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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-4 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.
Applicants amendment overcome the 101 and 112 rejections. A new search was made and new art was found which teaches the amended claims. See rejection below.
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) 1-3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abe U.S. PAP 2019/0042890 A1 in view of Kang U.S. PAP 2021/0365640 A1.
Regarding claim 1 Abe teaches a sentence structure analysis system (pattern extraction unit, see par. [0010]), comprising processing circuitry configured to:
(a) obtain a document including a plurality of headings arranged in a line direction ( document data, see par. [0011);
(b) extract one or more first headings from the document based on a regular pattern defined in a pattern dictionary ( pattern-candidate extraction unit 922 extracts, from document data, a candidate for a “pattern” relating to (co-occurring with) a received instance, see par. [0011]);
(c) extract one or more second headings from the document based on a pattern that is structurally similar to the regular pattern, but deviates in aspects such as delimiters, spacing, punctuation, or other comparable syntactic features (the pattern-candidate extraction unit 202 extracts, as a pattern candidate, a pattern candidate relating to (co-occurring with) the seed instance (step S102), see par. [0118]);
(d) assign heading numbers to the first and second headings to indicate an order of the headings (The pattern-score calculation unit 203 calculates a reliability score of the extracted pattern candidate (step S103), see par. [0119]);
(e) classify the extracted headings into a first group including the first headings, and a second group including the second headings (the instance labeling unit 304 provides a label to the selected instance candidate (step S113), see par. [0123]);
(h) update the pattern dictionary based on the user modification ( The instance-score back-propagation unit 312 recalculates (corrects) a reliability score of a pattern relating to an instance candidate, based on the corrected reliability score of the instance candidate (step S115), see par. [0125]) and
(i) re-execute the heading extraction using the updated pattern dictionary to refine the classification of headings (The pattern-score propagation unit 313 recalculates (corrects) a reliability score of an instance candidate, based on the recalculated reliability score of the pattern (step S116), see par. [0126]).
However Abe does not teach (f) cause a display unit to visually present, via a user interface, a screen including the first group and the second group of the extracted headings, the screen being configured to receive a user selection for confirming or modifying the headings
(g) receive, via the user interface, a user modification to the pattern used for extracting the second headings.
In the same field of endeavor Kang teaches method for model customization according to an embodiment includes providing a user with prediction results of each of a plurality of pre-trained natural language processing models for a document subjected to analysis selected from a document set including a plurality of documents, acquiring user feedback on the prediction results from the user, generating a plurality of augmented documents from at least one of the plurality of documents based on data attributes of each of the plurality of documents and the user feedback; and retraining at least one of the plurality of natural language processing models, using training data including the plurality of augmented documents, see abstract, figure 2 and paragraphs [0044-0086]. Users who are even unfamiliar with natural language processing and programing codes can generate a customized natural language processing model to suit themselves and a large volume of training data with a simple operation, see par. [0020].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the Kang invention with the teachings of Abe for the benefit of allowing sers who are even unfamiliar with natural language processing and programing codes can generate a customized natural language processing model to suit themselves and a large volume of training data with a simple operation, see par. [0020].
Regarding claim 2 Abe teaches the sentence structure analysis system according to claim 1, wherein heading numbers are respectively assigned to the headings to indicate an order of the headings, the first headings include one or more regular headings assigned with heading numbers according to the regular pattern, the second headings include one or more similar headings assigned with heading numbers according to a similar pattern, and the similar pattern is structurally similar to the regular pattern but differs in syntactic features ( The instance-score update unit 311 updates a reliability score of the instance candidate, based on the label (step S114). More specifically, the instance-score update unit 311 increases a reliability score of an instance candidate provided with a positive label and decreases a reliability score of an instance candidate provided with a negative label. When, for example, a reliability score has a value lying between “0” and “1”, the instance-score update unit 311 may set a reliability score of an instance candidate provided with a positive label to be “1” and may set a reliability score of an instance candidate provided with a negative label to be “0”, see par. [0124]).
Regarding claim 3 Abe teaches the sentence structure analysis system according to claim 2, wherein the processing circuitry is configured to: analyze regularity of the heading numbers assigned to the headings ( negative-example check unit 935 provides, for a selected instance candidate, a label (a positive label or a negative label, see par. [0028]);
group the headings based on the analysis into one or more heading groups ( “positive label” is a label indicating that an instance candidate is included in (belongs to) a category, see par. [0028]);
identify a specific group including a heading that was erroneously extracted ( “negative label” is a label indicating that an instance candidate is not included in (does not belong to) a category, see par. [0028]);
and prevent the heading in the specific group from being used to segment the document (the instance deletion unit 937 deletes an instance candidate provided with a negative label and a pattern relating to (co-occurring with) the instance candidate, see par. [0029]).
Claim(s) 4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Abe U.S. PAP 2019/0042890 A1 in view of Kang U.S. PAP 2021/0365640 A1 further in view of Pito U.S. PAP 2021/0319177 A1.
Regarding claim 4 Abe in view of Kang does not teach the sentence structure analysis system according to claim 1, wherein the document is a legal document, and the processing circuitry is configured to segment, the legal document into blocks based on the first and second headings.
IN the same field of endeavor Pito teaches tools for extracting structure and header information from documents. Large professional documents such as those found in the legal domain are normally hierarchically structured into sections which contain sub-sections which further contain sub-sub-sections and so on. This hierarchical structure (or just hierarchy) contains important information the author intended to convey to the reader and properly extracting it can aid many downstream tasks such as information retrieval, information extraction, document presentation and/or document navigation, see par. [0067].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the Abe in view of Kang invention with the teachings of Pito for the benefit of aiding many downstream tasks such as information retrieval, information extraction, document presentation and/or document navigation, see par. [0067]
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Pertinent prior art available on form 892.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/MICHAEL ORTIZ-SANCHEZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2656