DETAILED ACTION
This action is responsive to the filing of 3/1/24. Claims 1-20 are pending and have been considered below.
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 .
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-7, 12-14, 19-20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is an examiner's statement of reasons for allowance. The prior art of record fails to disclose that no parent has been assigned to the computer field based on a determination that more than one object remains in the sub-graph, or based on a determination that the computer field is based on an input field with a constant value, or includes aggregate calculations in combination with other limitations recited within the claimed context. The claims present a combination of limitations that differ from the cited art, and there is no reasonable combination of references that would teach it.
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.
Claim(s) 1-4, 8-11, 15-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Montague (10,783,162) in view of Tonkin (20200372057.)
Claim 1, 8: Montague discloses a method for visualizing data performed at a computing device having one or more processors and memory storing one or more programs configured for execution by the one or more processors, the method comprising:
providing (i) a computed field that includes one or more input fields (4:26-45, discloses accessing information organized related to a subject such as a person where values are computed (computed field) related to the subject or person (input field) being stored within the table; 4:47-65, discloses a table where the information is changed or modified using a set of operations including creating new information based on the information and combine the information with other information (computed fields). The examiner interprets the computed fields to be related to the person field within the table with the information relating to the subject as computed fields using the person field (input field)) and (ii) an object model that includes a plurality of objects (1:35-40, discloses defining a graph that represents objects with nodes and connections among the objects with edges);
generating a sub-graph, for the computed field, (5:25-49, discloses modifying connections within a graph, finding neighboring nodes and removing nodes in a graph and combining two or more operations to generate the graph such as removing a neighboring node based on the determined object. The examiner interprets as creating a subgraph based on the determined objects) based on one or more objects and relationships between two or more of the objects (1:33-36, discloses a graph that represents objects with nodes and connections among the objects with edges and 1:53-57, discloses applying an operation on a graph includes a difference between the graph before the operation and after the operation is applied (sub-graph) and 2:50-55, discloses performing an operation on a portion of the graph and 1:20-25, discloses operations to shrink a graph and search for particular nodes in a graph and 5:30-40, discloses determining neighboring nodes (two or more determined objects) and removing nodes);
iteratively pruning objects from the sub-graph based on a traversal of the sub-graph (5:25-60, discloses traversing connections between nodes based on a connection type and removing nodes/connections or modifying connections and searching for nodes within the graph based on filters and combining operations where an output of a given operation is an input to a subsequent operation and 5:9-20, discloses a set of operations includes a set of macros that perform one or more operations in parallel or sequentially and 3:7-14, discloses viewing the differences in the graph before and after of an operation on a graph. The examiner interprets a sub-graph maybe determined from the original graph of objects using the first operation, a second operation maybe used to traverse the connections between the nodes, and a third operation maybe performed on the sub-graph to remove the determined objects) and one or more characteristics of the objects (4:64-67 and 5:1-8, discloses one or more nodes within a graph may be identified and removed based on a users’ selection of an operation and 4: 34-42, discloses nodes of the graph represent objects (persons and accounts) and 5:25-30, discloses finding neighboring nodes that share a property of a given node and search for nodes based on filters and 10:49-65, disclose filtering based on a person who are from a certain country or language); and
displaying a computed field in a user interface based on a parent of the computed field (4:36-65 discloses objects as persons or accounts and visualizing the information in a graph, plot, or table (user interface) and 14:16-28, discloses a display section 440 may display visual information related to accessed information and 4:26-42, discloses accessing information in the form of a table or in the form of a graph where the data is stored in a particular location within the table organized according to the person subject. The examiner interprets the parent of the computed field as the subject or person.)
However, Montague does not explicitly disclose: being assigned to one remaining object in the sub-graph.
Tonkin discloses a similar method, including: being assigned to one remaining object in the sub-graph (Fig. 3 and Column 9 5-17, discloses generating a knowledge graph including a plurality of nodes and linked nodes with edges where the nodes relate to concepts found in user selected messages and the remaining messages are linked to the nodes based on attributes of the messages that are linked to the user selected messages and Column 5 4-29, discloses grouping each user selected message into a conversation element and analyzing the remaining messages within an inbox for attributes related to the user selected messages and links the messages (within an activity stream) to the user selected messages where the pruning program suggests a portion of the messages within the social messaging system to prune based on unlinked elements and attributes and Column 7 32-46, discloses associating an activity stream with a determined topic and Column 10 47-67, teaches the pruning program pruning messages with zero linkage with other messages and then displays them to a user to delete them and Column 11 61-67 – Column 12 1-40, teaches nodes that represents a topic and relationships between concepts (topics) to generate a knowledge graph and Column 12 35-40, discloses where two concepts may represent a title of a message and Column 13 42-44 teaches that a title can be a determined topic and also discloses that two related concepts can be included in a single node. The examiner interprets as assigning an object (message related to a topic) as a parent to the computed concept of the remaining message)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Montague with that of Tonkin so as to remove all the unrelated objects to objects that the user had interest in and grouping the objects the user was interested in so the user could easily select and visualize the data regarding the data of that object.
Claim 2, 9, 16: Montague and Tonkin disclose the method of claim 1, wherein iteratively pruning the objects comprises removing, from the sub-graph, a first object of the one or more objects that is determined to be an attribute of a second object of the one or more objects (4:36-65 discloses objects as persons or accounts and 5:45-50, discloses searching for connections/nodes with particular properties such as accounts associated with names. The examiner interprets the account to be a shared attribute between the objects.)
Claim 3, 10, 17: Montague and Tonkin disclose the method of claim 1, wherein iteratively pruning the objects is further based on determining attributes based on a existence of a many-to-one relationship between two of the one or more objects (5:40-50, discloses searching around a given node for connections/nodes with particular properties (such as accounts associated with a particular name/number near a given node.))
Claim 4, 11, 18: Montague and Tonkin disclose method of claim 1, wherein generating the sub-graph comprises forming a minimum sub-graph in the object model that includes each object that contributes input values to the computed field (Fig. 5: 508; 14:63-67; a workflow of operations for the graph may be generated based on the user's selection.)
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Sherman (9,613,086) Generating And Displaying Data Visualizations That Use Relationships.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANDREY BELOUSOV whose telephone number is (571) 270-1695 and Andrew.belousov@uspto.gov email. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Friday EST.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Adam Queler, can be reached at telephone number 571-272-4140. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Andrey Belousov/
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2145
12/9/25