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 .
Election/Restrictions
Claim 5 is withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected species, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 12/12/2025.
Applicant’s election without traverse of claims 1-4, 6, and 7 in the reply filed on 12/12/2025 is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDSs) submitted on 03/08/2024 and 09/13/2024 were filed in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and 1.98. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation(s) is/are: “calculator” and “determination part” in claim 1.
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph
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 1-4, 6 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. Independent claims 1, 6, and 7 relate to the statutory category of method/process and machine/apparatus. Independent claim 1, 6, and 7 recite “…calculate(ing) a distance between vectors defined for the words; and …determin(ing) a pair of the words corresponding to the vectors to be synonyms when the distance between the vectors is smaller than or equal to a predefined distance, wherein the …calculate(ing), as the distance between the vectors, a curvilinear surface distance between the vectors in a hyperbolic space in which the vectors are defined”. The limitations of claims 1, 6, and 7 of “…calculat(ing)…”, “…determin(ing)…”, “…calculate(ing)…as drafted covers mental activity. More specifically, for claim 1, a human can, while reviewing a document determine if the words being reviewed are similar and what the distance between the similarity is. The human, from previous knowledge can determine if the words being reviewed are analogous of each other and how closely related they are.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, claim 6 recites the additional elements of “computer” and “processor” which are recited generally in the specification. For example, in paragraph [0056] of the as published patent application, there is a description of using a general purpose computer. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to the integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element of using a computer as general computer is noted. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. The claims are not patent eligible.
With respect to claims 2 and 3, the claims relate to using a particular mathematical algorithm to calculate the distance. The claim relates to a mental activity of using a mathematical formula to calculate determine the similarity between words. No additional limitations are present.
With respect to claim 4, the claim relates to determining if the words are synonyms and if they are adding the words to a preexisting dictionary.. The claim relates to a mental activity of determining if two words are analogous to each other. No additional limitations are present.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-4, 6 and 7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Scodary et al. (US 2021/0027799).
Regarding Claim 1, Scodary et al discloses a similarity calculation apparatus that calculates a similarity between words, the apparatus comprising: a distance calculator calculating a distance between vectors defined for the words (In one embodiment, B(a, c.sub.i) computes a minimum edit distance from each caller tag to each agent tag. This enables the system to reasonably understand that the caller tag “Speaks Spanish” and “Spanish” are related) (page 13, paragraph [0348]); and a determination part determining a pair of the words corresponding to the vectors to be synonyms when the distance between the vectors is smaller than or equal to a predefined distance (Call similarity may be performed by embedding the sequence of words into a sequence of vectors, with several signal features (i.e., energy, variance, spectral coefficients) appended to the word embedding. The distance function between two similarity matrices may minimize the distance between paired word/signal vectors) (page 17, paragraph [0478]), wherein the distance calculator calculates, as the distance between the vectors, a curvilinear surface distance between the vectors in a hyperbolic space in which the vectors are defined (Matching algorithms include euclidean or cosine distance, minimum flow, or distance along a space filling curve (i.e., a Hilbert curve)) (page 19, paragraph [0500]).
Regarding Claim 2, Scodary et al discloses the similarity calculation apparatus, wherein each of the vectors is described by Euclidean coordinates (Matching algorithms include euclidean or cosine distance, minimum flow, or distance along a space filling curve (i.e., a Hilbert curve)) (page 19, paragraph [0500]), and the curvilinear surface distance is a value obtained by multiplying a distance between the Euclidean coordinates of the vectors by a curvature of a curved surface between the vectors (Matching algorithms include euclidean or cosine distance, minimum flow, or distance along a space filling curve (i.e., a Hilbert curve). These matching algorithms may have a low- and high-fidelity step such that the majority of audio content may be filtered, rather than performing a linear search) (page 17, paragraph [0465]).
Regarding Claim 3, Scodary et al discloses the similarity calculation apparatus, wherein the curvature is represented by a norm of a vector product of the vectors (Matching algorithms include euclidean or cosine distance, minimum flow, or distance along a space filling curve (i.e., a Hilbert curve). These matching algorithms may have a low- and high-fidelity step such that the majority of audio content may be filtered, rather than performing a linear search) (page 17, paragraph [0465]).
Regarding Claim 4, Scodary et al discloses the similarity calculation apparatus, wherein the determination part associates the pair of words determined to be the synonyms with each other, and registers the pair of words in a synonym dictionary (For example, precomputed weights for different words and phrases may be implemented in a lookup table, and a word-trie data structure generated to efficiently count occurrences of words and phrases, weighted by configured coefficients) (page 6, paragraph [0108]).
Regarding Claim 6, Scodary et al discloses a non-transitory recording medium storing a similarity calculation program including a plurality of commands to be executed by one or more processors (Fig. 1, audio signal processor 104 and natural language processor 106) and executable by a computer (Fig. 38, machine 3800), the similarity calculation program when being installed in the computer and executed by the computer functioning as, using the plurality of commands executed by the one or more processors, the following steps comprising: causing the computer to calculate a distance between vectors defined for words (In one embodiment, B(a, c.sub.i) computes a minimum edit distance from each caller tag to each agent tag. This enables the system to reasonably understand that the caller tag “Speaks Spanish” and “Spanish” are related) (page 13, paragraph [0348]); and causing the computer to determine a pair of the words corresponding to the vectors to be synonyms when the distance between the vectors is smaller than or equal to a predefined distance (Call similarity may be performed by embedding the sequence of words into a sequence of vectors, with several signal features (i.e., energy, variance, spectral coefficients) appended to the word embedding. The distance function between two similarity matrices may minimize the distance between paired word/signal vectors) (page 17, paragraph [0478]), wherein the distance between the vectors is a curvilinear surface distance between the vectors in a hyperbolic space in which the vectors are defined (Matching algorithms include euclidean or cosine distance, minimum flow, or distance along a space filling curve (i.e., a Hilbert curve)) (page 19, paragraph [0500]).
Claim 7 is rejected for the same reason as claim 1.
Cited Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Tandecki et al. (US 2021/0319785) disclose word edit distance embedding.
Yuan et al. (US 20170235823) discloses clustering multilingual documents.
Ducatel et a. (US 10,296,584) discloses semantic textual analysis.
Atasu et al. (US 11,222,054) discloses low-complexity method for assessing distances between pairs of documents.
Scodary et al. (US 11,601,552) discloses hierarchical interface for adaptive closed loop communication system.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SATWANT K SINGH whose telephone number is (571)272-7468. The examiner can normally be reached Monday thru Friday 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Paras D Shah can be reached at (571}270-1650. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SATWANT K SINGH/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2653