Prosecution Insights
Last updated: April 19, 2026
Application No. 18/467,759

DYNAMICALLY GENERATING INSTANCE TYPES

Non-Final OA §102§103
Filed
Sep 15, 2023
Examiner
RASHID, WISSAM
Art Unit
2195
Tech Center
2100 — Computer Architecture & Software
Assignee
International Business Machines Corporation
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
88%
Grant Probability
Favorable
1-2
OA Rounds
2y 11m
To Grant
99%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 88% — above average
88%
Career Allow Rate
572 granted / 654 resolved
+32.5% vs TC avg
Moderate +12% lift
Without
With
+12.3%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
2y 11m
Avg Prosecution
25 currently pending
Career history
679
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
9.7%
-30.3% vs TC avg
§103
44.9%
+4.9% vs TC avg
§102
12.4%
-27.6% vs TC avg
§112
19.5%
-20.5% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 654 resolved cases

Office Action

§102 §103
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 . Claims 1-20 are pending. Claim Objections Claims 1, 8, and 15 are objected to because of the following informalities: the claim should presumably read “…an entity vector based on the user input…”. Appropriate correction is required. Claims 4, 11, and 18 are objected to because of the following informalities: The acronym “YAML” should be in parenthesis and preceded by each of the words that constitute each letter of said acronym. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102 The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action: A person shall be entitled to a patent unless – (a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. Claim(s) 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Featonby et al. (US 2022/0291941). With respect to claim 1, Featonby discloses: receiving, by a controller, a user input describing a desired workload and a user intent for the desired workload (Fig. 8, 802-806); generating, by a machine learning model executing on the controller, an entity vector based the user input ([0103], lines 8-12); accessing, by the controller, an instance type knowledge base comprising vector representations of one or more instance types ([0103], [0104]); calculating, by the controller, a ranking between the entity vector and the vector representations of the one or more instance types in the instance type knowledge base ([0067], [0104]); and determining a set of instance types for the desired workload based on the ranking ([0105]). With respect to claim 2, Featonby discloses: selecting, by the controller, a first instance type from the set of instance types for the desired workload (Fig. 5, Fig. 7). With respect to claims 8 and 9, they recite similar limitations as claims 1 and 2 and are, therefore, rejected under the same citations and rationale. With respect to claims 15 and 16, they recite similar limitations as claims 1 and 2 and are, therefore, rejected under the same citations and rationale. 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. Claim(s) 4, 5, 11, 12, 18, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Featonby et al. (US 2022/0291941) in view of Banerjee et al. (US 2022/0035650). With respect to claim 4, Featonby does not specifically disclose: wherein the user input comprises a YAML file. However, Banerjee discloses: wherein the user input comprises a YAML file ([0050]). It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate YAML files as a preferred choice due to its simplicity and versatility as it is lightweight due to not having to use extra delimiters like braces or ages which enhances readability. With respect to claim 5, Banerjee discloses: wherein the YAML file comprises a user intent ([0050], intent files corresponds to “user intent”). With respect to claims 11 and 12, they recite similar limitations as claims 4 and 5 and are, therefore, rejected under the same citations and rationale. With respect to claims 18 and 19, they recite similar limitations as claims 4 and 5 and are, therefore, rejected under the same citations and rationale. Claim(s) 7 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Featonby et al. (US 2022/0291941) in view of Sarkar et al. (US 2023/0034011). With respect to claim 7, Featonby does not specifically disclose: wherein the machine learning model comprises a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers model. However, Sarkar discloses: wherein the machine learning model comprises a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers model ([0029]). It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformer models for natural language processing applications due to improved contextual understanding, versatile embeddings, and efficient transfer learning With respect to claim 14, it recites similar limitations as claim 7 and is, therefore, rejected under the same citations and rationale. Allowable Subject Matter Claims 3, 6, 10, 13, 17, and 20 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 WISSAM RASHID whose telephone number is (571)270-3758. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00 am-5:00 pm. 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, Aimee Li can be reached at (571)272-4169. 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. /WISSAM RASHID/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2195
Read full office action

Prosecution Timeline

Sep 15, 2023
Application Filed
Mar 07, 2026
Non-Final Rejection — §102, §103 (current)

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Study what changed to get past this examiner. Based on 5 most recent grants.

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Prosecution Projections

1-2
Expected OA Rounds
88%
Grant Probability
99%
With Interview (+12.3%)
2y 11m
Median Time to Grant
Low
PTA Risk
Based on 654 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allow rate.

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