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 .
Response to Amendment
This communication is responsive to the amendment filed 3/18/2026.
Claims 1, 2, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, and 20 have been amended and no claims have been added and/or canceled.
In light if Applicant’s amendment, previous claim rejections based on 35 USC 102 and 103 with respect to claims 1-20 have been withdrawn.
Double patenting has been checked with regard to patent # US 11,941,344.
Claims 1-20 are pending with claims 1, 12, and 17 as independent claims.
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.
Claims 1, 10, 12, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Costenaro et al. (US 2012/0284344, published 11/8/2021, hereinafter as Costenaro) in view of Nielsen (US 5,890,164).
Claim 1. A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions stored on the non-transitory computer readable medium, the instructions, when executed by a computing system, cause the computing system to:
receive, at a content management system, a first version of a content item; Costenaro discloses in [0069] “the document is accessed by opening an attachment to an electronic message to which changes are made by a recipient. The document may also be accessed by selecting a link within an electronic message and/or directly accessing the document at a shared location.” (emphasis added).
compare the first version of the content item and a second version of the content item to determine a difference; Costenaro discloses in [0070] “determine differences between original document at a first time and track changes as they are being made after that time”. And in [0077] “an application/process may keep track of the changes within the document, a difference comparison may be made between the current state of the document and a previous version of the document, and the like.” (emphasis added).
Costenaro does not explicitly disclose
determine an importance of the difference between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item, based on at least one of: a degree of change between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item corresponding to the difference, or a modified semantic meaning between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item. However, Nielsen, in an analogous art, teaches in [claim 5] “comparing word counts includes deriving a change estimate by determining the absolute value of the difference between a first word count at the time a user last viewed the file and a second word count at the time of access and dividing that absolute value by the maximum of the first word count and the second word count.” (emphasis added) examiner note: calculating the change estimate based on dividing word count based on time of the document version was last seen and the word count at the time of access would indicate how much the document version has changed or the degree of change between the document version before the change and after the change.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Costenaro with the teaching of Nielsen because “Users are faced with increasing information overload, especially when using the worldwide web portion of the internet (WWW) which has hundreds of thousands of web sites and millions of web pages. Users often wish to monitor an information source, such as a web page, for changing information but do not have time to manually look at the source at regular intervals… provide a monitoring mechanism that informs users when a web page in which they are interested has changed and indicates how much it has changed.” Nielsen [Background].
generate, at the content management system, a summary of the difference between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item with a description of the importance of the difference; further, Costenaro discloses in [0071] “a summary is created that summarizes the changes that are made to the document. The summary may be configured to include different information. For example, the summary may include all of the changes made to the document, a portion of the changes made to the document and/or statistical information relating to the changes to the document.” (emphasis added) examiner note: the summary of the change may be made to the document and statistical information relating to the change may be made to describe the degree of change as indicated by Nielsen above, and
send the summary to a client device. Costenaro discloses in [0072] “a determination is made as to what recipients are to receive the electronic message that includes the summary. Each reviewer on the document may receive the electronic message or a portion of the reviewers may receive the electronic message. For example, the electronic message may be sent to only the recipients that are authorized to collaborate on the section(s) of the document to which the changes were made.” (emphasis added).
Claim 10. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 1 is incorporated, wherein the summary incorporates comments provided by an author. Costenaro discloses in [0055] “A comment section (e.g. comment section 516) allows a user to insert a comment next to the change that is made to the document.” (emphasis added).
Claim 12. The claim is directed towards a method for implementing the steps of claim 1, therefore, is similarly rejected as claim 1.
Claim 17. The claim is directed towards a system to implement the steps of claim 1, therefore, is similarly rejected as claim 1. Further, Costenaro discloses one or more processors; and a non-transitory computer readable medium storing processor instructions in [claim 17] “a processor, memory, and a computer-readable storage medium; an operating environment stored on the computer-readable storage medium and executing on the processor”. (emphasis added).
