DETAILED ACTION
Status of Claims
This action is in reply to the preliminary amendment filed on 19 December 2025.
Claims 17, 21, 24, 28, 31, and 35 have been amended.
Claims 1-16 were previously canceled.
Claims 17-36 are pending and have been examined.
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 17-36 recite allowable subject matter and would be allowable if the claims were amended or re-written to overcome the 101 rejection indicated in the Office Action below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 17-36 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea without significantly more).
Under step 1, it is determined whether the claims are directed to a statutory category of invention (see MPEP 2106.03(II)). In the instant case, claims 17-23 are directed to a method, claims 24-30 are directed to an apparatus, and claims 31-36 are directed to a product of manufacture (non-transitory computer readable medium).
While the claims fall within statutory categories, under revised Step 2A, Prong 1 of the eligibility analysis (MPEP 2106.04), the claimed invention recites an abstract idea of determining and generating push information related to product attributes for a user. Specifically, representative claim 17 recites the abstract idea of:
extracting preference attributes of a user for a product from user dialogue information in a current dialogue scenario;
determining an effective attribute node corresponding to each preference attribute in a pre-constructed knowledge graph, wherein the knowledge graph comprises attribute nodes each representing a product attribute of a graph product, product nodes each representing the graph product and edges each connecting an attribute node and a product node, and each edge represents an association relationship between the product node and the attribute node connected by the edge, wherein the determining the effective attribute node corresponding to each preference attribute in the pre-constructed knowledge graph includes searching the knowledge graph for the effective attribute node corresponding to each preference attribute in the knowledge graph;
sorting the effective attribute nodes according to a dialogue time sequence to generate a dialogue path;
determining a candidate attribute set and a candidate product set based on the dialogue path and the knowledge graph, wherein the candidate attribute set comprises only each adjacent attribute of an effective attribute node at an end of the dialogue path in the knowledge graph, and the candidate product set comprises product information represented by each product node connected to the each effective attribute node, wherein the effective attribute node at the end of the dialogue path in the knowledge graph is a latest attribute node of the effective attribute nodes sorted in the dialogue time sequence, and there is only one product node between each adjacent attribute and the effective attribute node;
predicting a current push strategy based on a current state vector by using a strategy prediction, wherein the current state vector is generated based on a dialogue record in the current dialogue scenario, and the push strategy represents pushing attribute querying information or pushing product information to the user at a current time;
determining a to-be pushed object from the candidate attribute set or the candidate product set based on the current push strategy, and generating current to-be pushed information based on the to-be pushed object; and
pushing the current to-be pushed information.
Under revised Step 2A, Prong 1 of the eligibility analysis, it is necessary to evaluate whether the claim recites a judicial exception by referring to subject matter groupings articulated in 2106.04(a) of the MPEP. Even in consideration of the analysis, the claims recite an abstract idea. Representative claim 1 recites the abstract idea of determining and generating push information related to product attributes for a user, as noted above. This concept is considered to be a method of organizing human activity. Certain methods of organizing human activity include “fundamental economic principles or practices (including hedging, insurance, mitigating risk); commercial or legal interactions (including agreements in the form of contracts; legal obligations; advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations); managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions).” MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)(II). In this case, the abstract idea recited in representative claim 1 is a certain method of organizing human activity because it relates to sale activities since the claims specifically recites the step of extracting preference attributes of a user for a product using dialogue information in a dialogue scenario, determining an effective attribute node corresponding to each preference attribute in a knowledge graph, where the graph comprises attribute node, product nodes, and edges that are connected based on an attribute node and a product node, each representing a product attribute of a graph product, and each edge represents the associated relationship between a product node and an attribute node, sorting the effective attribute nodes according to the dialogue information time sequence to generate a dialogue path, determining candidate attribute set and a candidate product set based on path of the dialogue, wherein the effective attribute node at the end of the dialogue path in the knowledge graph is a latest attribute node of the effective attribute nodes sorted in the dialogue time sequence, and there is only one product node between each adjacent attribute and the effective attribute node, predicting a current strategy to push information, where the strategy represents pushing attribute querying information or pushing product information to the user at a current time, determining a to-be pushed object from the candidate attribute set or the candidate product set based on the current push strategy, and generating current to-be pushed information based on the to-be pushed object, and then providing the to-be pushed information to a user, thereby making this a sales activity or behavior.
Thus, representative claim 1 recites an abstract idea.
