Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. 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
2. This Office Action is sent in response to Applicant’s Communication received on 05/25/2026 for application number 18/482,670.
Response to Amendments
3. The Amendment filed 05/25/2026 has been entered. Claims 1-20 have been amended. Claims. Claims 1-20 remain pending in the application.
4. Applicant’s amendments to the claims 1, 9, and 15 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The amendments provided to overcome the 101 rejection issued in the last office action is sufficient. The 35 U.S.C § 101 rejection of claims 1-20 is respectfully withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant argues that Chang does not disclose the requirements of the amended independent claims 1, 9, and 15. However, the argument is moot since this is a newly presented limitation, thus changes the scope of the claim. However, a newly found reference, Prakash, is applied.
Double Patenting
5. The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP §§ 706.02(l)(1) - 706.02(l)(3) for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
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Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-4, 6, 8-11, 15-18 of U.S. Patent No. US 11,842,290 B2. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because of the following mapping below. Each corresponding limitation is either identical or does not have a patentable, nonobvious distinction unless otherwise noted.
Instant Application 18/482,670
Patent No.: US 11,842,290 B2
Claim 1
Claims 1, 4
Claim 2
Claim 2
Claim 3
Claim 4
Claim 4
Claim 4
Claim 5
Claim 4
Claim 6
Claim 3
Claim 7
Claim 1
Claim 8
Claim 6
Claim 9
Claims 8, 11
Claim 10
Claim 9
Claim 11
Claim 11
Claim 12
Claim 11
Claim 13
Claim 10
Claim 14
Claim 10
Claim 15
Claims 15, 18
Claim 16
Claim 16
Claim 17
Claim 18
Claim 18
Claim 18
Claim 19
Claim 17
Claim 20
Claim 17
Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-3, 5, 7, 12-14, 17, 20-22, 25 of U.S. Patent No. US 11,379,738 B2. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because of the following mapping below. Each corresponding limitation is either identical or does not have a patentable, nonobvious distinction unless otherwise noted.
Instant Application 18/482,670
Patent No.: US 11,379,738 B2
Claim 1
Claim 1
Claim 2
Claim 3
Claim 3
Claim 1
Claim 4
Claim 2
Claim 5
Claim 7
Claim 6
Claim 7
Claim 7
Claim 1
Claim 8
Claim 5
Claim 9
Claim 12
Claim 10
Claim 14
Claim 11
Claim 12
Claim 12
Claim 13
Claim 13
Claim 17
Claim 14
Claim 17
Claim 15
Claim 20
Claim 16
Claim 22
Claim 17
Claim 20
Claim 18
Claim 21
Claim 19
Claim 25
Claim 20
Claim 25
Claim Rejections – 35 USC § 103
6. 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 of this title, 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.
7. Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Prakash et al. (U.S. Patent Application Pub. No. US 20190272296 A1) in view of Heidorn et al. (U.S. Patent Pub. No. US 5,966,686 A).
Claim 1: Prakash teaches a computer program product for annotating syntax tree in natural language processing, wherein the computer program product comprises a computer readable storage medium having computer readable program instructions executed by a processor to perform operations, the operations comprising (i.e. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium may include executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, facilitate performance of operations; para. [0007, 0016]):
generating a syntax tree comprising term nodes having terms from a question to process (i.e. natural language processing may be applied to the string to parse the string into words and determine natural language syntax data (e.g., part-of-speech tags and/or syntax tree data) for the words of the string; para. [0056, 0113, 0146]), generating syntax tree data for the words of the natural language string/question;
producing an annotated syntax tree with concept nodes having concepts for the terms, wherein the concepts provide meanings of the terms in the question (i.e. A translation layer may be implemented that can take a string of text (e.g., corresponding to a natural language question) and translate it into a query in a language or syntax for describing queries on databases (e.g., relational databases). The generated query is a sequence of tokens, where a token is an element in the database language or syntax (e.g., analogous to a word in a natural language, which allows the composition of phrases and sentences from words). A token may represent an entity or another concept meaningful in the context of a database. A token may have an associated data structure that includes data describing the token, storing data, such as descriptive text in a natural language, a token type, and/or an identifier or pointer for an entity in a database; para. [0044, 0119-0124]), enriching the parsed question representation by matching question words/fragments to database tokens that represent entities or concepts meaningful in the database context;
