a main language of the corpus”. The limitations are processes that, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “computer program product” , “computer system”, “processor” , nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed in a human mind or with the aid of pen and paper.
Limitations “determines whether each respective word matches within a preset spelling threshold or is a common misspelling of a known word of a main language of the corpus” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing a judgment or evaluation process. One of ordinary skills in the art can read a document and determine whether a word matches within a preset spelling threshold or is a common misspelling of a known word of a main language of the corpus.
Dependent claims 5, 12, and 19:
Step 2A Prong One: Claims 5, 12, and 19 recite limitations “responsive to a respective word not matching within the preset spelling threshold and not being a common misspelling of a respective known word of the main language of the corpus, determining… whether the respective word is a known term of the given subject matter”. The limitations are processes that, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “computer program product” , “computer system”, “processor” , nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed in a human mind or with the aid of pen and paper.
Limitations “responsive to a respective word not matching within the preset spelling threshold and not being a common misspelling of a respective known word of the main language of the corpus, determining… whether the respective word is a known term of the given subject matter” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing a judgment or evaluation process. One of ordinary skills in the art can read a document and determine whether a respective word is a known term of the given subject matter based on the determination whether a word matches within a preset spelling threshold or is a common misspelling of a known word of a main language of the corpus.
Step 2A Prong Two:
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the additional elements “determining, by the one or more processors…”. The limitation merely reciting the words "apply it" (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely using a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea as discussed in MPEP § 2106.05(f).
The one or more hardware processors, one or more computers, and one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media in these steps are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B:
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The limitations “determining, by the one or more processors…” is recognized by the courts as well-understood, routine , and conventional activities when they are claimed in a merely generic manner (see MPEP 2106.05(f)).
Dependent claims 6, 13, and 20:
Step 2A Prong One: Claims 6, 13, and 20 recite limitations “responsive to determining the respective word is the known term of the given subject matter, adding… the respective word to a custom dictionary that can be used to identify and correct future misspellings of the low occurrence word”. The limitations are processes that, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “computer program product” , “computer system”, “processor” , nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed in a human mind or with the aid of pen and paper.
Limitations “responsive to determining the respective word is the known term of the given subject matter, adding… the respective word to a custom dictionary that can be used to identify and correct future misspellings of the low occurrence word” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing a judgment or evaluation process. One of ordinary skills in the art can read a document and determine whether a word is known term of the given subject matter and add the particular word to a custom dictionary based on the determination.
Step 2A Prong Two:
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the additional elements “adding, by the one or more processors…”. The limitation merely reciting the words "apply it" (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely using a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea as discussed in MPEP § 2106.05(f).
The one or more hardware processors, one or more computers, and one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media in these steps are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B:
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The limitations “adding, by the one or more processors…” is recognized by the courts as well-understood, routine , and conventional activities when they are claimed in a merely generic manner (see MPEP 2106.05(f)).
Dependent claims 7 and 14:
Step 2A Prong One: Claims 7 and 14 recite limitations “responsive to at least one new document being added to the corpus, updating…the list of stop words and the list of subject matter relevant words based on words in the at least one new document.”. The limitations are processes that, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “computer program product” , “computer system”, “processor” , nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed in a human mind or with the aid of pen and paper.
Limitations “responsive to at least one new document being added to the corpus, updating…the list of stop words and the list of subject matter relevant words based on words in the at least one new document” in the context of this claim encompass a user mentally, and with the aid of pen and paper performing a generic updating process. One of ordinary skills in the art can perform updates on a list of data based on new data or document added to the corpus.
Step 2A Prong Two:
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the additional elements “updating, by the one or more processors…”. The limitation merely reciting the words "apply it" (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely using a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea as discussed in MPEP § 2106.05(f).
