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 .
Applicant’s filing dated 03/20/2024 has been received and made of record.
Application 18/611,225 claims the benefit of Provisional Application 63/460,194, filed 04/18/2023.
Applicant’s amendments dated 06/25/2026 and 08/27/2026 have been received and made of record.
Claims 7 and 14 have been canceled. Claims 1, 6, 13, and 15-20 have been amended. Claims 21 and 22 are newly added.
Claims 1-6, 8-13, and 15-22 are currently pending in Application 18/611,225.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks, filed 06/25/2026 and 08/27/2026, with respect to the 35 USC 101 rejections of the pending claims have been fully considered and are persuasive. The 35 USC 101 rejection has been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks, filed 06/25/2026 and 08/27/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-6, 8-13, and 15-22 under 35 USC 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Jayaraman2 (US 2024/0163232 A1) and Leeds (US 11,431,660 B1) as detailed below.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
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.
Claim(s) 1-2, 5, 7-9, 12, 14-16, and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koh (US 2019/0392926 A1) and Greyboi (“Prompt Engineering: Pre-prompting to improve your chatbot’s semantic lookup”), further in view of Jayaraman2 (US 2024/0163232 A1).
Regarding claims 1, 8, and 15 Koh discloses A method (Koh: Claim 1, “method”)/machine (Koh: Claim 15, “system”)/non-transitory machine-readable storage medium storing executable instructions that, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations (Koh: Paragraph [0047], “a controller including at least one processor 220 (e.g., CPU) and at least one memory device 230 (which can include one or more computer-readable storage mediums)”) comprising:
one or more processors (Koh: Paragraph [0047], “a controller including at least one processor 220 (e.g., CPU) and at least one memory device 230 (which can include one or more computer-readable storage mediums)”);
and one or more memories storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the machine to perform operations (Koh: Paragraph [0047], “a controller including at least one processor 220 (e.g., CPU) and at least one memory device 230 (which can include one or more computer-readable storage mediums)”) comprising:
receiving, by one or more processors (Koh: Paragraph [0047], “a controller including at least one processor 220 (e.g., CPU) and at least one memory device 230 (which can include one or more computer-readable storage mediums)”), a chatbot mention message from a user system of a user in a group chat session, the chatbot mention message comprising a chatbot prompt created by the user (Koh: Paragraph [0094], “ displaying a response by the AI medical assistant in response to a user input 1110 within a conversation with one or more other users (e.g., individual chat, group chat)… user input 110 may include a callout or tag (e.g., “@ [assistant name]”) accompanying a particular user query to invite a response from the AI medical assistant though the user is not directly in a one-on-one conversation with the AI medical assistant”);
generating, by the one or more processors, a chatbot response message using the prompt (Koh: Figure 4B and Paragraph [0068], “a response to the user input may be generated (450) based at least in part on the ranked relevance scores for content candidates”);
and providing, by the one or more processors, the chatbot response message to one or more other user systems of one or more other users in the group chat session (Koh: Paragraph [0094], “ displaying a response by the AI medical assistant in response to a user input 1110 within a conversation with one or more other users (e.g., individual chat, group chat)… user input 110 may include a callout or tag (e.g., “@ [assistant name]”).
Koh does not explicitly disclose generating, by the one or more processors, a prompt using the chatbot mention message.
However, Greyboi teaches generating, by the one or more processors, a prompt using the chatbot mention message (Greyboi: Page 4, “every time I prompt for the next bot response, I include relevant chunks of the youtube document (alternatively this could be chat history), by taking the user’s input, generating an embedding, grabbing the most relevant results in embedding distance order from the vector db, and stuffing them in the prompt”).
Koh and Greyboi are analogous art in the same field of endeavor as the instant invention as both are drawn to chatbot systems. 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; that is, it would have been obvious to incorporate Greyboi’s enhanced prompting into the system of Koh to allow for improved natural language processing and results.
Koh-Greyboi does not explicitly disclose the chatbot mention message further comprising a user identification of the user that originated the chatbot mention message;
determining, by the one or more processors, using the user identification of the user that originated the chatbot mention message, a persona of the chatbot that was defined by the user that originated the chatbot mention message;
… and the persona that was defined by the user that originated the chatbot mention message.
Koh and Greyboi are analogous art in the same field of endeavor as the instant invention as both are drawn to chatbot systems. 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; that is, it would have been obvious to incorporate Greyboi’s enhanced prompting into the system of Koh to allow for improved natural language processing and results.