determining an element comprising a concept node or term node in the annotated syntax tree satisfying a parameter of a higher order action (i.e. These patterns may take the form of collections of token constraints that, when satisfied are used to modify and/or select a candidate query generated based on a string … the natural language syntax data for words of the string may be compared to known patterns corresponding to database query syntax. When patterns are matched to the string and/or tokens of the database syntax that have been matched to fragments of the string, then the database query may be generated, modified, ranked, and/or selected based on the match with the pattern; para. [0046, 0056]);
executing code for an action having a parameter matching the parameter of the higher order action to generate information for the determined element (i.e. the search is invoked 460 by executing a search specified by the query on the database, which may have data stored or cached locally (e.g., in high-speed volatile memory), to generate the search results locally. For example, the query may be in another query format supported by a local or remote database server, and may be determined based on the sequence of tokens of the database syntax of the first candidate database query. In some implementations, the first candidate database query is modified by applying an inference (e.g., as described in relation to the operation 560 of FIG. 6), and the query used to search the database is based on this modified version of the first candidate query; para. [0073, 0317-0319]);
the determined element in the annotated syntax tree with the generated information (i.e. A token may have an associated data structure that includes data describing the token, storing data, such as descriptive text in a natural language, a token type, and/or an identifier or pointer for an entity in a database … the text representation for a token of the database query may include descriptive text in a natural language that is stored as part of data structure corresponding to the token … modifying 840 the first candidate database query using a rewrite rule (e.g., the rewrite rule 1714) of the pattern, and adjusting a ranking score of the first candidate database query based on a ranking score adjustment (e.g., the ranking score adjustment 1716) of the pattern; para. [0044, 0057, 0317]); and
determining at least one candidate answer to the question from the generated information added to the annotated syntax tree to use as an answer to the question (i.e. invoke a search of the database using a query based on the first candidate database query to obtain search results; and present data based on the search results in the user interface; para. [0005, 0073, 0074]).
Prakash does not explicitly teach annotating the element.
However, Heidorn teaches annotating (i.e. for each rule for which all the conditions of that rule are satisfied, the NSS performs the list of actions contained in the rule, resulting in specific changes to the syntax parse tree; col. 9, lines 15-22) the determined element (i.e. Each leaf node of the syntax parse tree generally represents one word or punctuation symbol of the input sentence … a semantic rule is described by a conditional expression preceded by the word "If" in bold type, followed by a list of actions preceded by the word "Then" in bold type. The "If" part of the semantic rule represents the conditions that must be applied to a syntax parse tree node or logical form graph node and found to be true in order for the rule, as a whole, to be applied to the node, and the "Then" expression represents a list of actions to be performed on the syntax parse tree or logical form graph; col. 2 lines 11-20, col. 9 lines 20-35) in the annotated syntax tree with the generated information (i.e. Each successful rule application in phase two creates a new logical form graph node … the NSS applies a fourth set of semantic rules to the skeletal logical form graph to add semantically meaningful labels to the links of the logical form graph; col. 11 lines 32-40, col. 12 lines 28-31).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Prakash to include the feature of Heidorn. One would have been motivated to make this modification because it improves the semantic understanding of the user’s natural language question.
Claim 2: Prakash and Heidorn teach the computer program product of claim 1. Prakash further teaches wherein the determining whether there is the element satisfying the parameter further comprises: determining whether the element satisfies a constraint for the parameter (i.e. checking 830 whether a first candidate database query from the set of candidate database queries satisfies the collection of token constraints of the pattern; responsive to satisfaction of the collection of token constraints of the pattern; para. [0313]), wherein the code for the action is executed in response to determining that parameter of the element satisfies the constraint (i.e. checking 830 whether a first candidate database query from the set of candidate database queries satisfies the collection of token constraints of the pattern; responsive to satisfaction of the collection of token constraints of the pattern, modifying 840 the first candidate database query using the rewrite rule of the pattern, and adjusting a ranking score of the first candidate database query based on the ranking score adjustment of the pattern; selecting 850, based on the adjusted ranking score, the first candidate database query from the set of candidate database queries; invoking 860 a search of the database using a query based on the first candidate database query to obtain search results; and presenting 870 data based on the search results in the user interface; para. [0313]).