Claims 2-7, 11, 13-15, and 18-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Costenaro and Nielsen as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Poletto et al. (US 2015/0244794, published 8/27/2015, hereinafter as Poletto).
Claim 2. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 1 is incorporated, Costenaro does not explicitly disclose wherein the summary comprises a description of an action leading to the difference and content of the first version of the content item affected by the action. However, Poletto, in an analogous art, discloses in [0045 and 0048] “the user may perform edits to image 402a using their user device while image 402a attempts to be sent to content management system 100… to the user, it may appear as if the image has already been uploaded to the content management system and their interactions are synchronized or taking place on the content management system.” And in [0056-0058] “the user may interact with the lower-quality version while higher-quality image 552a downloads in the background… after higher-quality image 552a has downloaded to the user device, the higher-quality image may be displayed within user interface 500 and may include any interactions and/or modifications previously associated with lower-quality image 502a.” (emphasis added) examiner note: user’s edits (action) to image 502a (first version) may be synchronized with image 552a (second version) at the content management system, wherein the edit by the user would lead change between the low-quality version and the higher-quality version of the image.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Costenaro with the teaching of Poletto because “if there is a low level of connectivity between the device and the server, the user may not be able to send content to the server or share content with one or more contacts. This can be frustrating and troublesome for the user because they may desire to interact with their content without any constraints despite any limitations that may be outside of their control (e.g., low connectivity/signal). Thus, it would be beneficial for there to be systems and methods that provide a user with a set of interactivity features locally on their user device.” Poletto [Background].
Claim 3. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 1 is incorporated, the instructions when executed by the computing system, cause the computing system to:
Costenaro does not explicitly disclose receive, at the content management system, the second version of the content item. However, Poletto, in an analogous art, discloses in [0050 and 0056-0058] “FIG. 5 shows a schematic illustration of a user interface displaying a download of a first version of a content item from a content management system and a download of a second version of the content item from the content management system while displaying the first version of the content item within the user interface… Downloading image 552a in the background while providing the set of interactivity features with image 502a may allow the user to have a local feel for the image even though the highest resolution image may not be currently available on the user device… In response to the download of higher-quality image 552a finishing, higher-quality image 552a may be displayed within user interface 500 in place of lower-quality image 502a.” (emphasis added) examiner note: image 502a may be the first version of the content item and image 552a is the second version of the content item. The second version of the content item may be downloaded/received, at the content management system, after the first version.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Costenaro with the teaching of Poletto because “if there is a low level of connectivity between the device and the server, the user may not be able to send content to the server or share content with one or more contacts. This can be frustrating and troublesome for the user because they may desire to interact with their content without any constraints despite any limitations that may be outside of their control (e.g., low connectivity/signal). Thus, it would be beneficial for there to be systems and methods that provide a user with a set of interactivity features locally on their user device.” Poletto [Background].
Claims 4, 13, and 18. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 3 is incorporated, the instructions, when executed by the computing system, cause the computing system to:
transfer, the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item to a comparison module, wherein the comparison module compares the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item. Costenaro discloses in [0077-0078] “Many different methods may be used for determining the changes… an application/process may keep track of the changes within the document, a difference comparison may be made between the current state of the document and a previous version of the document, and the like… statistics relating to the document changes are determined. Many different types of statistics may be determined. For example, number of characters changed, words changed, lines changed, paragraphs changed, sections changed, pages changed, comments added, highlighting added/removed, pictures inserted/deleted, tables inserted/deleted, formatting changes, and the like.” (emphasis added).
Claims 5, 14, and 19. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 4 is incorporated, the instructions, when executed by the computing system, cause the computing system to:
identify, by the comparison module, the difference between the first version of the content item and second version of the content item. Costenaro discloses in [0077-0078] “Many different methods may be used for determining the changes… an application/process may keep track of the changes within the document, a difference comparison may be made between the current state of the document and a previous version of the document, and the like… statistics relating to the document changes are determined. Many different types of statistics may be determined. For example, number of characters changed, words changed, lines changed, paragraphs changed, sections changed, pages changed, comments added, highlighting added/removed, pictures inserted/deleted, tables inserted/deleted, formatting changes, and the like.” (emphasis added) examiner note: highlighting added/removed, pictures inserted/deleted, tables inserted/deleted or formatting changes may indicate identifying differences.
