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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on June 8, 2026, has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed June 8, 2026, with respect to claims 1 – 20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Priority
The instant application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application 17/095,358 and claims benefit under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) to U.S. provisional applications 63/387,638 and 63/479,723. However, claims 1 – 20 of the instant application are not supported by the specification and claims of U.S. application 17/095,358. Therefore, claims 1 – 20 of the instant application have the effective filing date of the earliest provisional application for any claims which are fully supported under the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112 by the provisional application (See MPEP § 2139.01).
Claim Objections
Claim 15 is objected to because of the following informalities:
In Claim 15, line 8, “an audio handler configure to process user voice input” should read “an audio handler configured to process user voice input”.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Regarding claim 20, the disclosure does not provide adequate support for the claim limitation "store data corresponding to the supplemental response in a data log for processing via a log analyzer associated with the multimodal server" because the specification does not disclose storing data corresponding to the supplemental response in a data log. The specification recites, in paragraph 0177, lines 1-7, “In the exemplary embodiment, one or more of the multimodal server 1515, the audio handler 1545, and the conversation orchestrator 1560 may generate application logs 1805 of their actions. For example, each action of the multimodal server 1515, the audio handler 1545, and/or the conversation orchestrator 1560 may be automatically stored in a log along with details about that action. Additionally or alternatively, if it is determined that needed data is missing to answer the user's query, the network 1500 may log that that data is missing and ask the user 1405 (shown in Figure 14) to provide the missing data.”, disclosing storing actions and details about the actions of the multimodal server, the audio handler, and the conversation orchestrator in a log, but not disclosing storing data corresponding to the supplemental response in a data log. The introduction of claim changes which involve narrowing the claims by introducing elements or limitations which are not supported by the as-filed disclosure is a violation of the written description requirement of 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, first paragraph (see MPEP § 2163.05, subsection II).
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, 10 – 11, 15 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Baldwin et al. (US Patent No. 10,755,699), hereinafter Baldwin, in view of D'Agostino et al. (US Patent No. 10,749,822), hereinafter D'Agostino, and Willshire et al. (US Patent No. 11,711,467), hereinafter Willshire.
Regarding claim 1, Baldwin discloses a multi-mode conversational computer system (Column 2, lines 25-27, "According to an aspect of the invention, an exemplary system architecture for implementing a cooperative conversational voice user interface is provided.") for implementing responses to multiple mode user interactions, the computer system comprising:
one or more processors and one or more memory devices in communication with the one or more processors (Column 22, lines 1-2, "one or more physical processors programmed with one or more computer program instructions");
a touch display screen having a graphical user interface configured to accept user touch input (Column 7, lines 41-45, "For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching."; Column 14, lines 19-23, "For example, the Session Input Accumulator may accumulate inputs including recognition text for each utterance, a recorded speech file for each utterance, a list-item selection history, a graphical user interface manipulation history, or other input data.");
an audio handler configured to process user voice input (Column 2, lines 37-41, "The utterance component of the input may be processed by a speech recognition engine (which may alternatively be referred to as an Automatic Speech Recognizer or ASR) to generate one or more preliminary interpretations of the utterance."; A speech recognition engine processing the utterance component of the input reads on an audio handler configured to process user voice input.);
and a voice bot configured to respond to the processed user voice input (Column 7, lines 41-45, "For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching."; Column 8, lines 2-5, "Conversational speech engine 115 may communicate with one or more databases 130 to generate an adaptive conversational response, which may be returned to the user as an output 140."),
wherein the one or more processors are configured to: receive, as part of a user interaction with the computer system, at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data with the computer system in proximate time of one another via the touch display screen and the audio handler (Column 7, line 33-49, "Referring to FIG. 1, an exemplary system architecture for implementing a cooperative conversational voice user interface is illustrated according to one aspect of the invention. The system may receive an input 105 from a user, where in one implementation, input 105 may be an utterance received by an input device (e.g., a microphone), where the utterance may include one or more requests. Input 105 may also be a multi-modal input, where at least part of the multi-modal input is an utterance. For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching. For instance, the touch-screen device may be a navigation device, and input 105 may include an utterance of “Give me directions to here,” where the user may be requesting directions to a desired destination on the display of the navigation device."; Receiving a multi-modal input including an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on receiving at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data with the computer system in proximate time of one another via the touch display screen and the audio handler, where an utterance that includes a request reads on an exchange of information via the audio handler and a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on an exchange of information via the touch display screen.);
and output response data corresponding to first and second responses to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data via a multimodal channel such that the first response is presented via the touch display screen and the second response is presented via a [selected] voice bot [of the plurality of voice bots] in proximate time of one another as part of the user interaction (Column 7, line 66 - Column 8, line 13, "Conversational speech engine 115 may include a conversational language processor 120 and/or a voice search engine 125, described in greater detail in FIG. 2 below. Conversational speech engine 115 may communicate with one or more databases 130 to generate an adaptive conversational response, which may be returned to the user as an output 140. In one implementation, output 140 may be a multi-modal output and/or an interaction with one or more applications 145 to complete the request. For example, output 140 may include a combination of an audible response and a display of a route on a navigation device. For example, the utterance may include a request to perform an action, and output 140 may include a conversational response reporting success or failure, as well as an execution of the action."; Generating an adaptive conversational response including a combination of an audible response and a display of a route on a navigation device, where the audible response is a conversational response, reads on outputting response data corresponding to first and second responses to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data via a multimodal channel such that the first response is presented via the touch display screen and the second response is presented via a voice bot in proximate time of one another as part of the user interaction, where a display of a route on a navigation device reads on the first response being presented via the touch display screen, and a conversational response reads on the second response presented via the voice bot.).
Baldwin does not specifically disclose:
a plurality of voice bots configured to respond to the processed user voice input; and the second response is presented via a selected voice bot of the plurality of voice bots.
D'Agostino teaches:
a plurality of voice bots configured to respond to the processed user voice input (Column 5, lines 7-15, "System 100 includes functionality and structure associated with receiving inputs from a client device 164 (associated with a user), analyzing the received input at the conversational analysis system 102 to identify a context of the input and based on the context of the input, determine a chat bot from the plurality of chat bots to route the received input. The determined chat bot can then provide a response on the request to the client device 164 in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system 102."; Determining a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot providing a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system reads on a plurality of voice bots configured to respond to the processed user voice input.);
and the second response is presented via a selected voice bot of the plurality of voice bots (Column 5, lines 7-15, "System 100 includes functionality and structure associated with receiving inputs from a client device 164 (associated with a user), analyzing the received input at the conversational analysis system 102 to identify a context of the input and based on the context of the input, determine a chat bot from the plurality of chat bots to route the received input. The determined chat bot can then provide a response on the request to the client device 164 in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system 102."; Determining a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot providing a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system reads on a response being presented via a selected voice bot of the plurality of voice bots.).
D'Agostino is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin to incorporate the teachings of D'Agostino to determine a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot provide a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system. Doing so would allow for determining an intention of a user request and routing the request to a chat bot that understands or has subject matter expertise in area of the intention of the request (D'Agostino; Column 4, lines 35-45).
Baldwin in view of D'Agostino does not specifically disclose: execute a load balancer to route a portion of the data corresponding to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data between the audio handler and the plurality of voice bots.