The one or more hardware processors, one or more computers, and one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media in these steps are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B:
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The limitations “updating, by the one or more processors…” is recognized by the courts as well-understood, routine , and conventional activities when they are claimed in a merely generic manner (see MPEP 2106.05(f)).
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 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.
Claims 1-6, 8-13, and 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rose (US PGPUB 20110004610) “Rose” in view of Harrity (US Patent 7207004) “Harrity” and Morgana et al. (US PGPUB 20100005083) “Morgana”.
Regarding claim 1, Rose teaches a method comprising: preprocessing, by one or more processors, a corpus of documents of a given subject matter in preparation for performing a similarity assessment on the corpus ([0021]: “Automatically generated stoplist can be used to configure other information extraction and analysis tools. According to embodiments of the present invention, the automatically generated stoplist can be created from a set of training documents for which keywords are defined”… [0024]: “…particularly if the corpus of documents is focused on a particular domain or topic”… Examiner’s note: A corpus of documents of a subject matter or topic can be processed to identify similarities such as frequent words), wherein preprocessing comprises: scanning, by the one or more processors, each document in the corpus to identify stop words, wherein a stop word is a high occurrence word that appears in at least a first pre-set threshold number of documents in the corpus ([0022]: “Words that occurred within a minimum threshold number of documents were added to the stoplist and ordered by their total term frequency”... [0025]: “To evaluate the automatic stoplist generation of the instant example, six stoplists were generated, three of which select words for the stoplist by term frequency (TF) and that have a document frequency greater than 10, 25, or 50 documents”… Examiner’s note: Words with high occurrence such as words that have a document frequency greater threshold number of documents can be added to a stoplist.); adding, by the one or more processors, the stop words to a list of stop words (Fig. 1a & [0022]: “The stop list was automatically generated by first identifying for each abstract in the Inspec training set the words occurring adjacent to words in the abstract's manually assigned keyword list. The frequency of each word occurring adjacent to a keyword was accumulated across the abstracts. Words that occurred within a minimum threshold number of documents were added to the stoplist and ordered by their total term frequency”.); performing, by the one or more processors, a similarity assessment on the corpus using the list of stop words ([0031]: “Because RAKE can split candidate keywords by stop words, extracted keywords do not contain interior stop words… A new candidate keyword is then created as a combination of those keywords and their interior stop words”…[0032]: “After candidate keywords are scored, the top T scoring candidate keywords are selected and extracted as keywords for the document”. ).
Rose does not explicitly teach scanning, by the one or more processors, each document in the corpus to identify stop words, wherein a stop word is or a low occurrence word that appears in less than a second pre-set threshold number of documents in the corpus; performing, by the one or more processors, a spellcheck function on the corpus of documents, wherein the spellcheck function takes into consideration the given subject matter for determining whether a word is misspelled or is a unique term known in the given subject matter; scanning, by the one or more processors, each document in the corpus to identify subject matter relevant words based on the given subject matter, wherein a subject matter relevant word is a word that is not on the list of stop words and is not identified by the spellcheck function as a misspelled word; adding, by the one or more processors, the identified subject matter relevant words to a list of subject matter relevant words; assigning, by the one or more processors, a weight to each identified subject matter relevant word based on a term frequency, wherein the term frequency equals how many times a word appears in a respective document divided by a total number of words in the respective document; and performing, by the one or more processors, a similarity assessment on the corpus using the list of subject matter relevant words with associated weights.
