Detailed Action
Status of Claims
Claims 1 – 20 were previously pending and subject to a non-final office action mailed 07/29/2025. Claims 2, 5 – 10, 12, & 15 – 20 were amended, claims 1, 4, 11, & 14 were cancelled, and claims 21 – 22 were added in a reply filed 10/22/2025. Claims 2 – 3, 5 – 10, 12 – 13, & 15 – 22 are currently pending and subject to the final office action below.
Responsive to the previously-indicated nonobvious subject matter of claims 2 & 12, Applicant has amended claims 2 and 12 to incorporate the recitations of the respective base claims 1 and 11. Therefore, the amended claims filed 10/22/2025 have overcome the previous prior art rejections.
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 .
Novel/Nonobvious Subject Matter
Claims 2 – 3, 5 – 10, 12 – 13, & 15 – 22 are allowed over the prior art. In particular, the cited references fail to teach or render obvious the previously-indicated nonobvious functionality of “sending, by the computing system, the question-answer pair to the contact center agent for approval; and determining, by the computing system and in response to sending the question-answer pair to the contact center agent for approval, whether a question-answer pair of the plurality of question-answer pairs is frequently asked in response to determining that the question-answer pair is not stored in the dynamic frequently asked questions knowledge base.”
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed 10/22/2025 with respect to the previous rejection of the claims under 35 USC 112(b) have been considered and are persuasive. The previous 35 USC 112(b) rejections have been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments filed 10/22/2025 with respect to the previous rejection of the claims under 35 USC 101 have been considered but are not persuasive.
Applicant initially argues, on pg. 12, that “claim 1 does not recite a contract, a legal obligation, advertising, marketing or sales activities, or business relations.”
Examiner respectfully disagrees, because the claims recite processes (see below for full analysis) that encompass providing updated frequently-asked questions to customer service agents based on agent-customer interactions. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in a commercial interaction, or while managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people, then it falls within the "Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity" grouping of abstract ideas e.g., “commercial or legal interactions (including marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations, and following rules or instructions).” Examiner respectfully submits that managing information which staff will use to assists in solving customer issues would be performed during a commercial interaction, a business relation, and also while following rules or instructions. Additionally, the claims also fall under the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas, because the recited steps as outlined below are analogous to “concepts performed in the human mind (including an observation, evaluation, judgment, opinion).” If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the human mind but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the "Mental Processes" grouping of abstract ideas. Therefore, the claims fall under two separate groupings of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Applicant next argues, on pp. 14 – 15, that “the claims represent integration into a practical application” because “unlike the claims in Parker V. Flook, claim 2 recites specific details on how, for example, the computing system determines whether a question-answer pair from a set of question-answer pairs generated by the computing system from the analysis of the transcript obtained by the computing system of the interaction between the contact center agent and the client is frequently asked and not already in the dynamic frequently asked questions knowledge base.”
Examiner respectfully disagrees, and notes that the “Supreme Court” has described the concern driving the judicial exceptions as “preemption”, the Courts do not use preemption as a stand-alone test for eligibility. For example, even though the claims in “Flook” did not wholly preempt the mathematical formula, and the claims in “Mayo” were directed to narrow laws that may have limited applications, the Supreme Court nonetheless held them ineligible because they failed to amount to significantly more than the recited exceptions (see Flook at 589-590; Mayo at 1302 cited at July 2015 Update: Subject Matter Eligibility page 8 Section VI and page 11 footnotes 26 to 29). Examiner also submits that the Federal Circuit has followed the Supreme Court’s lead in rejecting arguments that a lack of total preemption equates with eligibility (see e.g. buySafe 765 F.3d at 1355; Ultramercial, 772 F.3d at 716 also cited at July 2015 Update: Subject Matter Eligibility at Section VI page 8 last ¶ to page 9 first ¶ and at page 11 footnote 27 and corroborated by “May 2016 Update: Memorandum - Formulating a Subject Matter Eligibility Rejection and Evaluating the Applicant's Response to a Subject Matter Eligibility Rejection” page 6 last bullet point to page 7 ¶1. Additionally, Examiner respectfully submits that claim 2 “recites specific details” of steps which fall under the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” and “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas, and are therefore ineligible.
Applicant’s arguments on pp. 15 – 17, associated with well-understood, routine, and conventional elements have been considered but are not persuasive because the office action mailed 07/29/2025 did not classify any additional elements as well-understood, routine, and conventional.
Regarding Applicant’s remarks on pg. 17 associated with the evaluation of “claims at such a high level of generality,” Examiner respectfully submits that the claim elements have been considered both individually and as an ordered combination in the below Alice/Mayo analysis for eligibility.
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 2 – 3, 5 – 10, 12 – 13, & 15 – 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1
Claims 2 – 3, 5 – 10, & 21 – 22 are directed to a process (i.e., a method). Claims 12 – 13 & 15 – 20 are directed to a system (i.e., a machine). Therefore, claims 2 – 3, 5 – 10, 12 – 13, & 15 – 22 all fall within the one of the four statutory categories of invention.
Step 2A, Prong One
Independent claims 2 & 12 substantially recite: “receiving… a transcript of a contact center interaction between a contact center agent and a client; analyzing… the transcript to generate a plurality of question- answer pairs; determining… whether each question-answer pair of the plurality of question-answer pairs is stored in a dynamic frequently asked questions knowledge base; sending… the question-answer pair to the contact center agent for approval; determining…, in response to sending the question-answer pair to the contact center agent for approval, whether a question-answer pair of the plurality of question-answer pairs is frequently asked in response to determining that the question-answer pair is not stored in the dynamic frequently asked questions knowledge base, wherein determining whether the question-answer pair is frequently asked comprises determining whether the question of the question-answer pair has been asked a threshold number of times; and updating… the dynamic frequently asked questions knowledge base to include the question-answer pair in response to determining that the question-answer pair is frequently asked.”
