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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 2A, Prong One asks: Is the claim directed to a law of nature, a natural phenomenon (product of nature) or an abstract idea? See MPEP 2106.04 Part I. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas. See MPEP 2106.04(a).
With respect to claims 1 and 18, the limitation of “receiving an author’s input, via a GUI, for populating multimedia content into a UI card design pattern”, “converting at least a portion of the author’s input into one or more search parameters for a search query”, and “associating the one or more search parameters with a search field”, as drafted, is a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed in the mind. For example, “receiving” and “associating” in the context of this claim encompasses the user mentally analyzing data. Similarly, the limitation of “converting at least a portion of the author’s input”, as drafted, is a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components. For example, “converting” in the context of this claim encompasses the user mentally compiling skills. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
At step 2a, prong two, this judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. Claims 1 and 18 recite a computer system to execute the operations, however, this is recited as a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic computer system performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Additionally, the claim recites “converting….search parameters for a search query that is compatible with at least one of a search engine, a public database query, a private database query, or a combination thereof.” These elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose a meaningful limit on the judicial exception and provide only insignificant extra solution activity that is mere data gathering in conjunction with the abstract idea.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements amount to no more than mere instructions to apply an exception using generic computer components. Mere instructions to apply an exception using generic computer components cannot provide an inventive concept.
With respect to “receiving an author’s input, via a GUI, for populating multimedia content into a UI card design pattern that groups related information in a flexible-size container visually resembling a playing card for at least a portion of a multimedia guidance procedure as part of a workflow creation tool;” and “associating the one or more search parameters with a search field”, the courts have found limitations directed towards data gathering to be well-understood, routine, and conventional. See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II). Receiving or transmitting data over a network, e.g., using the Internet to gather data, Symantec, 838 F.3d at 1321, 120 USPQ2d at 1362 (utilizing an intermediary computer to forward information).
Considering the additional elements individually and in combination and the claim as a whole, the additional elements do not provide significantly more than the abstract idea. The claim is not patent eligible.
With respect to claims 2-4, 8, 19 & 20, the claims are directed towards receiving a position and modifying search parameters. This claim does not recite further abstract ideas under step 2a prong one and instead recite additional elements. These elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose a meaningful limit on the judicial exception and provide only insignificant extra solution activity that is mere data gathering in conjunction with the abstract idea. Under step 2B, with respect to “receiving a position”, the courts have found limitations directed towards data gathering to be well-understood, routine, and conventional. See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II). Receiving or transmitting data over a network, e.g., using the Internet to gather data, Symantec, 838 F.3d at 1321, 120 USPQ2d at 1362 (utilizing an intermediary computer to forward information). With respect to “modifying”, this is simply appending well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception. See Haokun Liu, Derek Tam, Mohammed Muqeeth, Jay Mohta, Tenghao Huang, Mohit Bansal, and Colin Raffel. 2022. Few-shot parameter-efficient fine-tuning is better and cheaper than in-context learning. In Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS '22). Curran Associates Inc., Red Hook, NY, USA, Article 142, 1950–1965. This reference provides a variety of ways that these steps have been performed in the prior art.
With respect to claims 5, 6, 7, 9 & 10 , the limitations are directed towards selection and navigation or presentation of GUI objects. These steps are not further abstract ideas under step 2a prong one and instead recite additional elements. These elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose a meaningful limit on the judicial exception and provide only insignificant extra solution activity that is mere data gathering in conjunction with the abstract idea. Under step 2B, the courts have found limitations directed towards data gathering to be well-understood, routine, and conventional. See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II). Receiving or transmitting data over a network, e.g., using the Internet to gather data, Symantec, 838 F.3d at 1321, 120 USPQ2d at 1362 (utilizing an intermediary computer to forward information).
With respect to claim 11, the limitations further define receiving a selection and detecting machine learning model from a plurality of objects and performing image recognition based on a received image. This describes further mental processes because under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed in the mind. For example, “detect the object” in the context of this claim encompasses the user mentally determining if data matches.
With respect to claims 12-17, the limitations are directed to receiving input and designating an action based in the detection of the object. These limitations further define the abstract idea by describing how the user determines actions based on received input.
Related Art
Allen et al. (U.S. Pub 2008/0148283) teaches a widget wherien a portion of a widget container is generated and a pre-defined function associated with the widget container before the widget container is generated wherein the widget container can be configured to be executed at a widget-container processing device in response to a reference to the widget container being accessed from a processor-readable vehicle. Mico et al. (U.S. Pub 2024/0428260) teaches an artificial intelligence-powered contextual customer service automation solution using logic trees enhanced with the mission and corporate values-based generative AI prompts to control responses with brand characteristics and tone by creating a customer response flow having one or more pre-built templates for handling responses for a brand, each of the one or more pre-built templates having a series of step-by-step actions with controls and generative artificial intelligence (AI) response prompts; receiving a query from a user through a dynamic chatbot; determining user intent and context information based on the query; identifying a workflow path to respond to the customer, based on the user intent and context information, from one or more pre-built templates; and performing one or more actions to execute the customer response flow based on a set of one or more brand values and one or more policy rules set forth in the one or more pre-built templates to respond to the request.
Inquiry
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANGIE BADAWI whose telephone number is (571)270-7590. The examiner can normally be reached Monday thru Wednesday 9:00am - 5:00pm EST with Thursdays and Fridays off.
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/ANGIE BADAWI/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2179