However, Jayaraman2 teaches the chatbot mention message further comprising a user identification of the user that originated the chatbot mention message (Jayaraman2: Paragraphs [0096] and [0099], “At step 725, the system will receive an indication for a chat bot response. This is an indication that the chat bot should communicate with the user… Both content and personality will be determined based on the user profile”; this inherently requires some identification of the user);
determining, by the one or more processors, using the user identification of the user that originated the chatbot mention message, a persona of the chatbot that was defined by the user that originated the chatbot mention message (Jayaraman2: Paragraph [0099], “Once the user selects a chat bot personality, the system will record the user-selected chat bot personality in the user preferences of the user profile. This user-selected personality will be used when determining the personality of the chat bot response at step 730”);
… and the persona that was defined by the user that originated the chatbot mention message (Jayaraman2: Paragraph [0099], “Once the user selects a chat bot personality, the system will record the user-selected chat bot personality in the user preferences of the user profile. This user-selected personality will be used when determining the personality of the chat bot response at step 730”).
Koh-Greyboi and Jayaraman2 are analogous art in the same field of endeavor as the instant invention as both are drawn to chatbot systems. 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; that is, it would have been obvious to incorporate Jayaraman2’s personality/persona selection into the system of Koh-Greyboi to allow for greater user customization.
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 teaches 2/9/16. The method of claim 1/machine of claim 8/medium of claim 15, further comprising:
storing, by the one or more processors, one or more stored chatbot mention messages and one or more stored chatbot response messages associated with the user (Greyboi: Page 4, “every time I prompt for the next bot response, I include relevant chunks of the youtube document (alternatively this could be chat history), by taking the user’s input, generating an embedding, grabbing the most relevant results in embedding distance order from the vector db, and stuffing them in the prompt”);
and generating a context for the prompt using the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more stored chatbot response messages (Greyboi: Page 4, “every time I prompt for the next bot response, I include relevant chunks of the youtube document (alternatively this could be chat history), by taking the user’s input, generating an embedding, grabbing the most relevant results in embedding distance order from the vector db, and stuffing them in the prompt”).
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 teaches 5/12/19. The method of claim 2/machine of claim 9/medium of claim 16, wherein the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more stored chatbot response messages are associated with two or more users in the group chat session, and wherein the method further comprises generating, by the one or more processors, a context for the prompt for each user of the group chat session using the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more stored chatbot response messages (Greyboi: Page 4, “every time I prompt for the next bot response, I include relevant chunks of the youtube document (alternatively this could be chat history), by taking the user’s input, generating an embedding, grabbing the most relevant results in embedding distance order from the vector db, and stuffing them in the prompt”; Koh: Paragraph [0066], “user intent and/or medical content may additionally or alternatively be predicted based at least in part on a user's previous search history and/or previous terminology (in chat conversations, note-taking, etc.)”; it is implicit or would be obvious that group messages would be considered for context in the combined system of Koh-Greyboi).
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 teaches 7/14. The method of claim 1/machine of claim 8, wherein generating the response comprises generating the response using a persona of the chatbot (Koh: Paragraphs [0065] and [0068], “colloquial or shorthand medical terminology may be “learned” by user feedback and used to adjust relevance scores appropriately… the conversation simulator 332 may be configured to present the medical content in a colloquial manner”; the style of the chatbot, which may be user or area specific, can be considered a persona).
Claim(s) 3-4, 10-11, and 17-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koh (US 2019/0392926 A1), Greyboi (“Prompt Engineering: Pre-prompting to improve your chatbot’s semantic lookup”), and Jayaraman2 (US 2024/0163232 A1) as applied above and further in view of Peterson (“You Can Save Your ChatGPT Conversations for Later”).
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 teaches 3/10/17. The method of claim 2/machine of claim 9/medium of claim 16.
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 does not explicitly disclose in response to receiving, by the one or more processors, a delete message request from the user, deleting the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more stored chatbot response messages.
However, Peterson teaches this feature (Peterson: Page 3, “It’s easy to delete conversations, if you want: Choose the conversation in question, select the trash can icon, then choose the checkmark to delete it. You can also clear your entire conversation history from the “Clear conversations” options towards the bottom of the sidebar”).
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 and Peterson are analogous art in the same field of endeavor as the instant invention as both are drawn to chatbot systems. 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; that is, it would have been obvious to incorporate Peterson’s description of conversation deletion into the system of Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 for greater user control of privacy and context.
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2-Peterson teaches 4/11/18. The method of claim 3/machine of claim 10/medium of claim 17, wherein deleting the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more chatbot prompt messages comprises immediately deleting the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more chatbot prompt messages from a short-term datastore, and deleting the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more chatbot prompt messages from a long term datastore using a message deletion policy (Peterson: Page 3, “It’s easy to delete conversations, if you want: Choose the conversation in question, select the trash can icon, then choose the checkmark to delete it. You can also clear your entire conversation history from the “Clear conversations” options towards the bottom of the sidebar”; this procedure would delete the conversation from both short-term working memory (RAM) and long-term storage (disk) at ChatGPT’s servers).
