NON-FINAL REJECTION, SECOND DETAILED ACTION
Status of Prosecution
The present application, 18/509,923 filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
The application was filed in the Office on Nov. 15, 2023.
The Office mailed a first detailed action, non-final rejection on May 11, 2026.
Applicant’s representative initiated an interview on July 28, 2026.
Applicant filed amendments with accompanying remarks and arguments on July 30, 2026, the subject of the instant action.
Claims 1-2, 5-10 and 13-18 are pending and are all rejected. Claims 3, 11 and 19 are cancelled by amendment. Claims 1, 9 and 17 are independent.
Claims Status
Claims 3, 11 and 19 are cancelled by amendment.
Claims 4, 12 and 20 are objected to.
Claims 1, 3, 5-9, 11, 13-17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Boyer, United States Patent Application Publication 2020/0097843, published on March 26, 2020 in view of Horesh et al. (“Horesh”), United States Patent 11,972,333, published on April 30, 2024.
Claims 2, 10 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Boyer in view of Horesh in further view of Bosnjakovic et al. (“Bosnjakovic”) United States Patent 11,875,240, published on Jan. 16, 2024.
Objections
Claims 4, 12 and 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.
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.
A.
Claims 1, 3, 5-9, 11, 13-17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Boyer, United States Patent Application Publication 2020/0097843, published on March 26, 2020 in view of Khanwalkar et al. (“Khanwalkar”), United States Patent 12,057,032, published on April 30, 2024.
As to Claim 1, Boyer teaches: A computer-implemented method for building a data repository with generative artificial intelligence (Al), the method comprising:
receiving, via one or more processors, a first input statement (Boyer: par. 0035, input questions (i.e. statement) are received at the question answering system [212]);
determining, via the one or more processors, at least one domain corresponding to the first input statement (Boyer: par. 0053, the question analysis module [304] may assign a question category (i.e. domain) to the input question);
determining, via the one or more processors, a first question based on the first input statement and the determined at least one domain (Boyer: par. 0046, Fig. 2, the input user query may be parsed into to a generated parsed question by the question analyzer [212]);
selecting, via the one or more processors, based at least in part on the determined at least one domain, a model to apply to the first question (Boyer: par. 0021, “In using a question classifier, the QA system may first filter incoming questions through the question classifier, and, based on a resultant classification, invoke the appropriate answering pipeline cognitive service (i.e. model));
using the model, composing, via the one or more processors, an answer to the first question (Boyer: par. 0021);
presenting, via the one or more processors, the answer to a subject matter expert (Boyer: par. 0067, answers are presented to a subject matter expert (SME) for review);
receiving, via the one or more processors, from the subject matter expert, approval of the answer (Boyer: par. 0067, the SME will rate the suitability of the answer to validate the results of the particular answering pipeline);
in response to receiving approval, adding, via the one or more processors, the answer to a data repository (Boyer: par. 0047, output of the question analyzer is stored in an information corpus [226]).
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Boyer may not explicitly teach: determining, via the one or more processors, that the first question is a new question by: (i) determining confidence scores indicating similarity between the first question and respective existing questions, and (ii) comparing the confidence scores to a threshold;
Albert teaches in general concepts related to preventing duplicate posts within a question and answer forum (Albert: Abstract). Specifically, Albert teaches that submitted questions may be compared to see whether the newly submitted question is distinct from other questions (Albert: par. 0021). To determine whether a question is distinct, question vectors are compared corresponding to the new question and other stored questions to see if they meet a question similarity threshold (Albert: par. 0031). If the question is not similar and distinct it may be considered as unanswered with no corresponding answer (Albert: par. 0051).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at a time before the effective filing date of the application to have modified Boyer’s disclosures and teachings by addressing new questions by determining that they are not duplicative of other questions as taught and suggested by Albert. Such a person would have been motivated to do so with a reasonable expectation of success to allow for the dynamic review of best models and tailored approaches to providing answers in a quest and answer system (col. 1, line 61 to col. 2 line 18).
Boyer and Albert may not explicitly teach: selecting, via the one or more processors, based at least in part on the determined at least one domain, a generative Al model to apply to the first question;
in response to the determining that the first question is a new question, using the determined generative Al model, composing, via the one or more processors, an answer to the first question.