Under Step 2A, Prong 2 of the eligibility analysis, if it is determined that the claims recite a judicial exception, it is then necessary to evaluate whether the claims recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application of that exception. MPEP 2106.04(d). The courts have identified limitations that did not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application include limitations merely reciting the words “apply it” (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely using a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea, as discussed in MPEP 2106.05(f). MPEP 2106.04(d). In this case, representative claim 17 includes the additional element of a pre-trained strategy prediction model.
Although reciting such additional elements, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they merely amount to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer or merely use a computer as a tool to perform the abstract idea. These additional elements are described at a high level in Applicant’s specification without any meaningful detail about their structure or configuration. Similar to the limitations of Alice, representative claim 1 merely recites a commonplace business method (i.e., determining and generating push information related to product attributes for a user) being applied on a general-purpose computer using general purpose computer technology. MPEP 2106.05(f). While the claims recite a pre-trained model, the recitations are results based in nature and do not include details as to how the model is actually functioning beyond known functions. Thus, the claimed additional elements are merely generic elements and the implementation of the elements merely amounts to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer. Since the additional elements merely include instructions to implement the abstract idea on a generic computer or merely use a generic computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea, the abstract idea has not been integrated into a practical application.
Under Step 2B of the eligibility analysis, if it is determined that the claims recite a judicial exception that is not integrated into a practical application of that exception, it is then necessary to evaluate the additional elements individually and in combination to determine whether they provide an inventive concept (i.e., whether the additional elements amount to significantly more than the exception itself). MPEP 2106.05. In this case, as noted above, the additional element recited in independent claim 17 is recited and described in a generic manner merely amount to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer.
Even when considered as an ordered combination, the additional elements of representative claim 17 does not add anything that is not already present when considered individually. In Alice, the court considered the additional elements “as an ordered combination,” and determined that “the computer components…‘ad[d] nothing…that is not already present when the steps are considered separately’… [and] [v]iewed as a whole…[the] claims simply recite intermediated settlement as performed by a generic computer.” Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208, 217, (2014) (citing Mayo, 566 U.S. at 79, 101 USPQ2d at 1972). Similarly, when viewed as a whole, representative claim 17 simply conveys the abstract idea itself facilitated by generic computing components. Therefore, under Step 2B of the Alice/Mayo test, there are no meaningful limitations in representative claim 17 that transforms the judicial exception into a patent eligible application such that the claims amount to significantly more than the judicial exception itself.
As such, representative claim 17 is ineligible.
Independent claims 24 and 31 are similar in nature to representative claim 17, and Step 2A, Prong 1 analysis is the same as above for representative claim 17. It is noted that in independent claim 24 includes the additional elements of an apparatus, at least one processor, and a memory storing instructions, wherein the instructions when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform operations, and independent claim 31 includes the additional element of a non-transitory compute readable medium, storing a computer program, wherein the program, when executed by a processor, implements operations. The Applicant’s specification does not provide any discussion or description of additional elements in claims 24 and 31, as being anything other than generic elements. Thus, the claimed additional elements of claims 24 and 31 are merely generic elements and the implementation of the elements merely amounts to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer. As such, the additional elements of claims 24 and 31 do not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application of the abstract idea. Additionally, the additional elements of claims 24 and 31, considered individually and in combination, do not provide an inventive concept because they merely amount to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer.
As such, claims 24 and 31 are ineligible.
Dependent claims 18-23, 25-30, and 32-36, depending from claims 1, 24, and 31 respectively, do not aid in the eligibility of the independent claim 17. The claims of 18-23, 25-30 and 32-36, merely act to provide further limitations of the abstract idea and are ineligible subject matter.
It is noted that dependent claims include the additional element of an embedding vector (claims 18, 25, & 32). Applicant’s specification does not provide any discussion or description of the an embedding vector as being anything other than a generic element. The claimed additional elements, individually and in combination with other claimed features, does not integrate into a practical application and does not provide an inventive concept because they are merely being used to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer (see MPEP 2106.05(f)). Accordingly, claims 18, 25, and 32 are directed towards an abstract idea. Additionally, the additional element of claims 18, 25, 32, considered individually and in combination, do not provide an inventive concept because they merely amount to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer. It is further noted that the remaining dependent claims 19-23, 26-30, and 33-36 do not recite any further additional elements to consider in the analysis, and therefore would not provide additional elements that would integrate the abstract idea into a practical application and would not provide an inventive concept.