Harrity teaches scanning, by the one or more processors, each document in the corpus to identify stop words, wherein a stop word is or a low occurrence word that appears in less than a second pre-set threshold number of documents in the corpus (Col4 line 40-49: “Optionally, the table may also identify how many times a word occurs in a document or over a group of documents in the document corpus and/or where the word occurs in the document(s). In one implementation, the table may remove words that occur less than a threshold number of times in a document (e.g., a word occurring less than three times in any document of the document corpus may be removed) or a threshold number of times across a group of documents (e.g., a word occurring in less than five different documents of the document corpus may be removed)”… Examiner’s note: The system identifies words that occur less than a threshold number of times across a group of documents which can correspond to stop word that appears in less than a pre-set threshold number of documents in the corpus); performing, by the one or more processors, a spellcheck function on the corpus of documents, wherein the spellcheck function takes into consideration the given subject matter for determining whether a word is misspelled or is a unique term known in the given subject matter (Col 4 line 35-38: “Returning to FIG. 3A, a supplemental dictionary may be created based on words in the document(s) of the document corpus (act 330). In one implementation, a table of words may be created based on the document corpus”... Col 4 line 64-65: “Returning to FIG. 3A, it may be determined whether the word matches a word in the supplemental dictionary… Col 5 line 6-9: If a match occurs, then the word may be designated as matching a word in the supplemental dictionary. In one implementation, the word may be treated as if it were correctly spelled”… Col 5 line 22-24: “If a match does not occur, then the word may be designated as not matching in the supplemental dictionary”… Col 6 line 10-15: “It may then be determined whether the word was designated as matching a word in the supplemental dictionary (act 420). If not, a closely matching word or words from the standard and supplemental dictionaries may be provided (act 430)”… Examiner’s note: The system performs a spellcheck function that determines whether each word match with a supplemental dictionary or is misspelled. The supplemental dictionary can correspond to a pool of unique terms known in the given subject matter because it is not a standard dictionary and created based on the corpus of documents); scanning, by the one or more processors, each document in the corpus to identify subject matter relevant words based on the given subject matter, wherein a subject matter relevant word is a word that is not on the list of stop words and is not identified by the spellcheck function as a misspelled word (Col4 line 40-49: “The table may remove words that occur less than a threshold number of times in a document (e.g., a word occurring less than three times in any document of the document corpus may be removed) or a threshold number of times across a group of documents (e.g., a word occurring in less than five different documents of the document corpus may be removed)”… Col 4 line 64-65: “Returning to FIG. 3A, it may be determined whether the word matches a word in the supplemental dictionary”… Col 5 line 6-9: “If a match occurs, then the word may be designated as matching a word in the supplemental dictionary. In one implementation, the word may be treated as if it were correctly spelled”… Examiner’s note: A word that is matched with a word in the supplemental dictionary can be treated as if it were correctly spelled. Also, the stop words are removed before the matching process. Thus, the matched words can be considered as subject matter relevant words that is not on the list of stop words and is not identified by the spellcheck function as a misspelled word ); adding, by the one or more processors, the identified subject matter relevant words to a list of subject matter relevant words (Col 4 line 35-38: “Returning to FIG. 3A, a supplemental dictionary may be created based on words in the document(s) of the document corpus (act 330). In one implementation, a table of words may be created based on the document corpus”); and performing, by the one or more processors, a similarity assessment on the corpus using the list of subject matter relevant words with associated weights (Col 4 line 64-67 and col 5 line 1-5: “Returning to FIG. 3A, it may be determined whether the word matches a word in the supplemental dictionary (act 350). For example, the supplemental dictionary may be searched for an occurrence of the word. In one implementation, a match is determined if the word appears in the supplemental dictionary and its number of occurrences in a document or over a group of documents exceeds a threshold. In another implementation, a match is determined for any occurrence of the word in the supplemental dictionary”.) It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the Harrity teachings in the Rose system. Skilled artisan would have been motivated to incorporate processing words of document that are not found in standard dictionary taught by Harrity in the Rose system so words can be analyzed more in depth such as when words can have another meaning that don’t belong in a standard dictionary or words are really spelled incorrectly. Thus, words can be categorized correctly and updated more accurately in corpus of documents, which can improve user experience . This close relation between both of the references highly suggests an expectation of success.
Rose in view of Harrity does not explicitly teach assigning, by the one or more processors, a weight to each identified subject matter relevant word based on a term frequency, wherein the term frequency equals how many times a word appears in a respective document divided by a total number of words in the respective document.
