DETAILED ACTION
A. This action is in response to the following communications: Amendment filed: 08/11/2026. This action is made Final.
B. Claims 1-11 remain pending.
C. 35 USC 101 rejection withdrawn due to amendment and remarks.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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) 1-11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sim, Yan Chuan et al. (US Pub. 2020/0226481 A1), herein referred to as “Sim” in view of Ueda, Masami (US Pub. 2009/0235155 A1), herein referred to as “Ueda”.
As for claims 1 and 10-11, Sim teaches. An information processing system and corresponding program of claim 10 and method of claim 11 comprising: one or a plurality of processors, wherein the processor is configured to (par. 64 describes hardware environment for implementing specification):
perform control to display a comment input region that receives an input of a comment for a document indicated by a document file in a state where the document file is not opened (par. 132 using figure 17D as a visual, the administrator can edit tags of PDF documents, the tags can be input by user and/or automated input and later verified by user; par. 86 describes that a datasheet is a user interface for showing various files and fields including the tags that are editable; wherein the document is not opened in order for tags to be created and stored; par. 127 Tag-tag associations (i.e., between different tags) may be used to automatically generate and suggest tags to a user, and/or return related content associated with similar tags. For example, user input of one tag may prompt one or more additional tags to be suggested (e.g., displayed) to the user, where the additional tags are generated or identified based on the associations model.
“ FIG. 17D depicts a schematic of an exemplary datasheet 1740 for a guidelines and protocols clinic module associated with a hospital. The datasheet 1730 includes various guidelines and protocols for different clinical needs, and may include multiple fields for each guidelines or protocol to provide context (which may, for example, be used for indexing the content for search and retrieval by the AI system). Exemplary fields include location associated with each item (e.g., country), title, file type, relevant department, tags, etc. Furthermore, the datasheet 1730 may store a copy of file attachments containing the guidelines or protocols, which may be displayed on a computing device (e.g., upon user request). Additionally or alternatively, other suitable kinds of attachments (e.g., links, videos, images, etc.) may be provided as attachments as part of the clinic module…”
“…content in clinic modules may be associated with one or more tags as part of the content creation and upload process (and/or with updates to clinic module content by modifying associated datasheets). When clinic module content is tagged, the AI system may also auto-suggest tags using a stored dictionary (e.g., based on known tag-tag associations, tag-content associations, and/or content-content associations, canonical medical terms, curated synonyms, etc.), and an administrator may select one or more of the auto-suggested tags for further labeling of medical content in the clinic module. An administrator may additionally or alternatively choose to add synonyms or new tags to the datasheets or portion thereof, which may further update the stored dictionary with additional synonyms. Furthermore, it should be understood that as various users interact with content of clinic modules, such as by adding user-provided tags, the AI system may subsequently auto-suggest such user-provided tags to an administrator for further tagging of the content. Accordingly, the associations model within the AI environment may continuously evolve through administrative management of clinic modules and/or user engagement with content of clinic modules...”;
receive a designation of a display position of the comment for an image representing the document file on the basis of information which is input to the comment input region (par. 153 GUI 800c of FIG. 8C, selection of the training command results in display of a dialog box 830 prompting the user to enter one or more tags.); and
perform control to display the comment at the designated display position of the image representing the document file (par. 153-154 user can input into the system to display tags and their associated content).
Sim does not specifically discuss a way to reduce overhead by means of not loading documents to interact with them; however in the same field of endeavor Ueda teaches performing control to display the comment at the designated display position of the image representing the document file, wherein the information processing system conserves computer resources by eliminating a need to load the document into an editor and reduces computational overhead associated with opening the document file (par. 134-139 the display format is a thumbnail view wherein a position in which the label annotation is superimposed is a position indicated by the coordinates of the annotation in consideration of a ratio of an original image size to a thumbnail size; in such that the document is not opened only a thumbnail version, and the user is able to place a comment/ annotation at a position relative to the original version based upon the coordinates of the annotation on the thumbnail view by a ratio compared (e.g. if a user places an annotation in the lower right half of a thumbnail, then when the document is opened the annotation will also be displayed in relative area to this initial selection). The combination of annotation and thumbnail can either be done by the client or at the server level wherein coordinate of the annotation are saved in the string that the annotation is saved in, such that when a mouse is moved into a rectangle indicated by the received coordinates the annotation character string may be displayed such as in a popup window or other means such as a dialog view (permanent display). Note the workflow of figure 14 which when executed also spans across figures 15-17 for user interaction with a thumbnail view of documents (documents not opened) and interacted with to provide comments in form of annotations to the documents for one or more user to view; par. 8 discusses that a need exists that the invention solves is to edit annotations without opening/loading a document an to annotation many documents).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Ueda into Sim because Ueda suggests as the number of annotations in a document increases, it is more difficult to identify an important annotation among them. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-339005 discloses a technique which allows an annotation to be easily identified by switching display/non-display of annotations added by other users. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-350554 discloses a technique in which an annotation that should be noted can be easily determined from among annotations added to a digitized document. However, the above described techniques make it easy to distinguish an annotation added to a document only when the document is opened. Therefore, in the above described techniques, if there are many documents to be handled, for example, during operation of receiving and placing orders through a fax, documents need to be opened one by one to check an annotation. This causes difficulties in the operation. In addition, if an annotation to be sent to a recipient (customer) and an annotation added as a memo by an operator are pasted in a mixed manner on a document, it is troublesome to delete some of the annotations when the document is faxed to the recipient or is sent as a file attached to an e-mail.
