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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Status of the Application
Claims 1-20 have been examined in this application. This communication is the first action on the merits.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/23/2023 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 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claims are directed towards a computer readable medium, and in the Spec. the medium is described as “the one or more memory modules 134 may be configured as volatile and/or nonvolatile memory and, as such, may include random access memory (includes SRAM, DRAM, and/or other types of RAM), flash memory secure digital (SD) memory, registers, compact discs (CD), digital versatile discs (DVD), and/or other types of non-transitory computer-readable mediums. - i.e. it may include non-statutory forms of patentable subject matter such as transitory media. In order to overcome the rejection, the Office recommends amending the claims so that they recite only tangible, non-transitory media.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Claim 1 is directed towards an apparatus, thus meeting the Step 1 eligibility criterion. Claim 1 does recite the abstract concept of a method of organizing human activity – commercial interaction and fundamental economic practice, which has been identified as an abstract idea by the MPEP. The relevant claimed limitations include: receive a communication through at least one of a direct method or an indirect method; extract a target belief from the communication; identify an attributable cause for the target belief based on the communication; compile one or more known causes of the target belief and determine that at least one of the one or more known causes is false; generate a score for a comparison between the attributable cause and each of the one or more known causes, the score is based on an amount of similarities between the attributable cause and the one or more known causes; determine that the attributable cause corresponds to the at least one of the one or more known causes that is false, when the score is greater than a predetermined threshold; and generate the interventions for presentation on the user interface based on the determination that the attributable cause corresponds to the at least one of the one or more known causes that is false. Claim 1 also recites the abstract concept of a mental concept – i.e. mental process that can be performed in the human mind or using pen/paper, including an observation/evaluation/judgment, which has been identified as an abstract idea by the MPEP: extract a target belief from the communication / identify an attributable cause for the target belief based on the communication/ compile one or more known causes of the target belief and determine that at least one of the one or more known causes is false; generate a score for a comparison between the attributable cause and each of the one or more known causes, the score is based on an amount of similarities between the attributable cause and the one or more known causes; determine that the attributable cause corresponds to the at least one of the one or more known causes that is false, when the score is greater than a predetermined threshold; and generate the interventions for presentation on the user interface based on the determination that the attributable cause corresponds to the at least one of the one or more known causes that is false. These claimed limitations, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, cover performance in the human mind but for the recitation of generic computing elements – see below, thus still being in the mental process category.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. Claim 1 recites the additional elements of a user interface/apparatus comprising a memory and a processor, which represent generic computing elements. The additional elements do not, alone or in combination, improve the functioning of the computing device or another technology/technical field, or apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking its use to a particular technological environment. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Claim 1 does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception, because as noted above, the claimed computing elements represent generic computing elements; they are recited at a high level of generality. The additional elements do not, alone or in combination, improve the functioning of the computing device or another technology/technical field, or apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking its use to a particular technological environment. Therefore, Claim 1 does not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea itself. The claim is not patent eligible.
Independent claims 9, 17 are directed to a method and CRM for performing similar claimed limitations to those of claim 1; the claims recite the same abstract idea as Claim 1. Claims 9, 17 perform the claimed limitations using only generic components of a networked computer system. Therefore, claims 9, 17 are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more for the reasons given in the discussion of claim 1.
Remaining dependent claims 2-8, 10-16, 18-20 further recite and narrow the abstract idea of claims 1/9/17. The claims further recite the additional elements of using an online chatbot, using a machine learning model to extract data and training the model, an analysis module, a web browser. The web browser/module represent generic computing elements that perform the claimed limitations; they are recited at a high level of generality. Using an online chatbot does no more than apply or link the use of the recited judicial exception to a particular technological environment/field of use. Using a machine learning model to extract data and training the model does no more than apply or link the use of the recited judicial exception to a particular technological environment/field of use. The additional element does not, alone or in combination with the other additional elements, improve the functioning of the computing device or another technology/technical field, or apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking its use to a particular technological environment. Therefore, the claims above do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea itself. The claims are not patent eligible.
Relevant prior art
The prior art of record does not teach neither singly nor in combination the limitations of
claims 1-20.
Sun (9443245) teaches an opinion search engine, including: collecting opinion data about a user-specified product category of interest from multiple different opinion-providing webpages having different link paths; extracting metadata about the opinion data from the opinion data; evaluating the different link paths of the different opinion-providing webpages to determine product category taxonomies of the different opinion-providing webpages; determining that a first link path of a first opinion-providing webpage uses a first term to refer to a specific product category and a second link path of a second opinion-providing webpage uses a second term to refer to the specific product category; creating a product category taxonomy of hierarchical product categories that includes the specific product category; categorizing the metadata according to the hierarchical categories of the product category taxonomy; and ranking different products discussed in the opinion data based at least on the categorized metadata. However, it lacks the combination of claimed elements of pending independent claims 1/9/17.
Ruiz (20150199613) teaches knowledge discovery from belief networks, including:
providing a user interface configured to receive a selection of a given variable that is observed to take one or more given values in collected web traffic data, wherein the web traffic data is modeled using a belief network; extracting a plurality of variable-value pairs from the belief network, each extracted variable-value pair comprising an influential variable and a corresponding influential value, wherein each extracted variable-value pair has a statistical influence on a probability distribution of values taken by the given variable; and displaying a ranked list of the plurality of extracted variable-value pairs, the ranked list being ordered based on an influence parameter that quantifies the statistical influence a particular extracted variable-value pair has on the probability distribution of values taken by the given variable. However, it lacks the combination of claimed elements of pending independent claims 1/9/17.
Cardie (20150331937) teaches automatically summarizing opinions in digital text, including: extracting multiple opinion expressions from the digital text using the processor, where each opinion expression is identified by a grammatical element and associated with an opinion source. The opinion expressions are identified that share a common opinion source and a common opinion topic using the processor. The opinion polarities and opinion strengths of the opinion expressions that share a common opinion source are combined to form (74) an overall opinion summary with one aggregate opinion frame for each common opinion source-topic pairing. However, it lacks the combination of claimed elements of pending independent claims 1/9/17.
When taken as a whole, the claims are not rendered obvious as the available prior art does not
suggest or otherwise render obvious the noted features nor does the available prior art suggest or
otherwise render obvious further modification of the evidence at hand. Such modifications would
require substantial reconstruction relying solely on improper hindsight bias, and thus would not be
obvious.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Alexandru Cirnu whose telephone number is (571) 272-7775. The examiner can normally be reached on 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, Ilana Spar can be reached on (571) 270-7537. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Alexandru Cirnu/
Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3622
6/8/2026
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