DETAILED ACTION
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 Amendment
This office action is in response to applicant’s amendment and RCE filed, 25 April 2025, of application filed, with the above serial number, on 23 December 2023 in which claims 1, 4, 6-7, 11, 13-20, 22 have been amended, and claims 24-25 have been added. Claims 1-4, 6-25 are pending in the application.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to as failing to comply with 37 CFR 1.84(p)(5) because they do not include the following reference sign(s) mentioned in the description: 1450. Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-4, 6-25 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention. The independent claims are amended to recite ‘wherein the AI agent is … configured for operation by an external third-party application provider communicatively coupled to the at least one processor’. It is indefinite what is being claimed and the specification only provides in par. 156 “Furthermore, external third-party application providers such as an AI agent provider 1450 may be communicatively coupled with the computing device 1300 via the network 1410.” It is unclear how the AI agent is ‘configured for operation’, is the AI agent provided via retrieval and stored by the SaaS platform elements in a data repository, or provided with access to yet retained only at the third party provider, is the AI agent configured, etc. See in relation, the drawing objection above.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1-4, 6-20, 23-25 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chivukula (hereinafter “Chivukula”, 2022/0121478) in view of Sohum (hereinafter “Sohum”, 2021/0117893).
As per Claim 1, Chivukula discloses a non-transitory computer-readable medium containing instructions that when executed by at least one processor cause the at least one processor to perform operations for building an application incorporating artificial intelligence (Al) functionality, the operations comprising:
enabling access to a developer application framework associated with a software as a service (SaaS) platform (at least paragraph 4, 21; DevOps platform for building pipelines across SaaS applications);
receiving application code (template) for generating an application in the SaaS platform (at least paragraph 46-47; UI allowing template customization or pipeline build);
receiving, for at least one of a plurality of SaaS platform elements, a selection of a predetermined add-on provided by the SaaS platform (at least paragraph 43-46; eg. user can utilize drag and drop and/or plug and play functionality to add DevOps tools to and/or remove DevOps tools from templates and workflows);
establishing a link between the selected add-on, and the at least one of the plurality of SaaS platform elements (at least paragraph 53; Each pipeline activity can be stand alone and can include (but are not limited to): tool configuration, trigger logic, API connection details);
enabling implementation of permissions for providing access to data from the at least one of the plurality of linked SaaS platform elements (at least paragraph 50; Roles include a user ID and role definition defining who has access to perform what tasks on this specific pipeline);
based on the implemented permissions, configuring a transfer of at least one of structured data or unstructured data from the at least one of the plurality of linked SaaS platform elements (at least paragraph 38, 50, 54; For AI/ML pipelines, DevOps tools can fit into one or more categories supporting additional DevOps initiatives including fetching data and/or code from various sources (e.g., source code, databases, unstructured data, NO SQL DB, data warehousing databases, etc.), preparing the data, training models, packaging models, validating models, deploying models, and monitoring models; catalog 238 can expose templates 237 based on user roles/needs and allows a user to “one click deploy” a workflow into a full Pipeline Orchestration Model);
receiving Al integration code including at least one reference to the transferred at least one of structured data or unstructured data (at least paragraph 37, 55-57, 62; workflow with data source configured into pipeline; AI/ML pipelines included); and
publishing the application for selective use with at least one of the SaaS platform elements, wherein in use, the published application is configured to exchange data with the at least one of the plurality of SaaS platform elements (at least paragraph 54, 48, 66; template shared in a catalog).
Chivukula fails to explicitly disclose the add-on being an AI assistant, receiving AI processing context, establishing a link between the selected AI assistant add-on and the AI processing context, wherein the AI processing context is configured to instruct how the selected AI assistant add-on handles data from the at least one of the plurality of SaaS platform elements, and the received at least one call to an AI agent associated with the predetermined AI assistant add-on, wherein the AI agent is selectable from a plurality of AI agents and configured for operation by an external third-party application provider communicatively coupled to the at least one processor. However, the use and advantages for using such a system was well known to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention as evidenced by the teachings of Sohum.
Sohum discloses, in an analogous art, an online chatbot marketplace being created wherein external vendors can upload intelligent conversational AI agents that specialize in certain fields that are then integrated into a mega bot, the system receives data, context, and queries and based on analysis of the data and queries, a particular agent is called and selected to respond (at least paragraph 26-27, 61-71, 78-80, 92, 111).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate the use of Sohum’s multiple chatbot agents selection with Chivukula, as Sohum discloses the chatbot switching allowing a suitable agent to be chosen and provides a seamless experience to the users and would be an obvious addition to the pipeline of Chivukula being developed with the tools being added to the pipeline being AI chatbot agents.
As per Claim 2. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the at least one of a plurality of SaaS platform elements includes at least one sub-element of at least one SaaS platform element of the plurality of SaaS platform elements (at least paragraph 54; detail including metadata of template).
As per Claim 3. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 2, wherein the at least one of a plurality of SaaS platform elements includes at least one sub-element of one of the plurality of SaaS platform elements (at least paragraph 54; detail including metadata of template).
