DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to the amendment filed 3/2/2026.
Claims 1-20 are currently pending.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 3/2/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see page 9 of amendment, filed 3/2/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1 under 35 U.S.C. 103 over Wilde in view of Margolin have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Robertson et al. (US 7,149,983), hereinafter Robertson.
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, and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Wilde et al. (US 2022/0236843), hereinafter Wilde, in view of Liu, in view of Robertson.
The applied Wilde reference has a common assignee with the instant application. Based upon the earlier effectively filed date of the reference, it constitutes prior art under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2).
This rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 might be overcome by: (1) a showing under 37 CFR 1.130(a) that the subject matter disclosed in the reference was obtained directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor of this application and is thus not prior art in accordance with 35 U.S.C.102(b)(2)(A); (2) a showing under 37 CFR 1.130(b) of a prior public disclosure under 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(B); or (3) a statement pursuant to 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) establishing that, not later than the effective filing date of the claimed invention, the subject matter disclosed and the claimed invention were either owned by the same person or subject to an obligation of assignment to the same person or subject to a joint research agreement. See generally MPEP § 717.02.
As per claim 1, Wilde teaches the following:
a method of operating an application on a computing device, (see Fig. 1), the method comprising:
displaying, in a user interface of the application, a content canvas populated with content. As Wilde teaches in paragraph [0075], a user types content in a dynamic document canvas. Further see Fig. 13;
capturing a state of the content canvas. As Wilde teaches in paragraph [0089], and corresponding Fig. 6, step 602, text on authored content is analyzed, where the authored content is interpreted as being a current “state”;
generating a prompt
displaying, in a user interface of the application, suggestion components corresponding to the follow-on prompts. As Wilde further teaches in paragraph [0089], at step 606, candidate document suggestions are provided; and
in response to a selection of a suggestion component of the suggestion components:
sending, . As Wilde further teaches in paragraph [0089], step 608, a selection of a candidate document is selected; and
populating the content canvas with an enhancement As Wilde further teaches in paragraph [0089], step 610, the selected document is included in the content sharing board.
While Wilde teaches in paragraph [0030] that the suggestion system includes a machine learning model and further see paragraph [0056], Wilde does not explicitly teach of the use of a foundation model or that the follow on prompt includes natural language instructions for said model. In a similar field of endeavor, Liu teaches of recommending content in response to user requests (see abstract). Liu further teaches in column 51, lines 27-57, that a trained machine learning model is utilized (foundation model). Liu further teaches in column 2, line 61 – column 3, line 32, that recommendations may be presented in an open-ended manner responsive to user request and include follow-up queries, i.e., responses may include follow-up prompts of natural language queries to be resubmitted to the system.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of applicant’s claimed invention to have modified the AI responses of Wilde with the foundation model and follow on prompts of Liu. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modifications because as Liu teaches in column 51, lines 61-67, such follow up prompt benefit users in refining recommendations to better fit a user’s desires. Liu further teaches in column 1, lines 19-39, that an assistant (foundation model) benefits users in providing a wide variety of services.
Furthermore, Wilde does not explicitly teach of generating the prompt by selecting a prefix based on contextual information and one or more completions to append to said prefix to form a natural language instruction. Robertson teaches of a method to facilitate the construction of queries (see abstract). Robertson teaches in column 19, lines 49-65, that the method may utilized synonym searching across the columns of query building information to find relative terms, which may be applied to Wilde’s analysis of content, where the content may be used to find relative terms in Robertson. Robertson further shows on Fig. 8 that a natural language query 240 is constructed based upon user selections and in column 18, lines 25-39, that such natural language generation is created as the selections are made. This natural language query shown in Fig. 8 is interpreted as encompassing a prefix/completion as the user may define first a “do” task (prefix) and then a “do what” task (completion).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of applicant’s claimed invention to have modified the keyword searching of Wilde with the query construction of Robertson. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modification because as Robertson teaches in column 18, lines 25-39, such query construction benefits users who may not understand complex Boolean statements.
As per claim 10, Wilde teaches the following:
a computing apparatus comprising: one or more computer readable storage media; one or more processors operatively coupled with the one or more computer readable storage media; and program instructions stored on the one or more computer readable storage media. See Fig. 22.
The remaining limitations of claim 10 are substantially similar to those of claim 1 and are rejected using the same reasoning.
As per claim 18, Wilde teaches the following:
one or more computer-readable storage media having program instructions stored thereon that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing device. See Fig. 22.
The remaining limitations of claim 10 are substantially similar to those of claim 1 and are rejected using the same reasoning.
Claim(s) 2-4, 11-13, 19, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wilde in view of Liu in view of Robertson as applied to claims 1, 10, and 18 above, and further in view of Granot et al. (US 2020/0104146), hereinafter Granot.
