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 .
DETAILED ACTION
The instant application having Application No. 18/495,309 filed on 10/26/2023 is presented for examination.
Examiner Notes
Examiner cites particular columns and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner.
Drawings
The applicant’s drawings submitted are acceptable for examination purposes.
Authorization for Internet Communications
The examiner encourages Applicant to submit an authorization to communicate with the examiner via the Internet by making the following statement (from MPEP 502.03):
“Recognizing that Internet communications are not secure, I hereby authorize the USPTO to communicate with the undersigned and practitioners in accordance with 37 CFR 1.33 and 37 CFR 1.34 concerning any subject matter of this application by video conferencing, instant messaging, or electronic mail. I understand that a copy of these communications will be made of record in the application file.”
Please note that the above statement can only be submitted via Central Fax, Regular postal mail, or EFS Web.
Information Disclosure Statement
As required by M.P.E.P. 609, the applicant’s submissions of the Information Disclosure Statement dated 10/26/2023 is acknowledged by the examiner and the cited references have been considered in the examination of the claims now pending.
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 1-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract ide without significantly more.
Step 1: Claim 1 is a method claim.
Step 2:
2A Prong 1:
The claim recites
automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface, wherein the name comprises a naming format applied across a plurality of application programming interfaces searchable by names;
under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind, then it falls within the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas (concepts performed in the human mind including an observation, evaluation, judgment, and opinion).
2A Prong 2:
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the additional elements "obtaining one or more data sets descriptive of at least one application programming interface”, this limitation amounts to data gathering which is considered to be insignificant extra solution activity (MPEP 2106.05(g).
The processing device, memory and processor in these steps are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. (see MPEP 2106.05(f)). The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
2B:
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The limitations "obtaining..." is recognized by the courts as well-understood, routine, and conventional activities when they are claimed in a merely generic manner (see MPEP 2106.05(d)(II)(iv) Storing and retrieving information in memory, Versata Dev. Group Inc....
Accordingly, the claim does not appear to be patent eligible under 35 USC 101.
For the rejection of the dependent claims, the notations "presentation of data", retrieval of data" is unclear since they do not indicate whether they are mental processes or insignificant extra solution activities.
As such, claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Claims 2-15 depend from claim 1 and have similar issues as claim 1 and are rejected for at least those reasons as well as the reasons cited below:
2. The method of claim 1, further comprising publishing the generated name to a portal for searching for the plurality of application programming interfaces (insignificant extra solution activities - presentation of data).
3. The method of claim 2, wherein the at least one application programming interface is an additional application programming interface to be searchable in the portal based on the generated name. (insignificant extra solution activities - presentation of data).
4. The method of claim 2, wherein the at least one application programming interface is an existing application programming interface to be searchable in the portal based on the generated name. (retrieval of data)
5. The method of claim 1, wherein the one or more data sets are descriptive of multiple application programming interfaces such that names are automatically generated for the multiple application programming interfaces (evaluation, mental process)
6. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface further comprises extracting one or more named entities from the one or more data sets. (evaluation, mental process)
7. The method of claim 6, wherein extracting one or more named entities from the one or more data sets further comprises utilizing a named entity recognition algorithm. (evaluation, mental process)
8. The method of claim 6, wherein automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface further comprises filtering the extracted one or more named entities to obtain a filtered set of one or more named entities. (presentation of data)
9. The method of claim 8, wherein filtering the extracted one or more named entities to obtain a filtered set of one or more named entities further comprises applying one or more rules to remove one or more predefined terms from the extracted one or more named entities. (evaluation, mental process)
10. The method of claim 8, wherein the extracting and filtering are implemented via one or more machine learning models. (evaluation, mental process)
11. The method of claim 8, wherein automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface further comprises determining an intent result from the one or more data sets. (evaluation, mental process)
12. The method of claim 11, wherein determining an intent result from the one or more data sets further comprises utilizing a long short-term memory network. (evaluation, mental process)
13. The method of claim 11, wherein the intent result determining is implemented via one or more machine learning models. (evaluation, mental process)
14. The method of claim 11, wherein automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface further comprises assembling the filtered set of one or more named entities and the intent result into the name for the at least one application programming interface. (evaluation, mental process)
15. The method of claim 1, wherein the naming format comprises one or more of a functionality part, a product part, and a functional domain part. (evaluation, mental process)
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.
Claims 1-9, 14-17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wiktop (US 2016/0267153) in view of Bursik (US 2019/0057147).
As per claim 1, Wiktop discloses a method comprising:
obtaining one or more data sets descriptive of at least one application programming interface (Paragraph 35 “The API assessment component 160 may include computer program code to cause one or more CPUs associated with the API assessment component 160 to perform assessment functions associated with the various APIs discovered by the API discovery component 155 and stored in the R-AIR 140′. The API assessment component 160 may implement an information platform that automates the creation of a taxonomy used for de-duplication of like services, securitizing of data, and deprecating business capabilities. Deprecating business capabilities may include removing business capabilities that are no longer utilized (e.g., are outdated or have been replaced) or are duplicates of other business capabilities. When a business capability is removed, the system may let the users of those business capabilities know, by an automated announcement for example, that the business capabilities may no longer be supported and may be eventually retired. The taxonomy may act as a knowledge base for the API assessment component 160 to perform correlation and coordination useful to manage the APIs.”); and
wherein the steps are performed in accordance with a processing device comprising a processor operatively coupled to a memory and configured to execute program code (Paragraph 20).