An object of the present invention is to provide a mechanism which allows a document to be easily checked and improves operating efficiency. In order to improve efficiency of Sim Ueda solves a solution to handle tags of Sim’s documents by means that Ueda handles the annotations saved for documents. The functionality is similar between annotation and tag in which the difference is that of how long of a character string each typically represent, wherein a tag can be short one or few words while an annotation can be one word to sentence or even a paragraph; yet the functionality still remains the same outside of the length of characters, in such that meta data is created to describe a digital file. Both system can use the tag and annotation as a means to find documents and both system use tag and annotation as a means of organization.
As for claim 2, Sim teaches. The information processing system according to claim 1,
wherein the input information is specific text information for designating the display position (par. 127-129 first and second tags are different in which display position denotes more importance based upon what is displayed first over second).
As for claim 3, Sim teaches. The information processing system according to claim 1,
wherein the image representing the document file is a thumbnail image (par. 141 a displayed visual thumbnail version of content item may be selected for enlarged viewing).
As for claim 4, Sim teaches. The information processing system according to claim 3, wherein the processor is configured to:
perform control to display the document in an enlarged manner in a case where the thumbnail image is selected and designated and simultaneously perform control to display the comment at the display position of the document (par. 141 a displayed visual thumbnail version of content item may be selected for enlarged viewing).
As for claim 5, Sim teaches. The information processing system according to claim 4, wherein the processor is configured to:
perform control to display the comment on the thumbnail image along only a position in a vertical direction of the display position (par. 141 content items may be displayed in any suitable manner on the user interface, such as visual thumbnail versions of content items arranged in a list, in an item carousel navigable by user gesture, or in a grid.); and
perform control to display the comment on the document, which is displayed in the enlarged manner, in accordance with both positions in the vertical direction and a horizontal direction of the display position (par. 141 a displayed visual thumbnail version of content item may be selected for enlarged viewing).
As for claim 6, Sim teaches. The information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to:
further receive designation of a display mode of the comment; and
perform control to display the comment in the received display mode (par. 158 FIGS. 11A and 11B are exemplary variations of GUIs relating to tagging content in an internet browser, thereby training an associations model. As shown in GUI 1100a in FIG. 11A, a text excerpt 1112 of displayed content in a browser 1110 may be selected by highlighting. Following such selection, an options menu 1114 may be displayed to offer selectable actions related to the selected content, such as copying the selected content, selecting all surrounding text, and forwarding or sharing the selected content to one or more other users (or saving the selected content to an archive). Furthermore, the options menu 1114 may include a training command icon 1116 that, when selected, may trigger or initiate a tagging process).
As for claim 7, Sim teaches. The information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to:
perform control to display a plurality of the comment input regions; and
receive a position corresponding to a position where the comment input region in which the comment is input is displayed, as the display position (par. 158; fig. 11a-b shows that use can select different positions and tag/comment on each section within the user interface).
As for claim 8, Sim teaches. The information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the processor is configured to:
further perform control to display a position designation screen that receives the designation of the display position for a region corresponding to a predetermined text string of the document in a case where the text string is input to the comment input region; and
receive the designation of the display position via the position designation screen (par. 160 user navigation within the user interface displays a position designation screen within a chat graphical user interface wherein the system determines text string relating to a chat and offers for user to tag/comment on the content; FIGS. 13A and 13B are exemplary variations of GUIs relating to an automatic prompt to a user to tag content, thereby training an associations model. As shown in the GUI 1300a in FIG. 13A, communication of a sufficiently long chat message 1310 may trigger display of a dialog box 1312 that prompts the user to tag the chat message 1310 as content for easy future retrieval; position designation screen is interpreted as an arbitrary graphical user interface screen that was navigated to by the user through transitions of graphical user interface screens).
As for claim 9, Sim teaches. The information processing system according to claim 8, wherein the processor is configured to:
receive an input of the text string on the position designation screen; and
receive a position of the text string, for which input is received, as the display position in a case where the document file includes the text string (par. 160 user selects positional text string within the chat to comment/tag; this can be repeatable with other selected text within the long chat (i.e. first portion of text could tagged as medical while second portion could be tagged as personal per se).
(Note:) It is noted that any citation to specific, pages, columns, lines, or figures in the prior art references and any interpretation of the references should not be considered to be limiting in any way. A reference is relevant for all it contains and may be relied upon for all that it would have reasonably suggested to one having ordinary skill in the art. In re Heck, 699 F.2d 1331, 1332-33, 216 USPQ 1038, 1039 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (quoting In re Lemelson, 397 F.2d 1006,1009, 158 USPQ 275, 277 (CCPA 1968)).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-11 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
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
Inquires
Any inquiry concerning this communication should be directed to NICHOLAS AUGUSTINE at telephone number (571)270-1056.
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.
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/NICHOLAS AUGUSTINE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2178 September 28, 2026