Willshire teaches:
execute a load balancer to route a portion of the data corresponding to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data between the audio handler and the plurality of voice bots (Column 9, lines 48-57, "Present in chatbot testing service 200 are a plurality of chatbot connectors 205 wherein each connector type is configured for a specific kind of chatbot technology. Chatbot connectors 205 allow chatbot testing service 200 to connect to live chatbots with chatbot testing agents 203 for testing and quality assurance. For example, voice connectors may be present which may comprise an automated speech recognition component for transmitting audio to and from various voice bots as well as a text-to-speech component for sending and receiving text from agents."; Column 11, lines 31-36, "Chatbot testing service 200 may further comprise a load balancer, a storage engine, and a scheduler engine. A load balancer may be present and configured to operate between the client browser and platform 100 that routes client requests to the available backend services and detects and reacts to unavailable instances."; A load balancer that routes client requests to the available backend services reads on executing a load balancer to route a portion of the data corresponding to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data between the audio handler and the plurality of voice bots.).
Willshire is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino to incorporate the teachings of Willshire to implement a load balancer that routes client requests to the available backend services. Doing so would allow for executing chatbot testing programs which activate, deactivate, and configure chatbot testing agents as needed (Willshire; Column 7, lines 7-21).
Regarding claim 10, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 1.
Baldwin further discloses:
wherein the one or more processors are further configured to receive user selectable input via a computer mouse or other input device in addition to the touch display screen (Column 7, line 33-49, "Referring to FIG. 1, an exemplary system architecture for implementing a cooperative conversational voice user interface is illustrated according to one aspect of the invention. The system may receive an input 105 from a user, where in one implementation, input 105 may be an utterance received by an input device (e.g., a microphone), where the utterance may include one or more requests. Input 105 may also be a multi-modal input, where at least part of the multi-modal input is an utterance. For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching. For instance, the touch-screen device may be a navigation device, and input 105 may include an utterance of “Give me directions to here,” where the user may be requesting directions to a desired destination on the display of the navigation device."; Receiving a multi-modal input including an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on receive user selectable input via a computer mouse or other input device in addition to the touch display screen, where the user selecting a portion of a display of the touch display screen reads on a user selected input via a touch display screen, and receiving an utterance from the user by a microphone reads on receiving user selectable input via an input device in addition to the touch display screen.).
Regarding claim 11, Baldwin discloses a computer-implemented method of facilitating a multi-mode conversation via a computer system (Column 2, lines 25-27, "According to an aspect of the invention, an exemplary system architecture for implementing a cooperative conversational voice user interface is provided.") comprising one or more processors and one or more memory devices in communication with the one or more processors (Column 22, lines 1-2, "one or more physical processors programmed with one or more computer program instructions"),
a touch display screen (Column 7, lines 41-45, "For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching."; Column 14, lines 19-23, "For example, the Session Input Accumulator may accumulate inputs including recognition text for each utterance, a recorded speech file for each utterance, a list-item selection history, a graphical user interface manipulation history, or other input data."),
an audio handler configured to process user voice input (Column 2, lines 37-41, "The utterance component of the input may be processed by a speech recognition engine (which may alternatively be referred to as an Automatic Speech Recognizer or ASR) to generate one or more preliminary interpretations of the utterance."; A speech recognition engine processing the utterance component of the input reads on an audio handler configured to process user voice input.),
and a voice bot configured to respond to the processed user voice input (Column 7, lines 41-45, "For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching."; Column 8, lines 2-5, "Conversational speech engine 115 may communicate with one or more databases 130 to generate an adaptive conversational response, which may be returned to the user as an output 140."),
the computer system configured for implementing responses to multiple mode user interactions (Column 7, lines 33-41, “Referring to FIG. 1, an exemplary system architecture for implementing a cooperative conversational voice user interface is illustrated according to one aspect of the invention. The system may receive an input 105 from a user, where in one implementation, input 105 may be an utterance received by an input device (e.g., a microphone), where the utterance may include one or more requests. Input 105 may also be a multi-modal input, where at least part of the multi-modal input is an utterance.”),
the computer-implemented method comprising: receiving, as part of a user interaction with the computer system, i) a user touch input via the touch display screen, the touch display screen having a graphical user interface configured to accept the user touch input and (ii) a user voice input via the audio handler, the audio handler being configured to accept the user voice input, wherein the user touch input and the user voice input are part of at least two or more separate but associated exchanges of information/data with the computer system as part of the user interaction and received in proximate time of one another via the touch display screen and the audio handler (Column 7, line 33-49, "Referring to FIG. 1, an exemplary system architecture for implementing a cooperative conversational voice user interface is illustrated according to one aspect of the invention. The system may receive an input 105 from a user, where in one implementation, input 105 may be an utterance received by an input device (e.g., a microphone), where the utterance may include one or more requests. Input 105 may also be a multi-modal input, where at least part of the multi-modal input is an utterance. For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching. For instance, the touch-screen device may be a navigation device, and input 105 may include an utterance of “Give me directions to here,” where the user may be requesting directions to a desired destination on the display of the navigation device."; Receiving a multi-modal input including an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on receiving at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data with the computer system in proximate time of one another via the touch display screen and the audio handler, where an utterance that includes a request reads on a user voice input via the audio handler and a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on a user touch input via the touch display screen.);
and outputting response data corresponding to first and second responses to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data via a multimodal channel such that the first response is presented via the touch display screen and the second response is presented via a [selected voice] bot [of the plurality of voice bots] in proximate time of one another as part of the user interaction (Column 7, line 66 - Column 8, line 13, "Conversational speech engine 115 may include a conversational language processor 120 and/or a voice search engine 125, described in greater detail in FIG. 2 below. Conversational speech engine 115 may communicate with one or more databases 130 to generate an adaptive conversational response, which may be returned to the user as an output 140. In one implementation, output 140 may be a multi-modal output and/or an interaction with one or more applications 145 to complete the request. For example, output 140 may include a combination of an audible response and a display of a route on a navigation device. For example, the utterance may include a request to perform an action, and output 140 may include a conversational response reporting success or failure, as well as an execution of the action."; Generating an adaptive conversational response including a combination of an audible response and a display of a route on a navigation device, where the audible response is a conversational response, reads on outputting response data corresponding to first and second responses to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data via a multimodal channel such that the first response is presented via the touch display screen and the second response is presented via a voice bot in proximate time of one another as part of the user interaction, where a display of a route on a navigation device reads on the first response being presented via the touch display screen, and a conversational response reads on the second response presented via the voice bot.).
Baldwin does not specifically disclose:
a plurality of voice bots configured to respond to the processed user voice input; and the second response is presented via a selected voice bot of the plurality of voice bots.
D'Agostino teaches:
a plurality of voice bots configured to respond to the processed user voice input (Column 5, lines 7-15, "System 100 includes functionality and structure associated with receiving inputs from a client device 164 (associated with a user), analyzing the received input at the conversational analysis system 102 to identify a context of the input and based on the context of the input, determine a chat bot from the plurality of chat bots to route the received input. The determined chat bot can then provide a response on the request to the client device 164 in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system 102."; Determining a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot providing a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system reads on a plurality of voice bots configured to respond to the processed user voice input.);
and the second response is presented via a selected voice bot of the plurality of voice bots (Column 5, lines 7-15, "System 100 includes functionality and structure associated with receiving inputs from a client device 164 (associated with a user), analyzing the received input at the conversational analysis system 102 to identify a context of the input and based on the context of the input, determine a chat bot from the plurality of chat bots to route the received input. The determined chat bot can then provide a response on the request to the client device 164 in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system 102."; Determining a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot providing a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system reads on a response being presented via a selected voice bot of the plurality of voice bots.).
D'Agostino is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin to incorporate the teachings of D'Agostino to determine a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot provide a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system. Doing so would allow for determining an intention of a user request and routing the request to a chat bot that understands or has subject matter expertise in area of the intention of the request (D'Agostino; Column 4, lines 35-45).
Baldwin in view of D'Agostino does not specifically disclose: executing a load balancer to route a portion of the data corresponding to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data between the audio handler and the plurality of voice bots.