Morgana teaches assigning, by the one or more processors, a weight to each identified subject matter relevant word based on a term frequency, wherein the term frequency equals how many times a word appears in a respective document divided by a total number of words in the respective document ([0027]: “A text document can be provided for keyword extraction, as shown at block 410. A set of common words in a corpus of the document can be determined utilizing a simple frequency threshold parameter, as depicted at block 420. The frequency of the word can be determined as the count of the word divided by the count of words in the document and/or the corpus. A determination can be made whether the words in the document possess a frequency in the corpus that is more than the threshold, as illustrated at block 430”.). It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the Morgana teachings in the Rose and Harrity system. Skilled artisan would have been motivated to incorporate determining frequency of words in a document taught by Morgana in the Rose and Harrity system to identify further information of the words such as how important they are relative to the document. Words with the most frequency in a document can assist users to understand the topic of the document or help the users to eliminate any possible stop words. This close relation between the references highly suggests an expectation of success.
Regarding claim 2, Rose in view of Harrity and Morgana teaches all of the limitations of claim 1. Rose does not explicitly teach responsive to the spellcheck function identifying a low occurrence word of the low occurrence words is a misspelled word, automatically replacing, by the one or more processors, the misspelled word with a correctly spelled word in respective documents in the corpus.
Harrity teaches responsive to the spellcheck function identifying a low occurrence word of the low occurrence words is a misspelled word, automatically replacing, by the one or more processors, the misspelled word with a correctly spelled word in respective documents in the corpus (Col 6 line 10-15: “It may then be determined whether the word was designated as matching a word in the supplemental dictionary. If not, a closely matching word or words from the standard and supplemental dictionaries may be provided. A closely matching word may refer to a word that is likely to correspond to the potentially misspelled word”.). It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the Harrity teachings in the Rose and Morgana system. Skilled artisan would have been motivated to incorporate fixing misspelled words to correctly spelled words taught by Harrity in the Rose and Morgana system to reduce spelling errors in a document, which can also improve user experience. This close relation between the references highly suggests an expectation of success.
Regarding claim 3, Rose in view of Harrity and Morgana teaches all of the limitations of claim 1. Rose does not explicitly teach responsive to the spellcheck function identifying a respective low occurrence word of the low occurrence words is not a misspelled word, automatically adding, by the one or more processors, the respective low occurrence word to a custom dictionary that can be used to identify and correct future misspellings of the low occurrence word (Fig. 3B & Col 5 line 6-9: “If a match occurs (act 350), then the word may be designated as matching a word in the supplemental dictionary (act 360) (FIG. 3B). In one implementation, the word may be treated as if it were correctly spelled (act 362)”… col 5 line 14-19: “The flag associated with the word to identify the word as a potentially misspelled word may be changed to a different type of flag, such as one that identifies the word as one that does not match a word in the standard dictionary, but matches a word in the supplemental dictionary”… Examiner’s note: A word can be considered as correctly spelled and the word can be incorporated into a supplemental dictionary of valid terms for future use). It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the Harrity teachings in the Rose and Morgana system. Skilled artisan would have been motivated to incorporate processing words that are not found in standard dictionary but are relevant words taught by Harrity in the Rose and Morgana system to reduce errors in autocorrecting words and maintain words that have meanings but are not found in dictionary, which can also improve user experience. This close relation between the references highly suggests an expectation of success.
Regarding claim 4, Rose in view of Harrity and Morgana teaches all of the limitations of claim 1. Rose does not explicitly teach wherein the spellcheck function determines whether each respective word matches within a preset spelling threshold or is a common misspelling of a known word of a main language of the corpus.
