Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed11/19/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. The independent claims have been amended to include “determining, based on a quantity of the one or more messages that include: (i) a first user of the plurality of users, (ii) a second user of the plurality of users, and (iii) the property, that the plurality of users form a contacts group". Applicant argued ---the cited portions of Lehikoinen fail to render obvious the above features of independent claim 1, as well as similar features of independent claims 8 and 15, at least as amended. ---. Attention is drawn to Fig. 4 and paragraph [0036] for the teaching amended features to the claims. For example, [0036] recites “At Block D, and in accordance with the exemplary embodiments of this invention, the messaging application 130B automatically selects at least one message recipient based on one or more criterion, such as by an analysis of the message history 130D to determine one or more parties who have previously received and/or sent a message having content of the same classification and/or sub-classification (e.g., the same "type" of content). At Block E, and based on the displayed message, the user is enabled to review and approve or modify the list of recipients generated by the messaging application 130B.”.
It is further notice that the independent claims are rejected under 35 USC 103 as being unpatentable over Lehikoinen in view of CORT et al. The missing or silent features of the claimed system are supported by CORT et al., such as advanced in the office action. The applicant is arguing the reference independently not as the combination such as recited in the office action.
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 of this title, 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 1-2, 7-9 and 14-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lehikoinen (US Pub. No. 2007/0245006 A1) in view of CORT et al. (US 2017/0337514 A1).
Regarding claims 1, 8 and 15, Lehikoinen teaches: A system implemented by one or more processors, comprising:
determining, based on a quantity of the one or more messages that include: (i) a first user of the plurality of users, (ii) a second user of the plurality of users, and (iii) the property, the plurality of users form a contact group; (see ¶0036). Lehikoinen also discloses the system for use in mobile and other types of devices (implemented by one or more processors) for sending a message from a device to a group of recipients. Fig. 2 and [¶0025] and [0¶027] show a messaging application which analyses relationships between the definition of the content (identifying a property shared in one or more messages) and contacts to create a group based on characteristics of message content (based on the property, the plurality of users form a contacts group);
determining, subsequent to determining the plurality of users form a contacts group, that a draft message by a user, which has not been transmitted, includes the property; Lehikoinen shows an example, [Where a user acquires an artwork and decides to send the image to his friends. The user invokes the messaging application and a blank message is displayed on the display (a draft message by a user, which has not been transmitted). The image is inserted in the message body and the user writes "art" in the subject field. The messaging application then searches for relations between the word "art" and contacts using the message history records which include message subject type categories such as "art", and the associated user names and contact information (draft message by a user, which has not been transmitted, includes the property) (see Fig.4 and [¶0026], [¶0030], and [¶0036])];
causing rendering of one or more selectable elements, for presentation to the user before the draft message is transmitted and based on determining that the draft message includes the property, one or more selectable elements associated with one or more of the plurality of users of the contacts group (see Fig.4 step E and [00¶36] and [¶0026]) [Lehikoinen shows the message is displayed to the user to review and approve or modify the list of recipient generated by the messaging application (presentation to the user before the draft message is transmitted) and has the option to accept the selected contacts or to remove one or more of them and/or to add another recipient of the original contacts selected by the messaging application (one or more selectable elements associated with one or more of the plurality of users), and the message is sent from the device];
causing, in response to selection by the user of the one or more selectable elements, at least the one or more of the plurality of users of the contacts group to be indicated as recipients of the draft message [Lehikoinen shows the user is enabled to review and approve or modify the list of recipient generated by the messaging application (indicated as recipients of the draft message) to remove one or more and/or to add another recipient of the original contacts selected by the messaging application (indicating one or more of the multiple identified users of the contacts group), and the message is sent from the device], (see Fig.4 step E and [¶0036],[¶0026].
Although Lehikoinen teaches identifying a property (i.e., word, subject type, contact, or content) shared in one or more messages transmitted to a plurality of users of an electronic message system ([¶0024]; [¶0025]; [¶0026], “The messaging application 130B then searches for relations between the word "art" and contacts in the contact list 130A. Assume that the messaging application 130B finds five contacts who have shared similar type of content previously”]; [¶0030]), Lehikoinen does not explicitly show wherein the property Is identified based on infrequency of occurrence in the one or more messages.
