DETAILED ACTION
This non-final rejection is responsive to the Request for Continued Examination (RCE) filed January 21, 2026. Claims 1, 3, 8, 10, 15, and 17 are currently amended.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 January 21, 2026 has been entered.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on February 2, 2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zach Bobbitt’s “Pandas: How to Read Excel File with Merged Cells” (hereinafter ‘Bobbitt) in view of Robert O’Brien’s “Tips And Tricks: How To Fill Null Values in SQL” (hereinafter ‘O’Brien’).
With respect to claims 1, 8 and 15 Bobbitt teaches:
receiving spreadsheet data comprising cells organized into at least a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns (Bobbitt, pages 1-2 –Excel file merged_data.xlsx that contains information about various basketball players);
exporting the spreadsheet data into a data frame table representing the plurality of rows and the plurality of columns such that the data frame table includes separate unmerged cells in two or more rows of a first column of the data frame table in place of a first merged cell of the spreadsheet data (Bobbitt, pages 2-3 – reading Excel file into pandas data frame to generate table on pages 2-3), wherein the first merged cell comprises a first merged-cell value spanning the two or more rows of the plurality of rows (i.e. Mavericks in cells A2-A5 or Rockets in cells A6-A9), and wherein exporting the spreadsheet data comprises splitting the first merged cell into the separate unmerged cells (table on pages 2-3 has separate unmerged cells), the separate unmerged cells including:
a first unmerged cell comprising the first merged-cell value (Bobbitt, pages 2-3 – first unmerged cell has Mavericks as value); and
one or more other cells comprising a predetermined value different from the first merged-cell value (Bobbitt, pages 2-3 – other unmerged cells are filled with NaN values); and
executing a statement on the data frame table to replace the predetermined value in each of the one or more other cells of the separate unmerged cells with a specific value derived from the first merged-cell value, wherein executing the statement comprises generating the statement and executing the statement when exporting the spreadsheet data into the data frame table (Bobbitt, page 3 – the fillna() statement is used to fill NaN values with appropriate team names).
Although Bobbitt teaches a pandas data frame table, which is conceptually similar to a database table (i.e. both are two-dimensional, tabular data structures with rows and columns), Bobbitt does not explicitly teach a database table, a database statement, or executing via a database query or as part of a batch script.
O’Brien teaches database table with null values (table on page 2), filling null values with a database statement (“filling down in SQL” on pages 3-6) , and executing the database statement via a database query or as part of a batch script (“filling down in SQL” on pages 3-6).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to have combine Bobbitt and O’Brien to arrive at the claimed invention of importing spreadsheet data having merged cells into a database table and filling blank/null values created by unmerging cells in the database table using a database statement. A person having ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this combination because both inventions are aimed at filling null values in a table, and pandas interacts with databases using SQL. Further, it is well known, as stated in the background of the present invention and by Bobbitt, that spreadsheet data with merged cells exported into a (SQL or data frame) table generates blank cells in the (SQL or data frame) table that need to be filled with the correct, corresponding values. Therefore, it would have been obvious to fill null or missing values (caused by unmerging imported spreadsheet data) of a SQL table using database statements.
With respect to claims 2, 9 and 16, Bobbitt in view of O’Brien teaches wherein the database statement excludes a loop function (Bobbitt, page 3; O’Brien, pages 3-6) (Neither Bobbitt or O’Brien use a loop function).
With respect to claims 3, 10, and 17, Bobbitt in view of O’Brien teaches wherein generating the database statement comprises: determining, from the separate unmerged cells, the first unmerged cell that comprises the predetermined value; determining, from the separate unmerged cells, the one or more other cells that comprise the first merged-cell value; and determining, from the separate unmerged cells, the specific value for each of the one or more other cells based, at least in part, on the first merged-cell value (Bobbitt, pages 2-3 – the fillna() statement is used to fill NaN values with appropriate team names; O’Brien - “filling down in SQL” on pages 3-6).
With respect to claims 4, 11, and 18, Bobbitt in view of O’Brien teaches wherein the specific value for each of the one or more other cells comprises the first merged-cell value (Bobbitt, pages 2-3 – “Mavericks”; O’Brien, pages 3-6 – “65”).
With respect to claims 5 and 12, Bobbitt in view of O’Brien teaches wherein the predetermined value comprises at least one of a NULL value or a blank value (Bobbitt, pages 2-3 – “NaN” value; O’Brien, pages 2-3 – “null” value).
With respect to claims 6, 13, and 19, Bobbitt in view of O’Brien teaches wherein the plurality of columns comprises a vertical array of data (Bobbitt, pages 1-2 –Excel file merged_data.xlsx table contains columns: Teams, Player, Points, and Assists; O’Brien, page 2 - table has columns: date, day_of_week, and inventory).
With respect to claims 7, 14, and 20, Bobbitt in view of O’Brien teaches, wherein the database statement comprises a structured query language (SQL) database query (O’Brien, pages 3-6 “Filling down in SQL”).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-20 have been considered but are moot because the 35 USC 101 Rejection has been withdrawn and the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALICIA M WILLOUGHBY whose telephone number is (571)272-5599. The examiner can normally be reached 9-5:30, EST, M-F.
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/ALICIA M WILLOUGHBY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2156