Regarding claim 2, modified Wilde teaches the method of claim 1 as described above. However, Wilde does not explicitly teach of generating titles for the recommendations. In a similar field of endeavor, Grano teaches of an assistor for suggesting steps for a user (see paragraph [0030]. Granot further teaches the following:
the prompt further tasks the foundation model with generating titles for the follow-on prompts, and wherein displaying the suggestion components corresponding to the follow-on prompts comprises displaying the suggestion components labeled with the titles. As Granot teaches in paragraph [0005], a program constructs a list of end-goals based on prior user experience. Granot further teaches in paragraph [0052] that a list of end-goal textual titles is generated for presenting suggestions to the user. Further see Fig. 5A.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of applicant’s claimed invention to have modified the suggestions of Wilde with the end-goal titles of Granot. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modification because the titles of Granot benefit users in relaying a determined possible goals of the user instead of simply titles of documents.
Regarding claim 3, modified Wilde teaches the method of claim 2 as described above. Wilde further teaches the following:
capturing the state of the content canvas further comprises capturing the state of the content canvas in response to detecting a change to the state of the content canvas. As Wilde teaches in paragraph [0039], events of a programmatic client may comprise words/phrases just typed by the user, suggesting that the content discovery captures data as the user enters/updates it. Further see paragraph [0052].
Regarding claim 4, modified Wilde teaches the method of claim 3 as described above. Wilde further teaches the following:
in response to a second change in the state of the content canvas: capturing an updated state of the content canvas; and generating a third prompt for the foundation model including the updated state of the content canvas, wherein the third prompt tasks the foundation model with generating new suggestions for enhancements to the content based on the updated state of the content canvas. As Wilde teaches in paragraph [0075], suggestions are surfaced as the user types, i.e., the suggestions are updated as new content is added by the user.
Regarding claims 11-13, modified Wilde teaches the apparatus of claim 10 as described above. The remaining limitations of claims 11-13 are substantially similar to those of claims 2-44 respectively, and are rejected using the same reasoning.
Regarding claims 19 and 20, modified Wilde teaches the media of claim 18 as described above. The remaining limitations of claims 19 and 20 are substantially similar to those of claims 2 and 3 respectively, and are rejected using the same reasoning.
Claim(s) 5-9 and 14-17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wilde in view of Liu in view of Robertson in view of Granot as applied to claims 1-4 and 10-13 above, and further in view of Katahanas et al. (US 2024/0329802), hereinafter Katahanas.
Regarding claim 5, modified Wilde teaches the method of claim 4 as described above. While Wilde teaches of a user creating/editing text, Wilde does not explicitly teach of a virtual whiteboard with virtual sticky notes. In a similar field of endeavor, Katahanas teaches of utilizing a learning model to analyze user entered text (see paragraph [0041]. Katahanas further teaches the following:
the content canvas comprises a virtual whiteboard, wherein the content comprises content items, and wherein content items comprise virtual sticky notes. As Katahans teaches in the abstract, the method is directed to a virtual whiteboard and in paragraph [0034], users are able to create graphical objects such as sticky notes.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of applicant’s claimed invention to have modified the canvas of Wilde with the whiteboard and sticky notes of Katahanas. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modification because as Katahanas teaches in paragraph [0002], such graphical displays benefit users with a more flexible collaborative display.
Regarding claim 6, modified Wilde teaches the method of claim 5 as described above. Wilde further teaches the following:
the state of the content canvas comprises one or more of: text from the content items, authors of the content items, reactions to the content items, a placement of the content items relative to other content items on the content canvas, and content canvas metadata. As Wilde teaches in paragraph [0089], and corresponding Fig. 6, step 602, text on authored content is analyzed, where the authored content is interpreted as being a current “state”.
Regarding claim 7, modified Wilde teaches the method of claim 6 as described above. Wilde further teaches the following:
the contextual information further comprises a meeting state, wherein the meeting state comprises one or more of: a chat pane message, a meeting transcript, an elapsed time, and a calendar invite. As Wilde teaches in paragraph [0082], recommendations may be faded based on an amount of time from the authorship activity.
Regarding claim 8, modified Wilde teaches the method of claim 7 as described above. Wilde further teaches the following:
the contextual information further comprises a user state, wherein the user state comprises a viewport and user activity with respect to the content canvas. As Wilde teaches in paragraph [0055], the library of documents considered by the system is those documents which are publicly or privately accessible by the user (viewport). Wilde teaches in paragraph [0074] of leveraging contextual signals to improve relevant documents/content. Wilde further teaches in paragraph [0075], that content the user is typing is monitored (user activity).
Regarding claim 9, modified Wilde teaches the method of claim 8 as described above. Wilde further teaches the following:
the contextual information further comprises user feedback with respect to a suggestion generated by the foundation model. As Wilde teaches in paragraph [0028], user provide feedback to a platform and re-arranges or filters suggested documents based upon said feedback. Further see paragraph [0062].
Regarding claims 14-17, modified Wilde teaches the apparatus of claim 13 as described above. The remaining limitations of claims 14 -17 are substantially similar to those of claims 5 -8 respectively, and are rejected using the same reasoning.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
-Dumais et al. (US 2004/ 0267730), background searches based upon interaction of a user with an application.
-Ayzenshtat et al. (US 10,185,748), intelligent auto completion which may apply to applicant’s amended limitations.
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/GREGORY A. DISTEFANO/
Examiner
Art Unit 2174
/WILLIAM L BASHORE/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2174