Harrity teaches wherein the spellcheck function determines whether each respective word matches within a preset spelling threshold or is a common misspelling of a known word of a main language of the corpus (Col 6 line 35-51: “A potentially misspelled word was selected by spell checking software associated with an application. In this case, the potentially misspelled word is "multiplexor." … Spell checker window may include an excerpt of the document that includes the potentially misspelled word in a "Not in Dictionary" section. Spell checker window 900 may also include a list of closely matching words from the standard dictionary and the supplemental dictionary in a "Suggestions" section… The closely matching words may optionally be ranked in some manner. For example, the closely matching words may be ranked based on the number of times that the words appear in documents of the document corpus and/or where the words occur within documents of the document corpus”… Examiner’s note: A misspelled word can be a common misspelling of know word found in the standard dictionary and the supplemental dictionary). Please refer to claim 2 for the motivational statement.
Regarding claim 5, Rose in view of Harrity and Morgana teaches all of the limitations of claim 4. Rose does not explicitly teach responsive to a respective word not matching within the preset spelling threshold and not being a common misspelling of a respective known word of the main language of the corpus, determining, by the one or more processors, whether the respective word is a known term of the given subject matter.
Harrity teaches responsive to a respective word not matching within the preset spelling threshold and not being a common misspelling of a respective known word of the main language of the corpus, determining, by the one or more processors, whether the respective word is a known term of the given subject matter (Col 4 line 52-61: “A word not in a standard dictionary may be identified (act 340)... For example, many existing software applications (e.g., Word, WordPerfect, Acrobat, PowerPoint, Explorer, etc.) include standard dictionaries that a user may use to check for misspelled words in a document. A word that does not appear in the standard dictionary may be flagged in some manner as a potentially misspelled word”… Col 4 line 64-66: “Returning to FIG. 3A, it may be determined whether the word matches a word in the supplemental dictionary (act 350)”… Examiner’s note: The system determines a word does not appear in the standard dictionary which can correspond to word not matching within the preset spelling threshold and not being a common misspelling of a known word of the main language. Subsequently, the system determines whether the word matches a word in the supplemental dictionary which can correspond to whether the respective word is a known term of the given subject matter). Please refer to claim 3 for the motivational statement.
Regarding claim 6, Rose in view of Harrity and Morgana teaches all of the limitations of claim 5. Rose does not explicitly teach responsive to determining the respective word is the known term of the given subject matter, adding, by the one or more processors, the respective word to a custom dictionary that can be used to identify and correct future misspellings of the low occurrence word.
Harrity teaches responsive to determining the respective word is the known term of the given subject matter, adding, by the one or more processors, the respective word to a custom dictionary that can be used to identify and correct future misspellings of the low occurrence word (Fig. 3B & Col 5 line 6-9: “If a match occurs (act 350), then the word may be designated as matching a word in the supplemental dictionary (act 360) (FIG. 3B). In one implementation, the word may be treated as if it were correctly spelled (act 362)”… col 5 line 14-19: “The flag associated with the word to identify the word as a potentially misspelled word may be changed to a different type of flag, such as one that identifies the word as one that does not match a word in the standard dictionary, but matches a word in the supplemental dictionary”… Examiner’s note: A word can be considered as correctly spelled and the word can be incorporated into a supplemental dictionary of valid terms for future use). Please refer to claim 3 for the motivational statement.
Regarding claim 8, note the rejections of claim 1. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 9, note the rejections of claim 2. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 10, note the rejections of claim 3. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 11, note the rejections of claim 4. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 12, note the rejections of claim 5. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 13, note the rejections of claim 6. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 15, note the rejections of claim 1. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 16, note the rejections of claim 2. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 17, note the rejections of claim 3. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 18, note the rejections of claim 4. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 19, note the rejections of claim 5. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Regarding claim 20, note the rejections of claim 6. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Claims 7 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rose (US PGPUB 20110004610) “Rose” in view of Harrity (US Patent 7207004) “Harrity”, Morgana et al. (US PGPUB 20100005083) “Morgana”, and Parikh (US PGPUB 20060200442) “Parikh”.