Willshire teaches:
executing a load balancer to route a portion of the data corresponding to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data between the audio handler and the plurality of voice bots (Column 9, lines 48-57, "Present in chatbot testing service 200 are a plurality of chatbot connectors 205 wherein each connector type is configured for a specific kind of chatbot technology. Chatbot connectors 205 allow chatbot testing service 200 to connect to live chatbots with chatbot testing agents 203 for testing and quality assurance. For example, voice connectors may be present which may comprise an automated speech recognition component for transmitting audio to and from various voice bots as well as a text-to-speech component for sending and receiving text from agents."; Column 11, lines 31-36, "Chatbot testing service 200 may further comprise a load balancer, a storage engine, and a scheduler engine. A load balancer may be present and configured to operate between the client browser and platform 100 that routes client requests to the available backend services and detects and reacts to unavailable instances."; A load balancer that routes client requests to the available backend services reads on executing a load balancer to route a portion of the data corresponding to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data between the audio handler and the plurality of voice bots.).
Willshire is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino to incorporate the teachings of Willshire to implement a load balancer that routes client requests to the available backend services. Doing so would allow for executing chatbot testing programs which activate, deactivate, and configure chatbot testing agents as needed (Willshire; Column 7, lines 7-21).
Regarding claim 15, Baldwin discloses a multi-mode conversational computer system (Column 2, lines 25-27, "According to an aspect of the invention, an exemplary system architecture for implementing a cooperative conversational voice user interface is provided.") for implementing responses to multiple mode user interactions, the computer system comprising:
one or more processors and one or more memory devices in communication with the one or more processors (Column 22, lines 1-2, "one or more physical processors programmed with one or more computer program instructions");
a touch display screen having a graphical user interface configured to accept user touch input and a user selected or selectable input (Column 7, lines 41-45, "For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching."; Column 14, lines 19-23, "For example, the Session Input Accumulator may accumulate inputs including recognition text for each utterance, a recorded speech file for each utterance, a list-item selection history, a graphical user interface manipulation history, or other input data."; A request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on a user touch input and a user selected input, where the user is selecting a portion of a display.),
an audio handler configured to process user voice input (Column 2, lines 37-41, "The utterance component of the input may be processed by a speech recognition engine (which may alternatively be referred to as an Automatic Speech Recognizer or ASR) to generate one or more preliminary interpretations of the utterance."; A speech recognition engine processing the utterance component of the input reads on an audio handler configured to process user voice input.),
and a voice bot configured to respond to the processed user voice input (Column 7, lines 41-45, "For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching."; Column 8, lines 2-5, "Conversational speech engine 115 may communicate with one or more databases 130 to generate an adaptive conversational response, which may be returned to the user as an output 140."),
wherein the one or more processors are configured to: receive, as part of a user interaction with the computer system, at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data with the computer system in proximate time of one another via the touch display screen and the audio handler (Column 7, line 33-49, "Referring to FIG. 1, an exemplary system architecture for implementing a cooperative conversational voice user interface is illustrated according to one aspect of the invention. The system may receive an input 105 from a user, where in one implementation, input 105 may be an utterance received by an input device (e.g., a microphone), where the utterance may include one or more requests. Input 105 may also be a multi-modal input, where at least part of the multi-modal input is an utterance. For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching. For instance, the touch-screen device may be a navigation device, and input 105 may include an utterance of “Give me directions to here,” where the user may be requesting directions to a desired destination on the display of the navigation device."; Receiving a multi-modal input including an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on receiving at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data with the computer system in proximate time of one another via the touch display screen and the audio handler, where an utterance that includes a request reads on an exchange of information via the audio handler and a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on an exchange of information via the touch display screen.);
and output response data corresponding to first and second responses to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data via a multimodal channel such that the first response is presented via the touch display screen and the second response is presented via a [selected] voice bot [of the plurality of voice bots] in proximate time of one another as part of the user interaction (Column 7, line 66 - Column 8, line 13, "Conversational speech engine 115 may include a conversational language processor 120 and/or a voice search engine 125, described in greater detail in FIG. 2 below. Conversational speech engine 115 may communicate with one or more databases 130 to generate an adaptive conversational response, which may be returned to the user as an output 140. In one implementation, output 140 may be a multi-modal output and/or an interaction with one or more applications 145 to complete the request. For example, output 140 may include a combination of an audible response and a display of a route on a navigation device. For example, the utterance may include a request to perform an action, and output 140 may include a conversational response reporting success or failure, as well as an execution of the action."; Generating an adaptive conversational response including a combination of an audible response and a display of a route on a navigation device, where the audible response is a conversational response, reads on outputting response data corresponding to first and second responses to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data via a multimodal channel such that the first response is presented via the touch display screen and the second response is presented via a voice bot in proximate time of one another as part of the user interaction, where a display of a route on a navigation device reads on the first response being presented via the touch display screen, and a conversational response reads on the second response presented via the voice bot.).
Baldwin does not specifically disclose:
a plurality of voice bots configured to respond to the processed user voice input; and the second response is presented via a selected voice bot of the plurality of voice bots.
D'Agostino teaches:
a plurality of voice bots configured to respond to the processed user voice input (Column 5, lines 7-15, "System 100 includes functionality and structure associated with receiving inputs from a client device 164 (associated with a user), analyzing the received input at the conversational analysis system 102 to identify a context of the input and based on the context of the input, determine a chat bot from the plurality of chat bots to route the received input. The determined chat bot can then provide a response on the request to the client device 164 in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system 102."; Determining a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot providing a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system reads on a plurality of voice bots configured to respond to the processed user voice input.);
and the second response is presented via a selected voice bot of the plurality of voice bots (Column 5, lines 7-15, "System 100 includes functionality and structure associated with receiving inputs from a client device 164 (associated with a user), analyzing the received input at the conversational analysis system 102 to identify a context of the input and based on the context of the input, determine a chat bot from the plurality of chat bots to route the received input. The determined chat bot can then provide a response on the request to the client device 164 in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system 102."; Determining a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot providing a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system reads on a response being presented via a selected voice bot of the plurality of voice bots.).
D'Agostino is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin to incorporate the teachings of D'Agostino to determine a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot provide a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system. Doing so would allow for determining an intention of a user request and routing the request to a chat bot that understands or has subject matter expertise in area of the intention of the request (D'Agostino; Column 4, lines 35-45).
Baldwin in view of D'Agostino does not specifically disclose: execute a load balancer to route a portion of the data corresponding to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data between the audio handler and the plurality of voice bots.
Willshire teaches:
execute a load balancer to route a portion of the data corresponding to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data between the audio handler and the plurality of voice bots (Column 9, lines 48-57, "Present in chatbot testing service 200 are a plurality of chatbot connectors 205 wherein each connector type is configured for a specific kind of chatbot technology. Chatbot connectors 205 allow chatbot testing service 200 to connect to live chatbots with chatbot testing agents 203 for testing and quality assurance. For example, voice connectors may be present which may comprise an automated speech recognition component for transmitting audio to and from various voice bots as well as a text-to-speech component for sending and receiving text from agents."; Column 11, lines 31-36, "Chatbot testing service 200 may further comprise a load balancer, a storage engine, and a scheduler engine. A load balancer may be present and configured to operate between the client browser and platform 100 that routes client requests to the available backend services and detects and reacts to unavailable instances."; A load balancer that routes client requests to the available backend services reads on executing a load balancer to route a portion of the data corresponding to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data between the audio handler and the plurality of voice bots.).
Willshire is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino to incorporate the teachings of Willshire to implement a load balancer that routes client requests to the available backend services. Doing so would allow for executing chatbot testing programs which activate, deactivate, and configure chatbot testing agents as needed (Willshire; Column 7, lines 7-21).