However, CORT teaches wherein the property (i.e., relationship type, email addresses of the persons, words, names, , contact, or domain names of an email address) Is identified based on infrequency of occurrence in the one or more messages (Fig. 1, 115-117; Fig. 2, 148-149; Fig. 7, 251-261; [¶0060, “The identification of friends may also be done in an intelligent way by looking at, for example, the number of times that the user has emailed a particular person when deciding whether to make that person a friend (and/or other relevancy scores for persons as described below may be used in determining friends). This ranking of persons permits identifying a smaller group of people to use for creating a set of friends in an inferred social network mapped from email communications to and from the user terminal”]; [¶0065]; [¶0067], “the strength of the relationships of the user with the other persons is based on the content of the messages or documents sent to or received by the user (the importance of people relevant to a user may be ranked as described herein)”]; [¶0069]; [¶0070]; [¶0072]; [¶0095]; [¶0098]; [¶0145, “sorts the matched persons based on a relationship score determined from the statistical data derived at least in part from the received messages (115) and the sent messages (117)”]; [¶0154]; [¶0160, “ the length of the elapsed time period since receipt of the message is further used to determine the amount given to the score. The occurrence of an address in a recent message can be given more weight than the occurrence of the address in a message received/sent earlier than the recent message”]; [0172, “computes (255) a relevancy score for each of the addresses based on a number of messages in which the addresses are used and types of fields in which the addresses are used in the messages”]; [¶0173]; [¶0174]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Lehikoinen to incorporate the teaching of CORT such that the messaging application identifies suggested contacts based on a seed set by identifying in historical communications of a user account, groups of contact. Doing so would enable the system/messaging application to create a more relevant contacts suggestion group based on identified suggested contact for display in electronic communication since the system would assign relevancy scores to terms in the message based upon the position on the message body and title (CORT; [¶0139]; [¶0145]; [¶0147]; [¶0166]).
Regarding claims 2, 9 and 16, Lehikoinen shows:
The systems of claims 1, 8 and 15, above, wherein the property is a term included in a body or a heading of the one or more message (see Fig.4 and [¶0036],[¶0026] and [¶0030]. Lehikoinen shows an example, where a user acquires an artwork and decides to send the image to his friends, the user invokes the messaging application and a blank message is displayed on the display and the image is inserted in the message body and the user writes the term "art" in the subject field (term included in a body or a heading)).
Regarding claims 7 and 14, Lehikoinen teaches the method and system of claims 1, 8, above.
Lehikoinen further show:
transmitting, based on selection by the user of the one or more selectable elements, the draft message to at least the one or more of the plurality of users of the contacts group (see Fig.4 step E and [¶0036] and [¶0026]. Lehikoinen shows the user is enabled to review and approve or modify the list of recipients generated by the messaging application to remove one or more and/or to add another recipient of the original contacts selected by the messaging application (based on selection by the user of the one or more selectable elements), and the message is sent from the device (transmitting, the draft message)).
Claims 3, 5, 10, 12, 17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lehikoinen, CORT, in view of Benyamin et al (US Patent Application Pub. No. 2011/0145348 A1) hereinafter Benyamin.
Regarding claims 3, 10 and 17, the combined system teaches the method, system and medium of claims 2, 9 and 16 discussed above.
Lehikoinen does not explicitly show:
The system of claims 2, wherein the term is identified based on infrequency of occurrence in the one or more messages. However, Benyamin, in the same field of endeavor shows:
The method of claim 2, wherein the term is identified based on infrequency of occurrence in the one or more messages (see Fig. 1 and [¶0037] and [¶0039]. Benyamin shows a web page and message search and retrieval system which includes a message server that is coupled with a message database and receives user generated messages from a plurality of messaging services, [¶0033] and [¶0034]. The system retrieves messages in response to search queries and determines a list of relevant terms (term is identified), assigning relevancy scores to phrases constructed using keywords, where message rates/frequency is used to rank the phrases and low scored phrases are ignored. Also, phrases that are very frequent and appear with a frequency above a predetermined rate can also be ignored on the basis that the terms are common and not indicative of relevance (based on infrequency of occurrence).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combined system of Lehikoinen and CORT et al. (by modifying Lehikoinen) to incorporate the teaching of Benyamin such that the messaging application determines relevant /terms associated with the plurality of messages, and ignores terms which are common and not indicative of relevance. Doing so would enable the system/messaging application to create a more relevant contacts group since the system would assign relevancy scores to terms in the message using the message rates/frequency to rank the terms and the terms that that are very frequent and appear with a frequency above a predetermined rate can also be ignored on the basis that the terms are common and not indicative of relevance.
