Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
DETAILED ACTION
Claim Objections
Claim 10 is objected to because of the following informalities: regarding claim 10, the phrase “pair of the of the set” in line 16 should apparently be “pair of the set”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(B) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 2, 11-15 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 2 recites the limitation “the similarity” in line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. Claims 11 and 17 are rejected for the same reasons as discussed above with respect to claim 2.
Claims 11-15 recite the limitation “The media” in line 1. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claims. Because they depend on the wrong parent claim. The claims are media claims but they depend on claim 9 which is a method claim.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-6, 16, 17, 19 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Kumbi et al. (US Pub. No. 2025/0103822).
Regarding claim 1, with respect to Figures 1-8, Kumbi teaches a computer-implemented method comprising:
accessing a conversation flow/a set of digital content [i.e., conversation] from a communication record between a website visitor [i.e., customer] and customer support (fig.2, 3; paragraphs 0002, 0014-0017, 0043, 0046, 0048) (Note; the conversational flows/ digital content is used/accessed by the conversation system to interact with a website visitor (see paragraphs 0014, 0017).);
generating one or more prompts for a language model (paragraphs 0014, 0017) comprising:
at least a portion of the communication record (paragraphs 0014-0017, 0043, 0046, 0048);
a request to the language model to extract each of a set of questions and answer (“Q&A”) pairs from the communication record and to generate a predefined question-answer pairs [i.e., single, summarized Q&A pair] based on user question [i.e., at least a portion of the set of Q&A pairs] (paragraph 0016) (paragraphs 0014-0017, 0034, 0036, 0043, 0046, 0048);
generating an embedding corresponding to at least a portion of the single, validated question-answer pair [i.e., summarized Q&A pair] (paragraphs 0020-0021, 0029, 0030, 0036, 0041, 0044) (Note; in para. 29, the original spec says, “A subsequent prompt from the initial prompt can include a request to generate a single, summarized Q&A pair based on the remaining Q&A pairs (e.g., after filtering) extracted from the conversation”. Whereas in para. 36, Kumbi teaches that the online interaction server 102 validates the set of question-answer pairs to generate a set of validated question-answer pairs. The question-answer generation module 104 can verify that an answer in a given question-answer pair is derived using the digital content from the online platform 120 and detect and filter answers that are not. This validated question-answer pair is the claimed “summarized Q&A pair”.); and
causing storing of the embedding (paragraphs 0020-0021, 0029, 0030, 0041, 0044).
Regarding claims 2 and 17, Kumbi teaches that in response to a query through a chat interface from a different customer, using a semantic search to generate an answer to the query based on the similarity of the embedding to a corresponding embedding of the query (abstract; paragraphs 0003, 0014, 0020, 0023, 0041-0047, 0052).
Regarding claim 3, Kumbi teaches detecting the set of Q&A pairs from the communication record (paragraphs 0014-0017, 0043, 0046, 0048); and
ranking [i.e., indexing] the set of Q&A pairs using a logical index (paragraphs 0020, 0037, 0041, 0042).
Regarding claim 4, Kumbi teaches triggering the generating of the option [i.e., one or more prompts] based on at least one of a threshold value [i.e., threshold length] of message from the customer support (abstract; paragraphs 0003, 0018, 0021, 0022, 0027, 0045, 0046);
a threshold dissimilarity between answers from a help center database (paragraphs 0027, 0045); and
a probability model (paragraphs 0036).
Regarding claim 5, Kumbi teaches providing instructions to the language model comprising at least one of instructions to preserve links relevant to each Q&A pair of the set of Q&A pairs, instructions to remove phatic expressions from each Q&A pair of the set of Q&A pairs, instructions to remove personal information from each Q&A pair of the set of Q&A pairs, and instructions to only extract corresponding Q&A pairs of the set of Q&A pairs useful to other customers (fig.2; paragraphs 0016, 0034, 0036).
Regarding claims 6 and 19, Kumbi teaches wherein generating the one or more prompts for the language model further comprises: generating a first prompt for the language model, the first prompt comprising a first portion of the request corresponding to extracting each of the set of questions and answer (“Q&A”) pairs from the communication record (paragraph 0034); and
generating a follow-up questions and answers [i.e., second prompt] for the language model, the second prompt comprising a second portion of the request corresponding to generating the single, summarized Q&A pair based on at least the portion of the set of Q&A pairs (paragraphs 0034-0035).
