DETAILED ACTION
In view of the Pre Appeal Brief filed on December 4th 2025, PROSECUTION IS HEREBY REOPENED. A new ground of rejection is set forth below.
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 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.
Claims 1, 3-10 and 12-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cappiello et al. (US 2019/0384759 A1) in view of Heck et al. (US 2014/0236570 A1).
For claim 1, Cappiello et al. teaches a method comprising:
receiving a natural language query [query is a natural language query, 0006: Cappiello] and data identifying documents determined to be responsive to the natural language query [identifying search results that are responsive to the query with structured data to supplement the results, 0005: Cappiello], the natural language query being determined to be a question query [query in natural language question form, 0033: Cappiello], but does not teach a question query that seeks an answer response; identifying a structured content set from the documents that includes a first attribute having a first value that matches a first query term of the natural language query and a second attribute that matches a second query term of the natural language query; and using a portion of the structured content set to generate a response to the natural language query.
Heck et al. teaches a question query that seeks an answer response [question response in natural language form, Figure 5 and 0034-0040: Heck]; identifying a structured content set from the documents [identification of structured content that includes structured web pages from the web for outputting response for a query response system, 0021: Heck] that includes a first attribute having a first value that matches a first query term of the natural language query [use of natural language term in query with entity type to mine and enrich structured content, 0028-0031: Heck] and a second attribute that matches a second query term of the natural language query [pairing of terms with a secondary term from the natural language query to find pattern and relay appropriate result from structured content, 0024-0031: Heck]; and using a portion of the structured content set to generate a response to the natural language query [structured content is mined with relationships using criteria and matching, to obtain a resulting enriched subset structured content which is shown as a result in natural language, Figure 5 and 0034-0040: Heck].
Cappiello et al. (US 2019/0384759 A1) and Heck et al. (US 2014/0236570 A1) are analogous art because they are from the same field natural language querying.
Before the filing date of the invention it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to modify the natural language processing as described by Cappiello et al. with structured content set generation as taught by Heck et al.
The motivation for doing so would be for ”adapting spoken dialog systems for new domains and/or changes in the distribution and nature of user request” [0001: Heck].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Cappiello et al. (US 2019/0384759 A1) and Heck et al. (US 2014/0236570 A1) for answering natural language queries with proper structured content.
For claim 3, Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the structured content set is a table having columns and rows, and wherein the first value corresponds to a cell in a row and the structured content set includes a second value that corresponds to a cell in the row and a column corresponding to the second attribute [values included in row and column for structured data matching multiple attributes, 0033-0034: Cappiello].
For claim 4, Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the structured content set is a table having columns and rows, and wherein the first value corresponds to a cell in a column and the structured content set includes a second value that corresponds to a cell in the column and a row corresponding to the second attribute table [values included in row and column for structured data matching multiple attributes, 0033-0034: Cappiello].
For claim 5, Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the portion of the structured content set includes all values included in a column or a row of a table [values included in row and column for structured data, 0033-0034: Cappiello].
For claim 6, Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the first attribute is a subject attribute having unique values within the structured content set [attribute involving name, description and transaction id, 0055-0057: Cappiello].
For claim 7, Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the first attribute is a title of the structured content set [attribute involving name and description, 0057: Cappiello].
For claim 8, Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches:
The method of claim 7, wherein the first query term matches the first attribute when the first query term matches a portion of the title [facet of a field with segments top return as result, 0031: Cappiello].
For claim 9, Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising: determining remaining query terms of the natural language query, the remaining query terms excluding stop words, interrogatives, the first query term, and the second query term [parsing of terms in the query, 0032: Cappiello]; determining whether a portion of the remaining query terms match a portion of a title of the structured content set or a portion of a title of a document of the documents from which the structured set is identified [facet of a field with segments top return as result, 0031: Cappiello]; and in response to determining that the remaining query terms match, generating the structured content set [generating structured data results, 0006: Cappiello].
Claim 10 is a system of the method taught by claim 1. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 1 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 12 is a system of the method taught by claim 3. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 3 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 13 is a system of the method taught by claim 4. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 4 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 14 is a system of the method taught by claim 5. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 5 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 15 is a system of the method taught by claim 6. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 6 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 16 is a system of the method taught by claim 7. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 7 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 17 is a system of the method taught by claim 8. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 8 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 18 is a system of the method taught by claim 9. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 9 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 19 is a system of the method taught by claim 1. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 1 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 20 is a system of the method taught by claim 3. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 3 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 21 is a system of the method taught by claim 4. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 4 for the reasons stated above.
Claim 22 is a system of the method taught by claim 7. Cappiello et al. and Heck et al. teaches the limitations of claim 7 for the reasons stated above.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on December 4, 2025 have been fully considered and a new secondary reference has been brought in to address the arguments/limitations. The prosecution has been re-opened after the pre-appeal request. The arguments against the limitation is taught in detail above in the 35 U.S.C. 103 rejection.
Conclusion
The Examiner requests, in response to this Office action, that support be shown for language added to any original claims on amendment and any new claims. That is, indicate support for newly added claim language by specifically pointing to page(s) and line no(s) in the specification and/or drawing figure(s). This will assist the Examiner in prosecuting the application.
When responding to this Office action, Applicant is advised to clearly point out the patentable novelty which he or she thinks the claims present, in view of the state of the art disclosed by the references cited or the objections made. He or she must also show how the amendments avoid such references or objections See 37 CFR 1.111(c).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AJITH M JACOB whose telephone number is (571)270-1763. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday: Flexible Hours.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Apu Mofiz can be reached on 571-272-4080. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/AJITH JACOB/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2161
3/20/2026
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