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
This action is in response to the preliminary amendment and claimed listing filed on 02/24/2025.
Claims 1-18 are pending.
Specification
In the preliminary amendment, it provides the amendment to the Abstract with the statement: “Please delete the originally filed Abstract in its entirety and substitute the replacement Abstract submitted herewith on a separate sheet.”. In this amendment, the original filed Abstract is considered being deleted.
However, there is no submission of the substituted abstract in the filing of the preliminary amendment.
It requires an amendment to make clear the status of the Abstract of this application.
Accordingly, the abstract of the disclosure filed in the preliminary amendment is objected to. A corrected abstract/amendment is required. See MPEP § 608.01(b).
Claim Objections
Claims 5, 12 are objected to because of the following informalities:
In Claim 5, it recites “the one or more second keywords further comprise a fourth keyword and a fifth keyword”. When recites “a fourth keyword”, the limitation must depend on a claim that recite “third keyword”. Claim 5 depends on Claim 2, and Claim 2 depends on Claim 1; however, there is no third keyword recited in these Claims.
Claim 5 further recites, “… searching for the fourth keyword based on a second offset range,…”. Claim 5 depends on Claim 2 which is depended on Claim 1; however, there is no “first offset range” recited in Claims 1 and 2. Claim 5 should be amended to depend on Claim 3 because Claim 3 includes the limitations for the limitations addressed above in Claim 5 to require.
Claim 12: Claim recites a fourth keyword , a fifth keyword, second offset range
Claim 12 should be amended to depend on claim 10 with the same reasons as addressed in Claim 5 above.
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 7, 14 is 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.
As per Claims 7, 14: The claims recites “wherein a keyword type comprises a string type and/or a key-value pair type.”. The term “and/or” fails to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter. It has the claim indefinite. The term will be interpreted with “or”.
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, 7-8, 14-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over IFNEC, “Text Search Help” 2020, retrieved from https://www.ifnec.org/ifnec/work/textSearchHelp.jsp
in view of Koch et al., “Iterative Integration of Visual Insights during Scalable Patent Search and Analysis”, 2011, IEEE, pp. 557-569.
As per Claim 1: IFNEC discloses,
1. (Currently Amended) A text search method, comprising:
obtaining a first text including one or more pieces of running path information;
(See table first text: “white coat” AND horse. Within “AND” in the text search , “white coat” and horse also are the fields for searching, then each is a running path, i.e. search will search for text document “white coat” then in “white coat” it searches for ‘horse’ to produce result. It should be note that the table give only ‘Example”, and the examples read on the limitations. Moreover, fields of searching are also referred to “path” and see sec. 4, in p. 3, where the text
“white coat” AND horse can be combined with field such as “text” . See in p. 4: “abstract:restaurant regionFrancaise:gers”, would have pieces of running path information as abstract and regionFrancaise)
obtaining a search rule set, wherein the search rule set comprises one or more search rules (In p. 1, special character, the set of “+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \”, and Boolean operator “AND, &&, OR, ||, NOT, !, +, -” ), each of the one or more pieces of running path information corresponds to one or more search rules and each of the one or more search rules indicates a logical relationship between at least one keyword (See in p. 4, the ‘first text’ as shown in the last box "blue coat" OR "red coat"^2”, , running path is the search document that contains “blue coat” or “red coat”. Logical relationship is OR, or the operator ‘||’, search rules are ‘OR’ and ‘^2’ ) ;
IFNEC does not specifically address below limitations.
Koch discloses,
searching for one or more second keywords based on a first keyword and a first search
rule, wherein the first keyword is obtained based on first running path information, the first running path information is any one of the one or more pieces of running path information (See in p. 560, in Fig. 2, keywords of searching include “disk recorder”, and “optical device”, search field include image, sematic (i.e. keywords are combined with “AND”, meta, etc. )
and the first search rule is any search rule that is in the one or more search rules
and corresponds to the first running path information
(In Fig. 3, it is a text query (NOT (CD OR DVD) AND “disk recorder”. The search rules in the query ‘claim: first text’ are as NOT ((cd OR dvd)), i.e. NOT ((cd OR dvd)) reads on ‘first search rule’ with one search ‘OR’ that in the layout of Fig.3, as the pink color area in the yellow color area ),
; and
obtaining a first search result based on the first keyword (Fig. 3: the pink color area) and the one or more second keywords (Fig. 3: the yellow area) .
Search retrieval method that finds relevant information base on keywords and rules, fields, where rules are associated with logical operations.
Therefore, it would be obvious to an ordinary of skills in the art before the effective filing of the application to combine the search rule set used in search text of IFNEC with the presentations of searches bases on keywords, search rule set, and search fields in Koch. The combination would yield predictable results for conforming to key elements of searching where keywords, search rule set, and search fields are fundamental components of information retrieval systems, used to precisely define, filter, and execute searches efficiently.
[[Note: The below nodes are provided to make the terms in connecting to the claimed recitations “running path information” and “keyword”, in light of the specification:
-In the technological art, "running path" refers to the process of executing a pathfinding algorithm to identify a sequence of connections or nodes between a start and end point.
A "path" refers to the specific field or property within a structured document where the text data resides.
-In text search, keywords are the essential words or phrases representing the core concepts of a topic, used by users to find information and by search engines to match queries with relevant content in databases, web pages, or documents, acting as descriptive labels for content.]]
As per Claim 7: IFNEC and combining Koch, where
IFNEC further discloses,
7. (Original) The method according to claim 1, wherein a keyword type comprises a string
type and/or a key-value pair type.
(See IFNEC discloses,
As per Claims 8, 14: The claims are directed to an apparatus; the claims recite the limitations having functionality corresponding to the method claims 1, 7 above. The claims are rejected with the same rationale addressed in claims 1, 7.
As per Claim 15: The claim is directed to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium; the claim recites the limitations having functionality corresponding to the method claim 1 above. The claim is rejected with the same rationale addressed in claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-6, 9-13, 16-18 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Ted T Vo whose telephone number is (571)272-3706. The examiner can normally be reached 8am-4:30pm ET.
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, Wei Y Mui can be reached at (571) 272-3708. 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.
TTV
December 24, 2025
/Ted T. Vo/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2191