As per Claim 4. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 3, wherein the at least one sub-element of one of the plurality of SaaS platform elements is a plurality of sub-elements, and wherein establishing the link further includes enabling selection of the at least one of the plurality of sub-elements for linking (at least paragraph 54; details and allows a user to “one click deploy” a workflow into a full Pipeline Orchestration Model).
As per Claim 6. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the operations further include selecting the Al agent from the plurality of available Al agents by analyzing application code, context, developer information, user information, or a combination thereof (at least paragraph 48; Templates can include various amounts of detail based on the user's requirements. A template can follow a data model including various properties, such as, for example, Project, Roles, Type, Tags, Workflow, Plan, etc., and can include additional metadata, such as, for example, Name, ID, Owner, dates, etc.).
As per Claim 7. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 6, wherein the analyzing the application code is performed by a predetermined AI agent (at least paragraph 51; Sohum paragraph 65-66).
As per Claim 8. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the application code is template code from a template database associated with the SaaS platform (at least paragraph 46-48; template).
As per Claim 9. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the application code is received from a developer (at least paragraph 3-4; development team of DevOps pipeline build).
As per Claim 10. The non-transitory computing medium of claim 1, wherein a programming language of the application code is different from a programming language of the SaaS platform (at least paragraph 37-38, 5; Multilanguage pipelines).
As per Claim 11. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the selection of the predetermined AI assistant add-on is performed from a library of Al assistant add-ons associated with the SaaS platform (at least paragraph 43, 48; Pipeline manager 201 can provide a catalog of available tools; shared template catalog).
As per Claim 12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the operations further include maintaining the library of AI assistant add-ons (at least paragraph 43, 48).
As per Claim 13. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein each of the AI assistant add-ons in the library is preconfigured to be linked to the at least one of the plurality of SaaS platform elements (at least paragraph 43, 48; template with workflow in catalog).
As per Claim 14. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the selection of the predetermined Al assistant add-on is made from a plurality of Al assistant add-ons (at least paragraph 57; a user can select a workflow template from catalog; Sohum par. 27, Fig. 2).
As per Claim 15. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the receipt of the application code for generating the application in the SaaS platform includes receiving a first selection of a first AI assistant add-on for use with a first SaaS platform element and a second selection of a second Al assistant add-on for use with a second SaaS platform element different from the first SaaS platform element (at least paragraph 43, 48, 57).
As per Claim 16. The non-transitory computing medium of claim 1, wherein receiving permissions to access the data from the at least one of the plurality of linked SaaS platform elements includes initiating an authentication flow with the at least one of the plurality of linked SaaS platform elements (at least paragraph 63, 68, claim 4; login and authentication; RBAC).
As per Claim 17. The non-transitory computing medium of claim 1, wherein the operations further include running a compliance check on the received selection of the predetermined AI assistant add- on, using a compliance check plug-in tool (at least paragraph 20, 22, 102; microservice send logs to pipeline manager API to push to compliance folder).
As per Claim 18. The non-transitory computing medium of claim 1, wherein enabling the implementation of permissions for providing access to the data from the at least one of the plurality of linked SaaS platform elements includes displaying a user interface configured to: enable a user to implement permissions for providing access to the data from the at least one of the plurality of linked SaaS platform elements; and visualize the implemented permissions (at least paragraph 22, 48, 54, 68; intelligent dashboard helping users make informed decision across elements including security; wherein roles are part of UI and RBAC to control access).
As per Claim 23. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the published application is further configured to be available to the Al agent (at least Chivukula paragraph 54, 48, 66; template shared in a catalog; Sohum par. 60-62; vendors providing chatbots to be available in marketplace).
Claims 19-20 do not, in substance, add or define any additional limitations over claim 1 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons, supra.
As per Claim 24. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the at least one of the plurality of SaaS platform elements is written in a first programming language and the Al agent is written in a second programming language different from the first programming language (at least paragraph 37-38, 5; Multilanguage pipelines).
As per Claim 25. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the integration code includes point-to-point integration or hub-and-spoke integration (at least Sohum Fig. 2; paragraph 62).
Claim(s) 21-22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chivukula in view of Sohum, further in view of Adams (hereinafter “Adams”, 2024/0283759)
As per Claim 21. Chivukula and Sohum fail to explicitly disclose wherein implementing permissions by the user comprises choosing permissions for the Al agent to access the data. However, the use and advantages for using such a system was well known to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention as evidenced by the teachings of Adams (at least paragraph 99). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to incorporate the use of Adams’ AI agent permission with Chivukula/Sohum as Adams teaches it being well known to restrict AI agents to certain data and Adams teaches a reason being such that the AI agent not share particular personal information or participate in agreements on behalf of the user.
As per Claim 22. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 21, wherein the implementing permissions further comprises receiving a prompt from the user (at least paragraph 99 of Adams).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-4, 6-25 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GREGORY TODD whose telephone number is (303)297-4763. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30-5 MST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Nicholas Taylor can be reached on 571-272-3889. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/GREGORY TODD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2443