Claim 3: Prakash and Heidorn teach the computer program product of claim 1. Prakash further teaches wherein the operations further comprise: determining the action in response to determining the element of the annotated syntax tree satisfies the parameter of the higher order action (i.e. These patterns may take the form of collections of token constraints that, when satisfied are used to modify and/or select a candidate query generated based on a string; para. [0046, 0620]).
Claim 4: Prakash and Heidorn teach the computer program product of claim 3. Prakash further teaches wherein the determining the action comprises: determining whether the parameter of the higher order action matches a parameter of the action, wherein the action comprises the action having the parameter matching the parameter of the higher order action (i.e. checking 830 whether a first candidate database query from the set of candidate database queries satisfies the collection of token constraints of the pattern; responsive to satisfaction of the collection of token constraints of the pattern, modifying 840 the first candidate database query using the rewrite rule of the pattern, and adjusting a ranking score of the first candidate database query based on the ranking score adjustment of the pattern; selecting 850, based on the adjusted ranking score, the first candidate database query from the set of candidate database queries; invoking 860 a search of the database using a query based on the first candidate database query to obtain search results; and presenting 870 data based on the search results in the user interface; para. [0313]).
Claim 5: Prakash and Heidorn teach the computer program product of claim 3. Prakash further teaches wherein the determining the action comprises: determining whether the parameter of the higher order action matches parameters of a plurality of actions; and selecting one of the actions having the parameters matching the parameters of the high order action, wherein the action comprises the selected one of the actions (i.e. checking 830 whether a first candidate database query from the set of candidate database queries satisfies the collection of token constraints of the pattern; responsive to satisfaction of the collection of token constraints of the pattern, modifying 840 the first candidate database query using the rewrite rule of the pattern, and adjusting a ranking score of the first candidate database query based on the ranking score adjustment of the pattern; selecting 850, based on the adjusted ranking score, the first candidate database query from the set of candidate database queries; invoking 860 a search of the database using a query based on the first candidate database query to obtain search results; and presenting 870 data based on the search results in the user interface; para. [0313]).
Claim 6: Prakash and Heidorn teach the computer program product of claim 5. Prakash further teaches wherein the selecting one of the actions comprises: selecting an action, of the actions having the parameters matching the parameter of the high order action, having a syntax that has a closest match to the question to the answer (i.e. determining 420 a set of candidate database queries based on the string; determining 430 a first score, for a candidate database query from the set of candidate database queries, based on a match between one or more words of the string and a token of the candidate database query; determining 440 a second score, for the candidate database query, based on natural language syntax data determined for words of the string; selecting 450, based on the first score and the second score, the candidate database query from the set of candidate database queries; invoking 460 a search of the database using a query based on the selected candidate database query to obtain search results; para. [0067-0073]).
Claim 7: Prakash and Heidorn teach the computer program product of claim 1. Prakash further teaches wherein the action further includes the code and the parameter (i.e. wherein the pattern includes a collection of token constraints, a rewrite rule that maps one or more input tokens to a sequence of output tokens, and a ranking score adjustment that can be applied to a ranking score for a candidate database query; and storing the pattern; para. [0010, 0292]).
Claim 8: Prakash and Heidorn teach the computer program product of claim 1. Prakash further teaches wherein the generating the information comprises: adding real data from a database to the concepts in the annotated syntax tree (i.e. the system may determine the query from the string based in part on information derived from matching fragments of text from the string to tokens of a database, and also based in part on analysis of natural language syntax data (e.g., part-of-speech tags or syntax tree data) determined for words of the string … search results may include raw data (e.g., a table of search hits) retrieved from the database and/or summary data (e.g., aggregations or plots) determined by processing data accessed in the database; para. [0044, 0616]).
Claims 9-20 are similar in scope to Claims 1-6 and are rejected under a similar rationale.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
Allen et al. (Pub. No. US 20160306791 A1), Mechanisms are provided for processing natural language text. The natural language text is parsed to generate a logical parse which is then analyzed to identify a solicitation node of the logical parse for which a user is able to provide additional data to assist in processing the natural language text.
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
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 U.S.P.Q. 1038, 1039 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (quoting In re Lemelson, 397 F.2d 1006, 1009, 158 U.S.P.Q. 275, 277 (C.C.P.A. 1968)).
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/TAN H TRAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2141
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