Regarding claims 5, 12 and 19, the combined system teaches the method, system and medium of claims 2, 9 and 16 but does not explicitly show:
The systems of 2, 9 and 16 further comprising: wherein the term is identified based on a position of the term in the body or the heading. However, in a similar field of endeavor, Benyamin shows:
“wherein the term is identified based on a position of the term in the body or the heading” (see [¶0033] and [¶0034]. Benyamin shows the system retrieves messages in response to search queries and determines a list of relevant terms and assigning relevancy scores to phrases constructed using keywords. [¶0027] shows scoring each term based upon at least one characteristic including a characteristic from the group made up of the number of occurrences of the term in the set of messages having relevancy to the topic of the web page, the uniqueness of the term, the position of the term in each message, and combinations thereof (based on a position of the term in the body or the heading).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combined system of Lehikoinen and CORT et al. to incorporate the teaching of Benyamin such that the messaging application determines relevant /terms associated with the plurality of messages, assigning relevancy scores to phrases constructed using keywords, and scores each of the phrases based upon the position on the message body and title. Doing so would enable the system/messaging application to create a more relevant contacts group since the system would assign relevancy scores to terms in the message based upon the position on the message body and title.
Regarding claims 4, 11 and 18, the combined system (CORTet al.) shows:
The method of claim 3, wherein the term is identified based on one or more other draft messages by the user, which have not been transmitted, including the term (see Fig. 6, 231; [0139, “if a search for suggestions is started based on the initial input “er” and before the suggestions are displayed the user further typed “ic” to provide the input “eric,” the result controller stops the search for suggestions based on “er” and starts a new search for suggestions based on “eric.”]; [0145]; [0146]; [0147, “In FIG. 6, after receiving (231) one or more letters that are typed in by an end user in an entry box configured to receive an address for an outgoing message, the profile presenter (125) determines (233) whether the one or more letters match part of a name in the profile set (113)”]; [0166, “selects up to a predetermined number (e.g., 10) of candidates, after sorting the candidates for the suggestions based on the relevancy scores”]).
Claim 6, 13 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lehikoinen CORT, in view of Benyamin, and in further view of Balakrishnan et al (US Patent Application Pub. No. 2021/0090118 A1).
Regarding claims 6, 13 and 20, the combined system of Lehikoinen, CORT et al. and Benyamin does not explicitly show:
wherein the term is identified based on the position of the term being earlier in the one or more messages.
Balakrishnan, in a similar field of endeavor, shows:
“wherein the term is identified base on the position of the term being earlier in the one or more messages” (see Fig. 7 and [¶0003]. Balakrishnan shows a system to provide promotional messages to consumer devices by email messages. [¶0078] shows the system collects historical data including the message term metadata such as the message term, the format of the message term e.g., all capital letters, bold, etc., the position of the term within the message e.g., first word, second word, etc., (position of the term being earlier in the one or more messages), and the metadata is used to weigh various factors that are applied to determine an access rate/frequency for the message term based on the historical data).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of Lehikoinen and Benyamin, CORT and to incorporate the teaching of Balakrishnan such that the messaging application determines relevant /terms associated with the plurality of messages, assigning relevancy scores to phrases constructed using keywords, and scores each of the phrases based upon the position within the message e.g., first word, second word, etc. and assigns weight/score based on the position of the term within the message such as the first word, second word, etc. Doing so would enable the system/messaging application to create a more relevant contacts group since the system would assign relevancy scores to terms in the message based upon the position within the message.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/GLENTON B BURGESS/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2454