Claim 6. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 4 is incorporated, the instructions, when executed by the computing system, cause the computing system to:
Costenaro does not explicitly disclose assign, by the comparison module, a similarity score to the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item. However, Poletto discloses in [0107] “Organization module 136 may be used to identify similar content items for clusters in order to organize content items for presentation within user interfaces on user devices 102 and content management system 104. Similarity rules may be defined to create one or more numeric representations embodying information on similarities between each of the content items in accordance with various similarity rules. Organization module 136 may use numeric representations as a reference for similarity between content items in order to cluster the content items.” (emphasis added) examiner note: the numeric representations as a reference for similarity may be similarity measures indicating similarity score.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Costenaro with the teaching of Poletto because “if there is a low level of connectivity between the device and the server, the user may not be able to send content to the server or share content with one or more contacts. This can be frustrating and troublesome for the user because they may desire to interact with their content without any constraints despite any limitations that may be outside of their control (e.g., low connectivity/signal). Thus, it would be beneficial for there to be systems and methods that provide a user with a set of interactivity features locally on their user device.” Poletto [Background].
Claims 7 and 15. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 5 is incorporated, the instructions, when executed by the computing system, cause the computing system to:
Costenaro does not explicitly disclose
determine the importance of the difference based on the degree of change by determining at least one of a relative size of the change compared to the first version of the content item or an absolute size of the change to the first version of the content item. However, Nielsen, in an analogous art, teaches in [claim 5] “comparing word counts includes deriving a change estimate by determining the absolute value of the difference between a first word count at the time a user last viewed the file and a second word count at the time of access and dividing that absolute value by the maximum of the first word count and the second word count.” (emphasis added) examiner note: calculating the change estimate based on dividing word count based on time of the document version was last seen and the word count at the time of access would indicate the relative size of change to show much the document version has changed or the degree of change between the document version before the change and after the change.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Costenaro with the teaching of Nielsen because “Users are faced with increasing information overload, especially when using the worldwide web portion of the internet (WWW) which has hundreds of thousands of web sites and millions of web pages. Users often wish to monitor an information source, such as a web page, for changing information but do not have time to manually look at the source at regular intervals… provide a monitoring mechanism that informs users when a web page in which they are interested has changed and indicates how much it has changed.” Nielsen [Background].
Claim 11. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 1 is incorporated, Costenaro does not explicitly disclose wherein metadata is used to compare the first version of the content item and second version of the content item. However, Poletto discloses in [0111] “attributes 112 may be implemented using extended attributes, resource forks, or any other implementation that allows for storing metadata with a content item that is not interpreted by a content item system, such as content item system 108. In particular, attributes 112a and 112b may be content identifiers for content items. For example, the content identifier may be a unique or nearly unique identifier (e.g., number or string) that identifies the content item. By storing a content identifier with the content item, the content item may be tracked. For example, if a user moves the content item to another location within content item system 108 hierarchy and/or modifies the content item, then the content item may still be identified within content item system 108 of user device 102. Any changes or modifications to the content item identified with the content identifier may be uploaded or provided for synchronization and/or version control services provided by content management system 104.” (emphasis added) examiner note: the content identifier may be metadata such that any changes to the content item may be identified in the content identifier, therefore, the metadata may be utilized for comparing the two versions as indicated by the synchronization process.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Costenaro with the teaching of Poletto because “if there is a low level of connectivity between the device and the server, the user may not be able to send content to the server or share content with one or more contacts. This can be frustrating and troublesome for the user because they may desire to interact with their content without any constraints despite any limitations that may be outside of their control (e.g., low connectivity/signal). Thus, it would be beneficial for there to be systems and methods that provide a user with a set of interactivity features locally on their user device.” Poletto [Background].