Regarding claim 7, Rose in view of Harrity and Morgana teaches all of the limitations of claim 1. Rose does not explicitly teach responsive to at least one new document being added to the corpus, updating, by the one or more processors, the list of stop words and the list of subject matter relevant words based on words in the at least one new document.
Harrity teaches responsive to at least one new document being added to the corpus, updating, by the one or more processors, the list of subject matter relevant words based on words in the at least one new document (Col 3 line 34-35: “Processing may begin with the creating, modifying, or opening of a document (act 310) (FIG. 3A)”… Col 4 line 35-37: “Returning to FIG. 3A, a supplemental dictionary may be created based on words in the document(s) of the document corpus”… Examiner’s note: Document can be created within a corpus and the supplemental dictionary can be created respectively). It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the Harrity teachings in the Rose and Morgana system. Skilled artisan would have been motivated to incorporate updating the supplemental dictionary taught by Harrity in the Rose and Morgana system to improve processing of words in a document and reduce errors in correcting words in a document, which can enhance user experience. This close relation between the references highly suggests an expectation of success.
Rose in view of Harrity and Morgana does not explicitly teach responsive to at least one new document being added to the corpus, updating, by the one or more processors, the list of stop words.
Parikh teaches responsive to at least one new document being added to the corpus, updating, by the one or more processors, the list of stop words ([0035]: “A list of documents on the device is prepared (400) and a list of unique words for each document created (410). Stop words are then removed from this list (420) and an association is made between each of the remaining keywords and the document (430)”…[0036]: “Stop words, if removed, can be removed from the bags either before or after a mathematical union of the bags is made, as the end result is the same. Typically stop words are identified in a list which can be used for the exclusion process. Since the stop word removal process is well known it is not described herein. In addition, in some implementations where a stop word list is used, the list may be editable so that additional words can be defined as "stop words." For example, otherwise non-trivial words that are trivial in the particular context because they occur too often in that context (e.g. words like "shares" in stock related government filings) may be added to the list of stop words either in an automated or manual way based on their high frequency”.). It would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the Parikh teachings in the Rose, Harrity and Morgana system. Skilled artisan would have been motivated to incorporate updating the list of stop words taught by Parikh in the Rose, Harrity and Morgana system to improve processing of words in a document, which can also reduce the cost of the system. This close relation between the references highly suggests an expectation of success.
Regarding claim 14, note the rejections of claim 7. The instant claims recite substantially same limitations as the above-rejected claims and are therefore rejected under the same prior-art teachings.
Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Misra et al. (US Patent 12081809) is directed to increasing misspelling, typographical, and partial search tolerance for search terms. A system can obtain media content metadata associated with media content. The system can identify a plurality of names within the media content metadata and remove a plurality of stop words from the media content metadata. The system can determine a plurality of unigrams and a plurality of bigrams from the media content metadata. The system can determine a plurality of misspellings of the media content metadata. The system can compile the plurality of names, the plurality of stop words, the plurality of unigrams, the plurality of bigrams, and the plurality of misspellings as results. The system can determine a plurality of incorrect search strings based upon the results and can create a dictionary including the plurality of incorrect search strings mapped to a plurality of correct search strings.
Bull et al. (US Patent 10095775) is directed to identifying information gaps in corpora. A computer receives a document and extracts keywords from the document while filtering trivial keywords. The computer identifies and extracts top keywords detailed by the document using a topic modelling approach before determining whether the extracted top keywords exceed a threshold use frequency. Based on determining that the top keywords exceed a threshold use frequency, determining whether the top keywords have a relation to other entities within the document and, if so, determining whether the top keywords are defined within the document. Based on determining that the top keywords are not defined in the document, adding the top keywords to a list and defining the top keywords.
Conclusion
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/C.D.V./Examiner, Art Unit 2153 07/30/2026
/KAVITA STANLEY/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2153
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