Regarding claim 19, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 15.
Baldwin further discloses:
wherein the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data include a user touch input on the touch display screen via a user associated with the user interaction touching the touch display screen, a user selected or selectable input via the user via a computer mouse or other input device, and a user voice input via the user via the audio handler (Column 7, line 33-49, "Referring to FIG. 1, an exemplary system architecture for implementing a cooperative conversational voice user interface is illustrated according to one aspect of the invention. The system may receive an input 105 from a user, where in one implementation, input 105 may be an utterance received by an input device (e.g., a microphone), where the utterance may include one or more requests. Input 105 may also be a multi-modal input, where at least part of the multi-modal input is an utterance. For example, the input device may include a combination of a microphone and a touch-screen device, and input 105 may include an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching. For instance, the touch-screen device may be a navigation device, and input 105 may include an utterance of “Give me directions to here,” where the user may be requesting directions to a desired destination on the display of the navigation device."; Receiving a multi-modal input including an utterance that includes a request relating to a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on receiving at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data including a user touch input on the touch display screen via a user associated with the user interaction touching the touch display screen, a user selected or selectable input via the user via a mouse or other input device, and a user voice input via the user via the audio handler, where an utterance that includes a request reads on a user voice input via the audio handler, a portion of a display on the touch-screen device that the user is touching reads on a user touch input on the touch display screen via a user associated with the user interaction touching the touch display screen, and the user selecting a portion of a display of the touch display screen reads on a user selected input via an input device.).
Claims 2, 4 – 7, 13 – 14 and 16 – 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Evans et al. (US Patent No. 11,158,004), hereinafter Evans.
Regarding claim 2, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 1.
D'Agostino further teaches:
further comprising a conversation orchestrator (Column 4, lines 10-17, "The present disclosure describes various tools and techniques associated with a conversation management chat bot system that support the tracking and management of a conversation between a user and various chat bots. The conversation management chat bot system supports the management of multi-channels for multi-interaction customer conversations across various subject matters corresponding to various chat bots."; A conversation management chat bot system that support the tracking and management of a conversation between a user and various chat bots reads on a conversation orchestrator.),
and the one or more processors are configured to: cause the conversation orchestrator to: parse intent data associated with the second response (Column 6, lines 6-19, "The conversational analysis system 102 can perform functionality associated with one or more backend conversational interfaces 108, can perform operations associated with receiving input from a client device 164 (e.g., via conversational interface 170) associated with the backend conversational interface 108, and can analyze the received input to determine a context or an intent of the input (e.g., a particular question, a query, a comment, or other communication to which a response may be generated for the conversational interface 170). Using the determined context or the determined intent of the input, the conversational analysis system 102 can determine a particular chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route the received input to for requesting a response."; Analyzing the received input to determine a context or an intent of the input reads on parsing intent data associated with a response.);
and select the selected voice bot based upon an intent determined from the parsed intent data (Column 6, lines 6-19, "The conversational analysis system 102 can perform functionality associated with one or more backend conversational interfaces 108, can perform operations associated with receiving input from a client device 164 (e.g., via conversational interface 170) associated with the backend conversational interface 108, and can analyze the received input to determine a context or an intent of the input (e.g., a particular question, a query, a comment, or other communication to which a response may be generated for the conversational interface 170). Using the determined context or the determined intent of the input, the conversational analysis system 102 can determine a particular chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route the received input to for requesting a response."; Using the determined context or the determined intent of the input to determine a particular chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route the received input to for requesting a response reads on selecting the selected voice bot based upon an intent determined from the parsed intent data.).
D'Agostino is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to further incorporate the teachings of D'Agostino to analyze the received input to determine a context or an intent of the input and use the determined context or the determined intent of the input to determine a particular chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route the received input to for requesting a response. Doing so would allow for determining an intention of a user request and routing the request to a chat bot that understands or has subject matter expertise in area of the intention of the request (D'Agostino; Column 4, lines 35-45).
Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with insurance.
Evans teaches:
wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with insurance (Column 3, lines 14-19, "The presently disclosed example embodiments are generally directed to systems and techniques for utilizing natural language understanding, object recognition in digital images, human behavior profiling, and so on, to facilitate property maintenance, event handling (e.g., for fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.), and/or insurance responses."; Column 3, lines 45-52, "As described in more detail below, in many examples, a virtual assistant (also referred to as a virtual agent or intelligent personal assistant) may be output to a user to facilitate various functions. The virtual assistant may be output in any suitable format, such as a virtual assistant on a web site with a text interface (e.g., a chatbot), a virtual assistant application on a mobile device, or a speech interface, for example."; Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; A virtual assistant to facilitate insurance responses, where the virtual assistant is a chatbot and where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs, reads on the user touch input and the user voice input being associated with insurance.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a virtual assistant to facilitate insurance responses, where the virtual assistant is a chatbot and where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Regarding claim 4, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 1, but does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same insurance claim or insurance quote.
Evans teaches:
wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same insurance claim or insurance quote (Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; Column 5, lines 58-65, "The user interface component 114 may output a variety of user interfaces to enable user interaction with the client device 108 and/or the service provider system 102. For example, the user interface component 114 may enable the user 106 to communicate with other users and/or the service provider system 102 using a chat interface 116, where the user may input text, voice, digital images and/or video, and so forth."; Column 9, lines 23-31, "Furthermore, the service provider system 102 may include a claim builder system 136. The claim builder system 136 may assist the user 106 through the process of documenting loss to property (utilizing the user interface component 114 and/or the natural language I/O component 120 and via the network 110), and/or provide the user 106 with a claim estimate to remedy the loss. As such, the claim builder system 136 may facilitate processing to generate a claim."; Column 44, lines 14-23, " FIG. 16 illustrates an example system 1600 including details of the claim builder system 136 of FIG. 1 in accordance with various embodiments. A validation component 1602 of the claim builder system 136 may receive one or more user inputs 1604 relating to a claim submission by a user. The user inputs 1604 may indicate an identity of a user, a policy associated with the user, a location or item of property of the user associated with the loss submission, an event that occurred that caused the asserted loss, and so forth."; Column 47, lines 3-5, "FIG. 17 illustrates an example system 1700 including a user interface 1702 provided by the claim builder system 136 of FIG. 1 in accordance with various embodiments."; Column 47, lines 61-63, "The user 1706 may initiate a selection 1716 of one of the options displayed in the framing menu 1714, such as via a touch input on the client device 1704."; A service provider system including a claim builder system that assists a user through the process of documenting loss to property and providing the user with a claim estimate to remedy the loss, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs, reads on the user touch input and the user voice input being associated with the same insurance claim.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a service provider system including a claim builder system that assists a user through the process of documenting loss to property and providing the user with a claim estimate to remedy the loss, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
D'Agostino further teaches:
further comprising a conversation orchestrator (Column 4, lines 10-17, "The present disclosure describes various tools and techniques associated with a conversation management chat bot system that support the tracking and management of a conversation between a user and various chat bots. The conversation management chat bot system supports the management of multi-channels for multi-interaction customer conversations across various subject matters corresponding to various chat bots."; A conversation management chat bot system that support the tracking and management of a conversation between a user and various chat bots reads on a conversation orchestrator.);
and the one or more processors are configured to: cause the conversation orchestrator to: select the selected voice bot based upon a data category associated with the same insurance claim or insurance quote (Column 4, lines 36-55, "The conversation management chat bot system can determine from a context of the request from a first user an intention of the request. Based on the intention of the request, the conversation management chat bot system can route the request to a first chat bot that understands or has subject matter expertise in area of the intention of the request. The first chat bot, in tandem with the conversation management chat bot system, can formulate a response to the user's request based on the intention of the request. Additionally, the user can provide a subsequent request that references the first request indirectly or that discusses a new topic entirely. The conversation management chat bot system can gracefully follow the flow of the user's conversation (i.e., from the first request to one or more subsequent requests) and shift the responses as well by (1) recognizing the intent of each request from the user and (2) directing each user's request to a particular corresponding chat bot that understands the subject matter of the request. Each chat bot in the plurality of chat bots can have a different subject matter expertise."; Column 8, lines 44-67, "In some instances, the chat bot decisions engine 118 can determine a particular chat bot from the chat bot library 142, which includes a plurality of chat bots, to route the received input to a particular chat bot for receiving a response. Each chat bot in the chat bot library 142 is stored in or associated with a chat bot instance 144. For example, the chat bot library 142 can have chat bot instance 144-1 through chat bot instance 144-N. Each chat bot may be used by the conversational analysis system 102 for a particular subject, product, or type of request. For example, chat bot instance 144-1 is used for answering requests regarding the user profile, chat bot instance 144-2 is used for answering requests regarding financial information, chat bot instance 144-3 is used for answering requests regarding authentication data of the user, and chat bot instance 144-4 is used or answering requests regarding stock information. Other particular subjects are available for a chat bot instance that include, but are not limited to, social media management, emailing, and mortgage requests. In some instances, different chat bot instances 144 may be associated with different departments of a retailer, while in other instances, different chat bot instances 144 may be associated with different product lines, such as personal banking, investments, account management, and others."; The conversation management chat bot system routing a request to a first chat bot that understands or has subject matter expertise in the area of the intention of the request reads on selecting a voice bot, and each chat bot in the chat bot library being associated with a chat bot instance that is used by the conversational analysis system for particular subject, product, or type of request, where the subject can include user profiles, financial information, authentication data, and stock information, reads on selecting the selected voice bot based upon a data category associated with the same insurance claim or insurance quote.