Claim 16 is rejected for the same reasons as discussed above with respect to claim 1. Furthermore, Kumbi teaches a computing system comprising: a processor; and
a non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions that when executed by the processor, cause the processor to perform operations (paragraphs 0055, 0056).
Regarding claim 20, Kumbi teaches wherein the representation corresponds to a single, summarized Q&A pair of the at least the portion of the set of Q&A pairs (paragraphs 0020-0021, 0029, 0030, 0041, 0044).
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.
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 7, 8, 10 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumbi et al. (US Pub. No. 2025/0103822) in view of MEDALION et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 20240356874).
Regarding claims 7 and 18, Kumbi teaches filtering irrelevant Q&A pairs from the set of Q&A pairs (Figs. 4-7; paragraphs 0012, 0015, 0016, 0022, 0025, 0026, 0040-0047).
However, Kumbi does not specifically teach a further request to the language model to provide contextual metadata corresponding to each Q&A pair of the set of Q&A pairs and to filter irrelevant Q&A pairs based on the contextual metadata of each Q&A pair of the set of Q&A pairs. MEDALION teaches a further request to the language model to provide contextual metadata corresponding to each Q&A pair of the set of Q&A pairs and to filter irrelevant Q&A pairs based on the contextual metadata of each Q&A pair of the set of Q&A pairs (abstract; paragraph 0007-0009, 0034, 0045, 0049-0051) (Note; metadata includes context (see paragraphs 0049, 0050).). Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Kumbi to incorporate the feature of a further request to the language model to provide contextual metadata corresponding to each Q&A pair of the set of Q&A pairs and to filter irrelevant Q&A pairs based on the contextual metadata of each Q&A pair of the set of Q&A pairs in Kumbi’s invention as taught by MEDALION. The motivation for the modification is to do so in order to provide specific information about product or event to a customer such that the customer can ben benefitted out of the information.
Regarding claim 8, Kumbi teaches wherein the irrelevant Q&A pairs correspond to at least one of answers provided by a bot, irrelevant to a main topic of the communication record, irrelevant to other customers, and a dialog classification (abstract; paragraphs 0003, 0014, 0020, 0023, 0041-0047, 0052).
Claim 10 is rejected for the same reasons as discussed above with respect to claims 1 and 7. Furthermore, Kumbi teaches a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing executable instructions, which when executed by a processing device, cause the processing device to perform operations (paragraphs 0055, 0056).
Claims 9-13 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumbi et al. (US Pub. No. 2025/0103822) in view of Lim et al. (International Pub. No. WO 2023229376 A1).
Regarding claim 9, Kumbi does not specifically teach wherein the embedding is generated using Sentence Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (“SBERT”). Lim teaches wherein the embedding is generated using Sentence Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (“SBERT”) (page 11, paragraph 4). Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Kumbi to incorporate the feature of wherein the embedding is generated using Sentence Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (“SBERT”) in Kumbi’s invention as taught by Lim. The motivation for the modification is to do so in order to generate embedding using Sentence Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (“SBERT”) such that that a computer can easily understand according to the context and semantic characteristics of the text.
Claims 11-13 is rejected for the same reasons as discussed above with respect to claims 2, 4 and 13 respectively.
Regarding claim 15, Kumbi teaches wherein the irrelevant Q&A pairs correspond to at least one of answers provided by a bot, irrelevant to a main topic of the communication record, irrelevant to other customers, and a dialog classification (abstract; paragraphs 0003, 0014, 0020, 0023, 0041-0047, 0052).
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kumbi et al. (US Pub. No. 2025/0103822) in view of Lim et al. (International Pub. No. WO 2023229376 A1) further in view of MEDALION et al. (U.S. Pub. No. 20240356874).
Claim 14 is rejected for the same reasons as discussed above with respect to claims 6 and 7.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MD S ELAHEE whose telephone number is (571)272-7536. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday thru Friday; 8:30AM to 5:00PM EST.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, FAN TSANG can be reached on 571-272-7547. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571) 273-8300.
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/MD S ELAHEE/
MD SHAFIUL ALAM ELAHEE
Primary Examiner,
Art Unit 2694
January 11, 2026