The limitations stated above are processes that, under the broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in a business relation or commercial interaction. That is, the functions in the context of the claims encompass providing updated frequently-asked questions to customer service agents based on agent-customer interactions. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in a commercial interaction, or while managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people, then it falls within the "Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity" grouping of abstract ideas e.g., “commercial or legal interactions (including marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations, and following rules or instructions).” Additionally, the claims also fall under the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas, because the above steps are analogous to “concepts performed in the human mind (including an observation, evaluation, judgment, opinion).” If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the human mind but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the "Mental Processes" grouping of abstract ideas. Therefore, the claims fall under two separate groupings of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Step 2A, Prong Two
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. Independent claims 2 & 12, as a whole, amount to: (i) merely invoking generic components as a tool to perform the abstract idea or “apply it” (or an equivalent), as well as (ii) generally linking the recited judicial exception to a particular field or technological environment. Claims 2 & 12 recite the additional computer-related elements of “by a/the computing system,” “computing system comprising: at least one processor,” and “at least one memory comprising a plurality of instructions stored thereon that, in response to execution by the at least one processor, causes the computing system to.” Claims 2 & 12 also recite the additional element of: “based on an artificial intelligence model.”
The additional elements of “by a/the computing system,” “computing system comprising: at least one processor,” and “at least one memory comprising a plurality of instructions stored thereon that, in response to execution by the at least one processor, causes the computing system to” are recited at a high-level of generality, such that, when viewed as whole/ordered combination, amount to no more than mere instruction to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components or “apply it” (See MPEP 2106.05(f)).
Furthermore, the additional element of “based on an artificial intelligence model,” when viewed as whole/ordered combination, amounts to merely generally linking the recited judicial exception to a particular technological environment (i.e., field) of artificial intelligence (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)), and also amounts to no more than mere instruction to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components or “apply it” (See MPEP 2106.05(f)).
Accordingly, these additional elements, when viewed as a whole/ordered combination, do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Thus, claims 2 & 12 are directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B
As discussed above with respect to Step 2A Prong Two, the additional elements amount to no more than: (i) merely invoking generic components as a tool to perform the abstract idea or “apply it” (or an equivalent), as well as (ii) generally linking the recited judicial exception to a particular field or technological environment, and do not provide integration of the recited abstract ideas into a practical application. The same analysis applies here in Step 2B, i.e., (i) merely invoking the generic components as a tool to perform the abstract idea or “apply it” (See MPEP 2106.05(f)); and (ii) generally linking the recited judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use (See MPEP 2106.05(I)(A) & MPEP 2106.05(h)), does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application at Step 2A or provide an inventive concept at Step 2B.
Therefore, the additional elements of “by a/the computing system,” “computing system comprising: at least one processor,” “at least one memory comprising a plurality of instructions stored thereon that, in response to execution by the at least one processor, causes the computing system to,” and “based on an artificial intelligence model” fail to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application at Step 2A or provide an inventive concept at Step 2B. Thus, even when viewed as a whole/ordered combination, nothing in the claims adds significantly more (i.e., an inventive concept) to the abstract idea. There is no indication that the combination of elements, taken both individually and as an ordered combination, improves the functioning of a computer or improves any other technology. Thus, the claims are not patent eligible.
Furthermore, dependent claims 3, 5 – 10, 13, & 15 – 22 are merely directed to the particulars of the abstract idea and likewise do not add significantly more to the above-identified judicial exception. The additional elements of “transmitting an instruction to update the dynamic frequently asked questions knowledge base via a cloud-based application programming interface” in claims 6 & 16, when viewed as whole/ordered combination, amounts to no more than merely generally linking the recited judicial exception to a particular technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) as well as merely invoking the generic components as a tool to perform the abstract idea or “apply it” (See MPEP 2106.05(f)). The additional elements of “wherein the computing system comprises a cloud-based computing system” in claims 7 & 17, when viewed as whole/ordered combination, amounts to no more than merely generally linking the recited judicial exception to a particular technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) as well as merely invoking the generic components as a tool to perform the abstract idea or “apply it” (See MPEP 2106.05(f)). The additional elements of “wherein the computing system comprises an on-premises contact center system” in claims 8 & 18, when viewed as whole/ordered combination, amounts to no more than merely generally linking the recited judicial exception to a particular technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) as well as merely invoking the generic components as a tool to perform the abstract idea or “apply it” (See MPEP 2106.05(f)). The additional elements of “selecting the artificial intelligence model from a plurality of prospective artificial intelligence models” in claims 9 & 19, when viewed as whole/ordered combination, amounts to no more than merely generally linking the recited judicial exception to a particular technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) as well as merely invoking the generic components as a tool to perform the abstract idea or “apply it” (See MPEP 2106.05(f)). The additional element of “determining, by the computing system, the semantic meaning with a natural language processing algorithm” in claim 22, when viewed as whole/ordered combination, amounts to no more than merely generally linking the recited judicial exception to a particular technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) as well as merely invoking the generic components as a tool to perform the abstract idea or “apply it” (See MPEP 2106.05(f)). The limitations of the claims, when considered both individually and as an ordered combination, do not transform the abstract idea that they recite into patent-eligible subject matter because the claims simply instruct the practitioner to implement the abstract idea with generic computer components that conduct generic computer functions within a certain field of use, and thus are ineligible.
Conclusion
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 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BRYAN J KIRK whose telephone number is (571)272-6447. The examiner can normally be reached Monday -Friday 9:00-5:00.
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/BRYAN J KIRK/Examiner, Art Unit 3628
/SHANNON S CAMPBELL/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3628