D'Agostino is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino, Willshire, and Evans to further incorporate the teachings of D'Agostino to route a request to a first chat bot that understands or has subject matter expertise in the area of the intention of the request, where each chat bot in the chat bot library is associated with a chat bot instance that is used by the conversational analysis system for particular subject, product, or type of request, and where the subject can include user profiles, financial information, authentication data, and stock information, with the insurance claim as taught by Evans substituted for the particular type of request as taught be D'Agostino. Doing so would allow for determining an intention of a user request and routing the request to a chat bot that understands or has subject matter expertise in area of the intention of the request (D'Agostino; Column 4, lines 35-45).
Regarding claim 5, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 1, but does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same insurance policy.
Evans teaches:
wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same insurance policy (Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; Column 12, line 61 - Column 13, line 8, "The service provider system 102 may also include a policy sales and underwriting system 146. The policy sales and underwriting system 146 may gather information from the various systems 130-136 to generate an insurance policy and/or policies for the user 106 based on the information. For instance, the policy sales and underwriting system 146 may use information from the concierge system 130 on how often the user performs scheduled maintenance on different types of property, information from the storm helper system 132 on how the user reacts to being notified of events, information from the FNOL system 134 on how quickly the user reports a loss and detected fraud with reported losses, and/or information from the claim builder system 136 on types of claims and selections made by the user to repair property when a claim is submitted, to name a few examples."; A service provider system including a policy sales and underwriting system that gathers information from various systems to generate an insurance policy and policies for the user based on the information, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs, reads on the user touch input and the user voice input bring associated with the same insurance policy.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a service provider system including a policy sales and underwriting system that gathers information from various systems to generate an insurance policy and policies for the user based on the information, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Regarding claim 6, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 1, but does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with processing an insurance claim.
Evans teaches:
wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with processing an insurance claim (Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; Column 5, lines 58-65, "The user interface component 114 may output a variety of user interfaces to enable user interaction with the client device 108 and/or the service provider system 102. For example, the user interface component 114 may enable the user 106 to communicate with other users and/or the service provider system 102 using a chat interface 116, where the user may input text, voice, digital images and/or video, and so forth."; Column 9, lines 23-31, "Furthermore, the service provider system 102 may include a claim builder system 136. The claim builder system 136 may assist the user 106 through the process of documenting loss to property (utilizing the user interface component 114 and/or the natural language I/O component 120 and via the network 110), and/or provide the user 106 with a claim estimate to remedy the loss. As such, the claim builder system 136 may facilitate processing to generate a claim."; Column 44, lines 14-23, " FIG. 16 illustrates an example system 1600 including details of the claim builder system 136 of FIG. 1 in accordance with various embodiments. A validation component 1602 of the claim builder system 136 may receive one or more user inputs 1604 relating to a claim submission by a user. The user inputs 1604 may indicate an identity of a user, a policy associated with the user, a location or item of property of the user associated with the loss submission, an event that occurred that caused the asserted loss, and so forth."; Column 47, lines 3-5, "FIG. 17 illustrates an example system 1700 including a user interface 1702 provided by the claim builder system 136 of FIG. 1 in accordance with various embodiments."; Column 47, lines 61-63, "The user 1706 may initiate a selection 1716 of one of the options displayed in the framing menu 1714, such as via a touch input on the client device 1704."; A service provider system including a claim builder system that assists a user through the process of documenting loss to property and providing the user with a claim estimate to remedy the loss, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs, reads on the user touch input and the user voice input being associated with processing an insurance claim.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a service provider system including a claim builder system that assists a user through the process of documenting loss to property and providing the user with a claim estimate to remedy the loss, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
D'Agostino further teaches:
processing an insurance claim via one or more of the plurality of chatbots (Column 5, lines 7-15, "System 100 includes functionality and structure associated with receiving inputs from a client device 164 (associated with a user), analyzing the received input at the conversational analysis system 102 to identify a context of the input and based on the context of the input, determine a chat bot from the plurality of chat bots to route the received input. The determined chat bot can then provide a response on the request to the client device 164 in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system 102."; Determining a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot providing a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system reads on processing an insurance claim via one or more of the plurality of chatbots.).
D'Agostino is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin to incorporate the teachings of D'Agostino to determine a chat bot from a plurality of chat bots to route a received input and the determined chat bot provide a response to the request to the client device in response to providing the input to the conversational analysis system, with processing an insurance claim as taught by Evans substituted for the input to the conversational analysis system as taught be D'Agostino. Doing so would allow for determining an intention of a user request and routing the request to a chat bot that understands or has subject matter expertise in area of the intention of the request (D'Agostino; Column 4, lines 35-45).
Regarding claim 7, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 1, but does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with generating or filling out an insurance claim.
Evans teaches:
wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with generating or filling out an insurance claim (Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; Column 5, lines 58-65, "The user interface component 114 may output a variety of user interfaces to enable user interaction with the client device 108 and/or the service provider system 102. For example, the user interface component 114 may enable the user 106 to communicate with other users and/or the service provider system 102 using a chat interface 116, where the user may input text, voice, digital images and/or video, and so forth."; Column 9, lines 23-31, "Furthermore, the service provider system 102 may include a claim builder system 136. The claim builder system 136 may assist the user 106 through the process of documenting loss to property (utilizing the user interface component 114 and/or the natural language I/O component 120 and via the network 110), and/or provide the user 106 with a claim estimate to remedy the loss. As such, the claim builder system 136 may facilitate processing to generate a claim."; Column 44, lines 14-23, " FIG. 16 illustrates an example system 1600 including details of the claim builder system 136 of FIG. 1 in accordance with various embodiments. A validation component 1602 of the claim builder system 136 may receive one or more user inputs 1604 relating to a claim submission by a user. The user inputs 1604 may indicate an identity of a user, a policy associated with the user, a location or item of property of the user associated with the loss submission, an event that occurred that caused the asserted loss, and so forth."; Column 47, lines 3-5, "FIG. 17 illustrates an example system 1700 including a user interface 1702 provided by the claim builder system 136 of FIG. 1 in accordance with various embodiments."; Column 47, lines 61-63, "The user 1706 may initiate a selection 1716 of one of the options displayed in the framing menu 1714, such as via a touch input on the client device 1704."; A service provider system including a claim builder system that assists a user through the process of documenting loss to property and providing the user with a claim estimate to remedy the loss, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs, reads on the user touch input and the user voice input being associated with filling out an insurance claim.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a service provider system including a claim builder system that assists a user through the process of documenting loss to property and providing the user with a claim estimate to remedy the loss, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Regarding claim 13, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer-implemented method as claimed in claim 11, but does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with insurance.