Bursik discloses automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface (Paragraph 37 “Generally, the ingest service 202 is configured to receive data for use by the portal services 110, but in some examples the ingest service 202 can also perform data processing to parse, cleanse, and apply logic to the data as needed. One example of this comes in the form of nomenclature services, which can standardize language across different inputs based on the use of nomenclature within the data. For example, table names across different databases use different words, phrases, formats, or abbreviations to refer to the same kind of data. The ingest service 202 abbreviation service can derive a common name and use the common name rather than the default names in the data. This can allow for standardization of data as well as compliance with data governance standards.”)
wherein the name comprises a naming format applied across a plurality of application programming interfaces searchable by names (Paragraph 37 “The ingest service 202 abbreviation service can derive a common name and use the common name rather than the default names in the data. This can allow for standardization of data as well as compliance with data governance standards.”).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Wiktop to include the teachings of Bursik because it provides for improvements in data access within an organization by organizing large amounts of data assets scatter across difference data sources.
As per claim 2, Bursik discloses further comprising publishing the generated name to a portal for searching for the plurality of application programming interfaces (Paragraph 40-41).
As per claim 3, Bursik discloses wherein the at least one application programming interface is an additional application programming interface to be searchable in the portal based on the generated name (Paragraph 40).
As per claim 4, Bursik discloses wherein the at least one application programming interface is an existing application programming interface to be searchable in the portal based on the generated name (Paragraph 40).
As per claim 5, Wiktop further discloses wherein the one or more data sets are descriptive of multiple application programming interfaces such that names are automatically generated for the multiple application programming interfaces (Paragraph 47 “The network traffic may contain API signatures to enable the API discovery component 155 to find API directories which may then be searched to identify APIs. In this way, the API discovery component may discover APIs anywhere within the enterprise system 100 or the external systems 180.”).
As per claim 6, Wiktop further discloses wherein automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface further comprises extracting one or more named entities from the one or more data sets (Paragraph 47 “The network traffic may contain API signatures to enable the API discovery component 155 to find API directories which may then be searched to identify APIs. In this way, the API discovery component may discover APIs anywhere within the enterprise system 100 or the external systems 180.”).
As per claim 7, Wiktop further discloses wherein extracting one or more named entities from the one or more data sets further comprises utilizing a named entity recognition algorithm (Paragraph 42).
As per claim 8, Wiktop further discloses wherein automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface further comprises filtering the extracted one or more named entities to obtain a filtered set of one or more named entities (Paragraph 62).
As per claim 9, Wiktop further discloses wherein filtering the extracted one or more named entities to obtain a filtered set of one or more named entities further comprises applying one or more rules to remove one or more predefined terms from the extracted one or more named entities (Paragraph 62).
As per claim 14, Wiktop further discloses wherein automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface further comprises assembling the filtered set of one or more named entities and the intent result into the name for the at least one application programming interface (Paragraph 37).
As per claim 15, Wiktop further discloses wherein the naming format comprises one or more of a functionality part, a product part, and a functional domain part (Paragraph 36 “The API assessment component 160 may store both versions of identified “duplicate” APIs and then let the market decide which one should be deleted by performing analytics on the “duplicate APIs to see which is used more often or has differentiating features. The classification scheme may include a list of categories and APIs that have previously been grouped into the categories. The taxonomy may also include functions performed by the grouped APIs in each category.”).
As per claim 16, it is an apparatus claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 1 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 17, it is an apparatus claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 8 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
As per claim 19, it is an apparatus claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 14 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
Claims 10-13 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wiktop in view of Liu in further view of Liu (US 2019/0325081).
As per claim 10, Wiktop does not expressly discloses but Liu discloses wherein the extracting and filtering are implemented via one or more machine learning models (Paragraph 39 “The NLU module 220 may also comprise one or more programs that perform naive semantics or stochastic semantic analysis to the use of pragmatics to understand a user input. In particular embodiments, the parser may be based on a deep learning architecture comprising multiple long-short term memory (LSTM) networks. As an example and not by way of limitation, the parser may be based on a recurrent neural network grammar (RNNG) model, which is a type of recurrent and recursive LSTM algorithm.”).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the method of Wiktop to include the teachings of Liu because it allows the assistant system to interact with users based on the determined modalities that may be more suitable to the users' current situation or context.
As per claim 11, Wiktop does not expressly discloses but Liu discloses wherein automatically generating a name for the at least one application programming interface further comprises determining an intent result from the one or more data sets (Abstract).
As per claim 12, Wiktop does not expressly discloses but Liu discloses wherein determining an intent result from the one or more data sets further comprises utilizing a long short-term memory network (Paragraph 39).
As per claim 13, Wiktop does not expressly discloses but Liu discloses wherein the intent result determining is implemented via one or more machine learning models (Paragraph 39).
As per claim 18, it is an apparatus claim having similar limitations as cited in claim 11 and is thus rejected under the same rationale.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Muraoka (US 20190095525) discloses extracting an expression in a text for natural language processing. The computer system reads a text to generate a plurality of substrings in which each substring includes one or more units appearing in the text. The computer system obtains an image set for the each substring, using the one or more units as a query for an image search system; wherein the image set includes one or more images. The computer system calculates a deviation in the image set for the each substring. The computer system selects a respective one of the plurality of the substrings as an expression to be extracted, based on the deviation and a length of each substring.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TIMOTHY A MUDRICK whose telephone number is (571)270-3374. The examiner can normally be reached 9am-5pm Central Time.
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, Pierre Vital can be reached at (571)272-4215. 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.
/TIMOTHY A MUDRICK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2198 3/06/2026