Khanwalkar teaches in general concepts related to automated solving of multiple-choice questions by use of a generative question-answer model (Khanwalkar: Abstract). Specifically, Khanwalkar teaches that for questions that are identified as not having an existing answer, or if a similar question in a preexisting library of questions is unable to be identified, then an answer is generated by an auto-solving service (Khanwalkar: col. 8, line 65 to col. 9 line 3).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at a time before the effective filing date of the application to have modified the Boyer-Albert combination by utilizing AI generative models to generate answers for the new questions identified as taught and suggested by Khanwalkar. Such a person would have been motivated to do so with a reasonable expectation of success to allow for the efficient and reduction of steps for a user in seeking answers to the new questions.
As to Claim 5, Boyer, Albert and Khanwalkar teach the elements of claim 1.
Boyer further teaches: further in response to the determining that the first question is a new question, displaying, via the one or more processors, to a customer, an indication to contact a human representative (Boyer: par. 0067, answers are presented to a subject matter expert (SME) for review, which may be in the case of a new question).
As to Claim 6, Boyer, Albert and Khanwalkar teach the elements of claim 1.
Boyer, Albert and Khanwalkar may not explicitly teach: wherein the at least one domain includes at least one of: retirement; cyber; legal; compliance; human resources; privacy; or fairness.
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at a time before the effective filing date of the application to have implemented the Boyer-Horesh combination with domains as listed in the claim. Such a person would have been motivated to do so with a reasonable expectation of success to allow for the different domains to be captured with the different pipeline-models with different training data. Alternatively, it would have been mere design choice.
As to Claim 7, Boyer, Albert and Khanwalkar teach the elements of claim 1.
Boyer further teaches: the presenting the answer to the subject matter expert comprises presenting the answer along with the first question as a question-answer pair to the subject matter expert; and the receiving the approval comprises receiving approval of the question-answer pair (Examiner asserts the SME’s review and approval would be encompassed by the these limitations obviously).
As to Claim 8, Boyer, Albert and Khanwalkar teach the elements of claim 1.
Boyer and Horesh may not explicitly teach: receiving, via the one or more processors, a second input statement;
determining, via the one or more processors, a second question from the second input statement;
determining, via the one or more processors, that the second question is a duplicate of the first question; and
in response to the determining that the second question is a duplicate of the first question, not presenting, via the one or more processors, the second question to the subject matter expert.
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at a time before the effective filing date of the application to have implemented the Boyer-Horesh combination with not presenting the duplicate question to a SME as listed in the claim. Such a person would have been motivated to do so with a reasonable expectation of success for efficiency reasons as to not pursue identical review by a SME for an identical question
As to Claim 9, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 1.
As to Claim 11, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 3.
As to Claim 13, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 5.
As to Claim 14, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 6.
As to Claim 15, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 7.
As to Claim 16, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 8.
As to Claim 17, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 1.
As to Claim 19, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 3.
B.
Claims 2, 10 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Boyer, United States Patent Application Publication 2020/0097843, published on March 26, 2020 in view of Horesh et al. (“Horesh”), United States Patent 11,972,333, published on April 30, 2024 in further view of Bosnjakovic et al. (“Bosnjakovic”) United States Patent 11,875,240, published on Jan. 16, 2024.
As to Claim 2, Boyer and Horesh teach the elements of claim 1.
Boyer and Horesh may not explicitly teach: subsequent to adding the answer to the data repository:
pairing, via the one or more processors, the first question and the answer in the data repository;
receiving, via the one or more processors, a second input statement;
determining, via the one or more processors, that the second input statement corresponds to the first question; and
in response to the determining that the second input statement corresponds to the first question, presenting, via the one or more processors, the answer on a display.
Bosnjakovic teaches in general concepts related to tuning a generative AI model based on a knowledge base (Bosnjakovic: Abstract). Specifically, Bosnjakovic teaches that questions and answers may be paired together (Bosnjakovic: Fig. 4, [410], col. 16, lines 2 to 7, the question [306] and answer [308] constitute a pair [310]). Subsequent questions are received and after linking it to the first question answer pair it is associated with the answer pair (Bosnjakovic: Fig 4, [412], [418]).
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It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art at a time before the effective filing date of the application to have modified the Boyer-Horesh disclosures and teachings by utilizing question answer pairs as taught by Bosnjakovic. Such a person would have been motivated to do so with a reasonable expectation of success for data structure efficiency purposes.
As to Claim 10, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 2.
As to Claim 18, it is rejected for similar reasons as claim 2.
Conclusion
Prior art not relied upon but deemed relevant:
Devvarkonda et al., US PG Pub 2018/0137433 (5/17/2018) (teaching a dynamic similarity threshold based on question profiles.
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/JAMES T TSAI/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2147
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