Evans teaches:
wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with insurance (Column 3, lines 14-19, "The presently disclosed example embodiments are generally directed to systems and techniques for utilizing natural language understanding, object recognition in digital images, human behavior profiling, and so on, to facilitate property maintenance, event handling (e.g., for fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.), and/or insurance responses."; Column 3, lines 45-52, "As described in more detail below, in many examples, a virtual assistant (also referred to as a virtual agent or intelligent personal assistant) may be output to a user to facilitate various functions. The virtual assistant may be output in any suitable format, such as a virtual assistant on a web site with a text interface (e.g., a chatbot), a virtual assistant application on a mobile device, or a speech interface, for example."; Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; A virtual assistant to facilitate insurance responses, where the virtual assistant is a chatbot and where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs, reads on the user touch input and the user voice input being associated with insurance.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a virtual assistant to facilitate insurance responses, where the virtual assistant is a chatbot and where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Regarding claim 14, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer-implemented method as claimed in claim 11, but does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same subject, matter, or topic (such as completing a grocery delivery, or ordering other goods or services).
Evans teaches:
wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same subject, matter, or topic (such as completing a grocery delivery, or ordering other goods or services) (Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; Column 6, lines 39-54, "The illustrated environment 100 further includes a number of systems to support the service provider system 102, including but not limited to an event information system 122, an insurance management system 124, materials and labor services 126, and auxiliary loss information services 128. The systems 122-128 may be implemented as, and/or in conjunction with, a single computing device or a plurality of different devices, such as multiple servers utilized by a business to perform operations over the cloud as further described in FIG. 19. The service provider system 102 may call on one or multiple of the systems 122-128 to perform a service and/or provide information to the user 106 via the client device 108, such as part of a natural language conversation with the user or as part of a notification provided to the user, to name a few examples and as discussed in greater detail below."; A service provider system utilized by a business to perform operations over the cloud, where the service provider system calls on a system to perform a service for the user and where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs, reads on the user touch input and the user voice input being associated with a topic including ordering services.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a service provider system utilized by a business to perform operations over the cloud, where the service provider system calls on a system to perform a service for the user and where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Regarding claim 16, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 15, but does not specifically disclose: wherein the user touch input, the user selected or selectable input, and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with insurance.
Evans teaches:
wherein the user touch input, the user selected or selectable input, and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with insurance (Column 3, lines 14-19, "The presently disclosed example embodiments are generally directed to systems and techniques for utilizing natural language understanding, object recognition in digital images, human behavior profiling, and so on, to facilitate property maintenance, event handling (e.g., for fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.), and/or insurance responses."; Column 3, lines 45-52, "As described in more detail below, in many examples, a virtual assistant (also referred to as a virtual agent or intelligent personal assistant) may be output to a user to facilitate various functions. The virtual assistant may be output in any suitable format, such as a virtual assistant on a web site with a text interface (e.g., a chatbot), a virtual assistant application on a mobile device, or a speech interface, for example."; Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; A virtual assistant to facilitate insurance responses, where the virtual assistant is a chatbot and where the user interaction can be voice inputs, touch inputs, and selections, reads on the user touch input, the user voice input, and the user selectable input being associated with insurance.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a virtual assistant to facilitate insurance responses, where the virtual assistant is a chatbot and where the user interaction can be voice inputs, touch inputs, and selections. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Regarding claim 17, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 15, but does not specifically disclose: wherein the user touch input, the user selected or selectable input, and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same subject, matter, or topic.
Evans teaches:
wherein the user touch input, the user selected or selectable input, and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same subject, matter, or topic (Column 3, lines 14-19, "The presently disclosed example embodiments are generally directed to systems and techniques for utilizing natural language understanding, object recognition in digital images, human behavior profiling, and so on, to facilitate property maintenance, event handling (e.g., for fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.), and/or insurance responses."; Column 3, lines 45-52, "As described in more detail below, in many examples, a virtual assistant (also referred to as a virtual agent or intelligent personal assistant) may be output to a user to facilitate various functions. The virtual assistant may be output in any suitable format, such as a virtual assistant on a web site with a text interface (e.g., a chatbot), a virtual assistant application on a mobile device, or a speech interface, for example."; Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; A virtual assistant to facilitate insurance responses, where the virtual assistant is a chatbot and where the user interaction can be voice inputs, touch inputs, and selections, reads on the user touch input, the user voice input, and the user selectable input being associated with the same subject, matter, or topic.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a virtual assistant to facilitate insurance responses, where the virtual assistant is a chatbot and where the user interaction can be voice inputs, touch inputs, and selections. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Regarding claim 18, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino, Willshire, and Evans discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 17.
Evans further teaches:
wherein the subject, matter, or topic includes one of completing a grocery delivery or ordering or purchasing other goods or services (Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; Column 6, lines 39-54, "The illustrated environment 100 further includes a number of systems to support the service provider system 102, including but not limited to an event information system 122, an insurance management system 124, materials and labor services 126, and auxiliary loss information services 128. The systems 122-128 may be implemented as, and/or in conjunction with, a single computing device or a plurality of different devices, such as multiple servers utilized by a business to perform operations over the cloud as further described in FIG. 19. The service provider system 102 may call on one or multiple of the systems 122-128 to perform a service and/or provide information to the user 106 via the client device 108, such as part of a natural language conversation with the user or as part of a notification provided to the user, to name a few examples and as discussed in greater detail below."; A service provider system utilized by a business to perform operations over the cloud, where the service provider system calls on a system to perform a service for the user reads on the subject, matter, or topic including ordering other services.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino, Willshire, and Evans to further incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a service provider system utilized by a business to perform operations over the cloud, where the service provider system calls on a system to perform a service for the user. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Evans and Kirazci et al. (US Patent No. 10,984,786), hereinafter Kirazci.
Regarding claim 3, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 1, but does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same subject, matter, or topic including completing a grocery delivery or ordering other goods or services.
Evans teaches:
wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with the same subject, matter, or topic including completing a grocery delivery or ordering other goods or services (Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; Column 6, lines 39-54, "The illustrated environment 100 further includes a number of systems to support the service provider system 102, including but not limited to an event information system 122, an insurance management system 124, materials and labor services 126, and auxiliary loss information services 128. The systems 122-128 may be implemented as, and/or in conjunction with, a single computing device or a plurality of different devices, such as multiple servers utilized by a business to perform operations over the cloud as further described in FIG. 19. The service provider system 102 may call on one or multiple of the systems 122-128 to perform a service and/or provide information to the user 106 via the client device 108, such as part of a natural language conversation with the user or as part of a notification provided to the user, to name a few examples and as discussed in greater detail below."; A service provider system utilized by a business to perform operations over the cloud, where the service provider system calls on a system to perform a service for the user and where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs, reads on the user touch input and the user voice input being associated with a topic including ordering services.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a service provider system utilized by a business to perform operations over the cloud, where the service provider system calls on a system to perform a service for the user and where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Evans, does not specifically disclose: and the one or more processors are configured to: cause the first response to be updated based on an additional user input received subsequent to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data.