Claims 8-9, 16, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Costenaro, Nielsen, and Poletto as applied to claims 1 and 7 above, and further in view of Bernard et al. (US 2003/0135607, published 7/17/2003, hereinafter as Bernard).
Claims 8, 16, and 20. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 7 is incorporated, Costenaro does not explicitly disclose wherein the comparison module uses machine learning to determine the importance of the difference between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item. However, Bernard, in an analogous art, discloses in [0012] “a document monitoring agent that saves a record of all document versions that correspond to "important" or "significant" changes to networked documents, as evaluated by users.” And in [0039] “Recommender systems are able to provide personalized recommendations that take into account similarities between people based on their user profiles. An example of a recommender system is known from the Alexa Internet site (URL: http://www.alexa.com). Such system provides a list of recommended web pages worth viewing based on some predetermined filtering criteria… Recommender systems learn their users' tastes and recommend items to users by first matching users to each other by way of user profiles.” And in [0040] “it is even possible to combine recommender systems with monitoring agents as described, e.g. in the document EP-A-1 050 831, in the name of the present assignee, and thus also with the present agent.” And in [0042] “Profiler agents track and map each user's interests, learning more about the person each time (s)he uses KP. A recommender agent finds matches between new items and user preferences, automatically sending relevant and high quality information to people as it is found.” (emphasis added) examiner note: the document monitoring agent may be a machine learning module (recommender agent) because it learns people preferences such as significant change for a version of a document.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Costenaro with the teaching of Bernard in order to “track only changes significant to subscribers and filters out automatically detected changes that are of no interest.” Bernard [0010].
Claim 9. The rejection of the non-transitory computer readable medium comprising the instructions of claim 7 is incorporated, Costenaro does not explicitly disclose wherein the comparison module uses natural language processing to determine the importance of the difference between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item. However, Bernard, in an analogous art, discloses in [0012] “a document monitoring agent that saves a record of all document versions that correspond to "important" or "significant" changes to networked documents, as evaluated by users.” And in [0030-0032] “The monitoring agent 102 monitors document changes by periodically accessing the document. In this case, the monitoring agent 102 is responsible for detecting the change and therefore associates with the document identifier a record of information representing the state of the document. Such information is stored in document content representation storage 104. The monitoring agent 102 detects changes by comparing successive records. The information recorded may range from the whole document content to a document content checksum of only a few bytes. The relevance and efficiency of the change detection derives directly from the sort of record(s) (or combination thereof) that is used.” (emphasis added) examiner note: the document monitoring agent may be a natural language processing module (recommender agent) because it processes the content of the document and identify whether the change is significant or not according to the subscriber preferences.
Accordingly, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teaching of Costenaro with the teaching of Bernard in order to “track only changes significant to subscribers and filters out automatically detected changes that are of no interest.” Bernard [0010].
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 12, and 17 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.
Argument: Applicant argues “Costenaro fails to disclose (i) "determin[ing] an importance of the difference between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item, based on at least one of: a degree of change between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item corresponding to the difference, or a modified semantic meaning between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item," and (ii) "generat[ing], at the content management system, a summary of the difference between the first version of the content item and the second version of the content item with a description of the importance of the difference," as recited by currently amended independent claims 1, 12, and 17.”
Response: Applicant argument appears to be based on amendment to independent claims 1, 12, and 17. Accordingly, the amendment has been addressed by introducing new cited prior art detailed above.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See PTO-892.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AHAMED I NAZAR whose telephone number is (571)270-3174. The examiner can normally be reached 10 am to 7 pm Mon-Fri.
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, Stephen Hong can be reached at 571-272-4124. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/AHAMED I NAZAR/Examiner, Art Unit 2178 3/30/2026
/STEPHEN S HONG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2178
Prosecution Insights