As such, claims 18-23, 25-30, and 32-36 are ineligible.
Reasons for Allowable Subject Matter
Prior Art Considerations:
Upon review of the evidence at hand, it is concluded that the totality of evidence in combination, neither anticipates, reasonably teaches, nor renders obvious the below noted features of the Applicant’s invention.
Regarding the independent claims, the features are as follows:
wherein the effective attribute node at the end of the dialogue path in the knowledge graph is a latest attribute node of the effective attribute nodes sorted in the dialogue time sequence, and there is only one product node between each adjacent attribute and the effective attribute node
The most apposite prior art of record includes Gaskill, B. (PGP No. US 2018/0052885 A1), in view of Crook, P., et al. (PGP No. US 2022/0156465 A1), and Yang, T., et al. (PGP No. US 2014/0244428 A1), to teach a method for pushing information to users.
The reference of Gaskill describes a method for pushing information that includes a data extraction module that provides the extracted data to the dialog manager, where for instance, a user can input text for finding a specific item or product for purchase, and the system can extract the keywords or features for the item of interest using the current user’s interaction for the shopping session (Gaskill, see: paragraphs [0076], [0096], [0099], and [0102]). Gaskill also includes a knowledge graph that represents nodes and edges for items and item categories, including the item attributes and or value, where each item belongs to a certain category, such as ‘Men’s shoes’ or ‘cars and trucks’, where the edges indicate the correlation value and strength of the relationships associated between items and categories (Gaskill, see: paragraphs [0082], [0104]-[0107], and [0114]). Gaskill further describes that the system processes the sequence of inputs from the user, such as queries, and responses to prompts of the system (Gaskill, paragraph [0077]). The reference also describes the nodes are based upon previous utterances and terms provided by previous users of the system while shopping in the marketplace (Gaskill, paragraph [0077], [0112]). Further, it is described that the dialog manger proceeds in sequence from broadest category to more specific of a sub-category or an attribute (Gaskill, paragraph [0118]). The system of Gaskill includes determining candidate prompts, based upon on the interest indicated from the user, or if the user is more interested in a particular product line or style, allowing for the system to filter or narrow the attributes in the knowledge graph, indicating better suited candidates for the user (Gaskill, paragraphs [0118], [0120], and FIGS. 11B and 12). Next, the system of Gaskill will determine a next action type based on the operations of the dialog manager’s decision that the input and query of a user is complete, deciding that there is enough data to generate a prompt and suggesting or recommending items to the user (Gaskill, paragraphs [0039], [0045], [0103], [0127]). The prompting of the recommending then leads to the actual prompt provided to the user, such as providing a prompt letting the user know that a specific pair of sneakers have been found, along with displaying an image of the sneakers (Gaskill, paragraph [0127]). Although Gaskill describes the features of the knowledge graph, containing nodes and edges with relationships correlated, Gaskill does not describe the features of an effective attribute node at the end of the dialogue path in the knowledge graph is a latest attribute node of the effective attribute nodes sorted in the dialogue time sequence, and there is only one product node between each adjacent attribute and the effective attribute node.
The reference of Crook is relied upon merely to demonstrate that the sequence involved with the user input is in a dialogue form, where the system of Crook includes an assistant to determine a specific act of dialogue from the user, depicting a specific time sequence for all of the acts included in the user dialogue (Crook, see: paragraph [0097] and [0098], and FIG. 5C). Although Crook describes these features of a dialogue sequence, the reference does not describe the allowable features of the effective attribute node at the end of the dialogue path in the knowledge graph is a latest attribute node of the effective attribute nodes sorted in the dialogue time sequence, and there is only one product node between each adjacent attribute and the effective attribute node.
The reference of Yang describes a ranking system that utilizes tracking information of the user, and uses the tracked information to rank selections, ultimately providing recommendations of products to the user based upon a highest ranked product (Yang, see: paragraphs [0051] and [0063]). Although Yang describes the process of recommending products to the user, Yang does not describe a knowledge graph with nodes, and does not describe any of the allowable features indicated above.
The Examiner further emphasizes the claims as a whole and hereby asserts that the totality of the evidence fails to set forth, either explicitly or implicitly, an appropriate rationale for further modification of the evidence at hand to arrive at the claimed invention. Moreover, the combination of features of independent claims, would not have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art because any combination of evidence at hand to reach the combination of features as claimed would require substantial reconstruction of Applicant’s claimed invention relying on improper hindsight bias and resulting in an inappropriate combination.