Kirazci teaches:
cause the first response to be updated based on an additional user input received subsequent to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data (Column 1, lines 64-66, "Accordingly, techniques and a framework are described herein for multi-modal interaction between users, automated assistants, and other computing services."; Column 6, lines 8-12, "The display context is maintained for the third party computing service in association with the human-to-computer dialog session and is updated based at least in part on one or both of the intent of the user and the resolution information."; Column 18, lines 25-49, "Alternatively, if second client device 306B included a touchscreen and user 301 knew the correct wiring configuration from the candidate answer choices A-C, user 301 could have tapped on his selected answer. In some implementations, the selected answer may be visually emphasized at least temporarily. At any rate, the utterance by user 301 may be recorded and processed using various components described above in association with client portion 108 and server portion 119 of automated assistant 120, and data indicative of the answer provided by user 301 eventually is provided to the third party computing service. Meanwhile, the third party computing service may, based on the updated state of its visual dialog state machine, provide visual dialog state data (e.g., as part of the mixed payload described with reference to FIG. 2) to server portion 119 of automated assistant 120, which may in turn provide the visual dialog state data to client portion 108 of automated assistant 120. Client portion 108 of automated assistant 120 updates, in response to receiving the visual dialog state data, the GUI rendered on second client device 306B to provide a visual indication that the eliminated answer A) was incorrect (e.g., using strikethrough or other similar visual annotations). However, the user 301 has only eliminated candidate answer choice A and not selected either candidate answer choices B-C."; Figure 3:
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The display context being updated based on the intent of the user reads on causing the first response to be updated based on an additional user input received subsequent to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data. In the example from Figure 3, display 306B reads on the first response and providing a visual indication of the eliminated answer after the user provides a response reads on the first response being updated based on an additional user input.).
Kirazci is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino, Willshire, and Evans to incorporate the teachings of Kirazci to update display context based on the intent of the user. Doing so would allow for providing a multiple-choice turn-based dialog where the user can advance both visual and verbal dialog state machines to different respective states by either selecting one of the answer choices on the screen or by providing a vocal utterance that indicates a particular answer choice (Kirazci; Column 3, lines 30-47).
Claims 8 – 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Evans and Regmi et al. (US Patent No. 11,989,780), hereinafter Regmi.
Regarding claim 8, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 1, but does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with parametric insurance and/or parametric insurance claim.
Evans teaches:
wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with [parametric] insurance and/or [parametric] insurance claim (Column 5, lines 40-46, "The client device 108 is configured to engage in user interaction with a communication component 112 of the client device. The user interaction may take a variety of forms, such as mouse inputs (e.g., click, hover, scroll), keyboard inputs (e.g., type, navigate, volume control), voice inputs (e.g., instructions, selections, inquiries), touch inputs (e.g., through a touch screen), and so forth."; Column 5, lines 58-65, "The user interface component 114 may output a variety of user interfaces to enable user interaction with the client device 108 and/or the service provider system 102. For example, the user interface component 114 may enable the user 106 to communicate with other users and/or the service provider system 102 using a chat interface 116, where the user may input text, voice, digital images and/or video, and so forth."; Column 9, lines 23-31, "Furthermore, the service provider system 102 may include a claim builder system 136. The claim builder system 136 may assist the user 106 through the process of documenting loss to property (utilizing the user interface component 114 and/or the natural language I/O component 120 and via the network 110), and/or provide the user 106 with a claim estimate to remedy the loss. As such, the claim builder system 136 may facilitate processing to generate a claim."; Column 44, lines 14-23, " FIG. 16 illustrates an example system 1600 including details of the claim builder system 136 of FIG. 1 in accordance with various embodiments. A validation component 1602 of the claim builder system 136 may receive one or more user inputs 1604 relating to a claim submission by a user. The user inputs 1604 may indicate an identity of a user, a policy associated with the user, a location or item of property of the user associated with the loss submission, an event that occurred that caused the asserted loss, and so forth."; Column 47, lines 3-5, "FIG. 17 illustrates an example system 1700 including a user interface 1702 provided by the claim builder system 136 of FIG. 1 in accordance with various embodiments."; Column 47, lines 61-63, "The user 1706 may initiate a selection 1716 of one of the options displayed in the framing menu 1714, such as via a touch input on the client device 1704."; A service provider system including a claim builder system that assists a user through the process of documenting loss to property and providing the user with a claim estimate to remedy the loss, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs, reads on the user touch input and the user voice input being associated with insurance.).
Evans is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans to implement a service provider system including a claim builder system that assists a user through the process of documenting loss to property and providing the user with a claim estimate to remedy the loss, where the user interaction can be voice inputs or touch inputs. Doing so would allow for a user to interact with an automated system to manage and maintain their property, prepare for or react to an event, efficiently provide an insurer with a notice of loss, receive an insurance claim estimate, and perform a variety of other functions without having to interact with a human insurance agent (Evans; Column 3, lines 14-47).
Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Evans, does not specifically disclose: wherein both the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with parametric insurance and/or parametric insurance claim.
Regmi teaches:
handling parametric insurance claims (Abstract, lines 1-4, "The subject of the invention is an insurance claim and/or financial transaction processing system for parametric risk related claims and/or performance warranty related transactions"; Column 15, lines 13-19, "Parametric insurance. Parametric insurance are payouts that are triggered based on parameters. There could be one, two and/or three or more parameters that could result in a trigger in a single or multiple payout. Parametric insurance therefore is a type of insurance that rather than indemnifying pure loss, ex ante (through forecasts) makes a payment upon a triggered occurrence of an event.").
Evans teaches the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with insurance and/or insurance claim, but differs from the claimed invention because Evans does not teach an insurance claim being a parametric insurance claim. However, a system to handle a parametric insurance claim is taught by Regmi. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans and Regmi to implement a system where the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with parametric insurance and/or parametric insurance claim, where the parametric insurance claims of Regmi are substituted for the insurance claims of Evans to obtain predictable results.
Regarding claim 9, Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Evans and Regmi, discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 8.
Regmi further teaches:
wherein parametric insurance is related to and/or associated with collecting and analyzing data, monitoring the data, and when a threshold or trigger event is detected from analysis of the data, generating an automatic or other payout under or pursuant to an insurance claim (Column 15, lines 13-26, "Parametric insurance. Parametric insurance are payouts that are triggered based on parameters. There could be one, two and/or three or more parameters that could result in a trigger in a single or multiple payout. Parametric insurance therefore is a type of insurance that rather than indemnifying pure loss, ex ante (through forecasts) makes a payment upon a triggered occurrence of an event. The trigger is usually a catastrophic natural event that can result in a loss or a series of losses. Sometimes the loss is much greater and other times the loss is much less than the payout. Instead of basing payments on damage suffered, parametric insurance contracts establish the payout as a function of the occurrence or intensity of event, as determined by a specialized agency such as the U.S. National Hurricane Center.").
Evans teaches the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with insurance and/or insurance claim, but differs from the claimed invention because Evans does not teach an insurance claim being a parametric insurance claim. However, a system to handle a parametric insurance claim is taught by Regmi. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Evans and Regmi to implement a system where the user touch input and the user voice input relate to and/or are associated with parametric insurance and/or parametric insurance claim, where the parametric insurance claims of Regmi are substituted for the insurance claims of Evans to obtain predictable results, where parametric insurance is related to and/or associated with collecting and analyzing data, monitoring the data, and when a threshold or trigger event is detected from analysis of the data, generating an automatic or other payout under or pursuant to an insurance claim, as taught by Regmi.