Claim(s) 3-4, 10-11, and 17-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koh (US 2019/0392926 A1), Greyboi (“Prompt Engineering: Pre-prompting to improve your chatbot’s semantic lookup”), and Jayaraman2 (US 2024/0163232 A1) as applied above and further in view of Jayaraman (US 2024/0303739 A1).
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 teaches 3/10/17. The method of claim 2/machine of claim 9/medium of claim 16.
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 does not explicitly disclose in response to receiving, by the one or more processors, a delete message request from the user, deleting the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more stored chatbot response messages.
However, Jayaraman teaches this feature (Jayaraman: Paragraph [0106], “during the virtual chat communication session, a user, via a client device executing a software application associated with a financial institution over a communication network, may transmit a verbal or textual command to a virtual support agent (a human support agent or an automated support agent/chatbot) associated with the financial institution. The verbal or textual command may be to: erase/delete all data and information associated with a current virtual chat communication session from any memory, and/or (2) erase/delete in its entirety from memory, the data and information associated with a previous virtual chat communication session (i.e., a virtual chat communication session that was conducted temporally before the current virtual chat communication session), and/or (3) erase/delete from memory selective portions of a previous virtual chat communication session (i.e., a virtual chat communication session that was conducted temporally before the current virtual chat communication session)”).
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 and Jayaraman are analogous art in the same field of endeavor as the instant invention as both are drawn to chatbot systems. 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; that is, it would have been obvious to incorporate Jayaraman’s conversation deletion feature into the system of Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 for greater user control of privacy.
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2-Jayaraman teaches 4/11/18. The method of claim 3/machine of claim 10/medium of claim 17, wherein deleting the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more chatbot prompt messages comprises immediately deleting the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more chatbot prompt messages from a short-term datastore, and deleting the one or more stored chatbot mention messages and the one or more chatbot prompt messages from a long term datastore using a message deletion policy (Jayaraman: Paragraph [0106], “during the virtual chat communication session, a user, via a client device executing a software application associated with a financial institution over a communication network, may transmit a verbal or textual command to a virtual support agent (a human support agent or an automated support agent/chatbot) associated with the financial institution. The verbal or textual command may be to: erase/delete all data and information associated with a current virtual chat communication session from any memory, and/or (2) erase/delete in its entirety from memory, the data and information associated with a previous virtual chat communication session (i.e., a virtual chat communication session that was conducted temporally before the current virtual chat communication session), and/or (3) erase/delete from memory selective portions of a previous virtual chat communication session (i.e., a virtual chat communication session that was conducted temporally before the current virtual chat communication session)”; this procedure would delete the conversation from both short-term working memory (RAM) and long-term storage (disk) at the institution’s servers).
Claim(s) 3-4, 10-11, and 17-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koh (US 2019/0392926 A1), Greyboi (“Prompt Engineering: Pre-prompting to improve your chatbot’s semantic lookup”), and Jayaraman2 (US 2024/0163232 A1) as applied above and further in view of Leeds (US 11,431,660 B1).
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 teaches 21/22. The method of claim 1/machine of claim 8.
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 does not explicitly disclose determining, by the one or more processors, whether inclusion of the chatbot in the group chat session requires agreement by the one or more other users in the group chat session; in response to determining that the inclusion of the chatbot requires the agreement, prompting, by the one or more processors, the one or more other users in the group chat session to approve the inclusion of the chatbot; and processing, by the one or more processors, the chatbot mention message in response to receiving explicit agreement from each of the one or more other users in the group chat session.
However, Leeds teaches a variety of entry mechanisms for a forum, including voting on adding or removing members (which would include chatbots) (Leeds: Column 15 Lines 30-42).
Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 and Leeds are analogous art in the same field of endeavor as the instant invention as both are drawn to chatbot systems. 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; that is, it would have been obvious to incorporate Leeds’s admission controls into the system of Koh-Greyboi-Jayaraman2 for greater control of privacy.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim(s) 6, 13, and 20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Gatti de Bayser (US 2018/0025726 A1) describes a mediator system for adding a chatbot to a group chat based on explicitly asking for and receiving user permission (Gatti de Bayser: Paragraph [0060]).
Sugimoto (US 2019/0288963 A1) describes a printer chatbot that provides instructions immediately upon joining a chat (Sugimoto: Figure 15).
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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/IMAD HUSSAIN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2453
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