It is hereby asserted by the Examiner, that in light of the above and in further deliberation over all of the evidence at hand, that the claims recite allowable subject matter, as the evidence at hand does not anticipate the claims and does not render obvious any further modification of the references to a person of ordinary skill in the art.
Examiner’s Comment
The Examiner notes that the non-patent literature (NPL) document, titled Impactful techniques to help you ace your product recommendations, published in XP2 by dynamic yield (2020), documented on PTO-892 form as reference U, and hereinafter referred to as ‘Impactful’, describes a guide to improve product recommendations using algorithmic strategies, extracting user data behavior, such as interactions off and onsite in order to generate more relevant recommendations and increase shopping purchases. Although the reference Impactful describes such features, the reference does not disclose or teach the allowable features that are stated above, and does not remedy the deficiencies of the noted prior art.
Response to Arguments
With respect to the rejections made under 35 USC § 101, the Applicant’s arguments filed on 19 December 2025, have been fully considered but are not considered persuasive.
In response to the Applicant’s arguments found on pages 13-14 of the remarks stating that “The Applicant submits that each of independent claims 17, 24 and 31 as amended is not directed to an abstract idea” and “The features of ‘determining effective attribute nodes in a pre-constructed knowledge graph’ and ‘generating a dialog path by sorting effective attribute nodes according to dialogue time sequence and the knowledge graph’—as explicitly recited in the claim and supported by the specification—are technical, concrete limitations that transform abstract concepts into patent-eligible subject matter,” the Examiner respectfully disagrees. Under Step 2A, Prong One of the eligibility analysis, even when considering the amendments to the claims recite and are directed to the abstract idea of determining and generating push information related to product attributes for a user. The abstract idea in this case, falls into the enumerated grouping of a certain method of organizing human activity, related to sales activities or behaviors because the claims specifically recite the steps of extracting preference attributes of a user for a product using dialogue information, determining an effective attribute node corresponding to each preference attribute in a knowledge graph, where the graph comprises attribute node, product nodes, and edges that are connected based on an attribute node and a product node, each representing a product attribute of a graph product, and each edge represents the associated relationship between a product node and an attribute node, determining a time sequence to generate a dialogue path, determining candidate attribute set and a candidate product set based on path of the dialogue, where the strategy represents pushing attribute querying information or pushing product information to the user at a current time, determining a to-be pushed object from the candidate attribute set or the candidate product set based on the current push strategy, and generating current to-be pushed information based on the to-be pushed object, and then providing the to-be pushed information to a user. Even though the claims recite the features of the knowledge graph that includes the attribute nodes, product nodes, edges, searching the knowledge graph, and determining a candidate attribute set and a candidate product set based on the dialogue path and the knowledge graph, these features are considered to be features directed to the abstract idea. The features, although may be explained in the specification in a technical manner, are not described in the claim language as features that would be considered beyond the abstract idea. The currently claimed features are carrying out functions that could be carried out without technical features, such as carried out without a computer, and therefore the amended claims are still directed to the abstract idea.
In response to the Applicant’s arguments found on pages 14-15 of the remarks stating “These features—recited explicitly in the claim and supported by the specification’s technical details—integrate abstract ‘information push’ into a practical, patent-eligible technical solution,” the Examiner respectfully disagrees. Under Step 2A, Prong Two of the eligibility analysis, the amended claims do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. The representative independent claim 17 recites the additional element of a pre-trained strategy prediction model. The remaining features in the claims are considered to be directed to the abstract idea, as stated above. The additional element in this case, does not integrate the abstract idea because the additional element is described in a general or generic manner and is being used to apply the abstract idea with a generically recited computing component. Even though the claim recites the model, the recitations are results based in nature and do not include details as to how the model actually is functioning beyond known functions. Thus, the claimed additional elements are merely generic elements and the implementation of the elements merely amounts to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer and computing components. Therefore, the Examiner maintains that the claims do not recite limitations and additional elements that would integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, and thus, maintains the 101 rejection.
With respect to the rejections made under 35 USC § 103, the Applicant’s arguments filed on 19 December 2025, have been fully considered, and in light of the Applicant’s amendments to the claims, the claims now recite allowable subject matter, and thus, the 103 rejection is withdrawn.
Conclusion
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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/ASHLEY D PRESTON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3688
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