Regmi is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of insurance handling systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Evans and Regmi, to further incorporate the teachings of Regmi to handle parametric insurance claims, where parametric insurance makes a payment upon a triggered occurrence of an event. Doing so would allow for insurance claims where the payout is a function of the occurrence or intensity of an event as determined by a specialized agency, instead of being based on damage suffered (Regmi; Column 15, lines 13-26).
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Kim et al. (US Patent No. 11,677,690), hereinafter Kim.
Regarding claim 12, Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer-implemented method as claimed in claim 11, but does not specifically disclose further comprising: receiving user selected input via a computer mouse and the graphical user interface or other display configured to accept the user selected input.
Kim teaches:
receiving user selected input via a computer mouse and the graphical user interface or other display configured to accept the user selected input (Column 5, lines 28-33, “According to an embodiment, the input module 110 may receive a user input from a user. For example, the input module 110 may receive the user input from the connected external device (e.g., a keyboard or a headset). For another example, the input module 110 may include a touch screen (e.g., a touch screen display) coupled to the display 120.”; Column 25, lines 42-45, "In various embodiments, the first response may include at least one selectable item. The intelligence server 700 may receive a selection input to the at least one selectable item as the second chat message."; Column 29, lines 61-65, "The input device 1550 may receive a command or data to be used by other component (e.g., the processor 1520) of the electronic device 1501, from the outside (e.g., a user) of the electronic device 1501. The input device 1550 may include, for example, a microphone, a mouse, or a keyboard."; A chatbot response including a selectable item, where user inputs are received from a touch screen, reads on accepting a user selected input via a display configured to accept the user selected input, and the input device including a mouse reads on accepting a user selected input via a computer mouse.).
Kim is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Kim to receive a chatbot response including a selectable item using a mouse. Doing so would allow for supporting a chat service capable of simultaneously providing various services through a plurality of chatbots (Kim; Column 1, lines 56-59).
Claim 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Baldwin in view of D’Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Kirazci and Howard et al. (US Patent No. 11,436,411), hereinafter Howard.
Regarding claim 20, Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire discloses the computer system as claimed in claim 1,
Baldwin further discloses:
further comprising a multimodal server, wherein the multimodal server is associated with the multimodal channel (Column 7, lines 36-41, “The system may receive an input 105 from a user, where in one implementation, input 105 may be an utterance received by an input device (e.g., a microphone), where the utterance may include one or more requests. Input 105 may also be a multi-modal input, where at least part of the multi-modal input is an utterance.”; Column 8, lines 13-20, “In addition, in various implementations, the speech recognition engine 110, conversational speech engine 115, and/or databases 130 may reside locally (e.g., on a user device), remotely (e.g., on a server), or a hybrid model of local and remote processing may be used (e.g., lightweight applications may be processed locally while computationally intensive applications may be processed remotely).”).
Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire does not specifically disclose: receive data corresponding to an additional user input received subsequent to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data; in response to the data corresponding to the additional user input, cause at least one of audio processing tasks associated with one of the plurality of voice bots and user touch input processing tasks associated with the touch display screen to execute to generate a supplemental response to the additional user input.
Kirazci teaches:
receive data corresponding to an additional user input received subsequent to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information/data; in response to the data corresponding to the additional user input, cause at least one of audio processing tasks associated with one of the plurality of voice bots and user touch input processing tasks associated with the touch display screen to execute to generate a supplemental response to the additional user input (Column 1, lines 64-66, "Accordingly, techniques and a framework are described herein for multi-modal interaction between users, automated assistants, and other computing services."; Column 6, lines 8-12, "The display context is maintained for the third party computing service in association with the human-to-computer dialog session and is updated based at least in part on one or both of the intent of the user and the resolution information."; Column 18, lines 25-49, "Alternatively, if second client device 306B included a touchscreen and user 301 knew the correct wiring configuration from the candidate answer choices A-C, user 301 could have tapped on his selected answer. In some implementations, the selected answer may be visually emphasized at least temporarily. At any rate, the utterance by user 301 may be recorded and processed using various components described above in association with client portion 108 and server portion 119 of automated assistant 120, and data indicative of the answer provided by user 301 eventually is provided to the third party computing service. Meanwhile, the third party computing service may, based on the updated state of its visual dialog state machine, provide visual dialog state data (e.g., as part of the mixed payload described with reference to FIG. 2) to server portion 119 of automated assistant 120, which may in turn provide the visual dialog state data to client portion 108 of automated assistant 120. Client portion 108 of automated assistant 120 updates, in response to receiving the visual dialog state data, the GUI rendered on second client device 306B to provide a visual indication that the eliminated answer A) was incorrect (e.g., using strikethrough or other similar visual annotations). However, the user 301 has only eliminated candidate answer choice A and not selected either candidate answer choices B-C."; Figure 3:
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The display context being updated based on the intent of the user reads on receiving data corresponding to an additional user input received subsequent to the at least two separate but associated exchanges of information and generating a supplemental response to the additional user input in response to the data corresponding to the additional user input. In the example from Figure 3, display 306B reads on the first response and providing a visual indication of the eliminated answer after the user provides a response reads on the first response being updated based on an additional user input.).
Kirazci is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire to incorporate the teachings of Kirazci to update display context based on the intent of the user. Doing so would allow for providing a multiple-choice turn-based dialog where the user can advance both visual and verbal dialog state machines to different respective states by either selecting one of the answer choices on the screen or by providing a vocal utterance that indicates a particular answer choice (Kirazci; Column 3, lines 30-47).
Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Kirazci, does not specifically disclose: store data corresponding to the supplemental response in a data log for processing via a log analyzer associated with the multimodal server.
Howard teaches:
store data corresponding to the supplemental response in a data log for processing via a log analyzer associated with the multimodal server (Column 12, lines 12-23, "The system 200 may store transcriptions of the previous utterances in the query log 232 and the previous responses in the response log 234. The query log 232 may include and label the queries from the current user session. Similarly, the response log 234 may include and label the responses provided by the system 200 during the current user session. In some implementations, the query log 232 and the response log 234 may have timestamps to indicate when the system received each query and provided each response. The query log 232 and the response log 234 may also include data to indicate which response was for which query."; Column 14, lines 8-11, "The analyzer 222 may include a query log analyzer 230 that that determines whether the current query is likely directed toward the system 200 based on the speaker's previous interactions with the system 200."; Storing previous responses in a response log, where data is included to indicate which response was for which query, reads on storing data corresponding to the supplemental response in a data log.).
Howard is considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because it is in the same field of voice virtual agent systems. Therefore, it would have been obvious to someone of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Baldwin in view of D'Agostino and Willshire, and further in view of Kirazci, to incorporate the teachings of Howard to storing previous responses in a response log, where data is included to indicate which response was for which query, and analyzing the log. Doing so would allow for generating a confidence score to indicate that a user intended a second utterance for the system (Howard; Column 17, lines 33-42).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Chaudhry et al. (US Patent No. 12,499,155) teaches a system for automatic switching between visual responses, audio responses, and textual responses in an omni-channel single view experience.
Bikkula et al. (US Patent No. 11,722,439) teaches a system for rendering a channel response allowing an entity and its corresponding entity properties to be rendered in a plurality of the different channels for a bot performing a bot skill.
Di Fabbrizio et al. (US Patent No. 11,176,942) teaches a multi-modal conversational agent configured to receive voice or text-based inputs and to process the inputs in the context of a dialog with the user.
Ogawa et al. (US Patent No. 10,831,839) teaches a distributed computing system that includes server machines that form a data enablement platform and search bots and behavior bots that operate within the data enablement platform.
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/JAMES BOGGS/Examiner, Art Unit 2657
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