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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 December 29, 2025 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
With respect to Applicant’s amendment of claims 1, 12 and 20 with regards to minor informalities, the claim objections with respect to the same have been withdrawn.
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 1-2, 11-13, 20-21 and 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Willshire et al. (US PGPUB 2022/0407960; hereinafter “Willshire”) in view of Grunberg et al. (US PGPUB 2011/0214108; hereinafter “Grunberg”), Taylor et al. (US PGPUB 2020/0409818; hereinafter “Taylor”) and Browne et al. (US PGPUB 2018/0357152; hereinafter “Browne”).
Claim 1: (Currently Amended)
Willshire teaches a method of debugging a digital assistant, comprising:
receiving, by an electronic device and via an input box of a user interface for debugging the digital assistant, a debugging request of a user based on a natural language input ([0078] “FIG. 7 is a flow diagram illustrating an exemplary method for NLU/NLP testing… A platform 100 user can access the admin interface 202 in order to create a conversational AI test set (e.g., one or more test cases and/or test scripts).” [0080] “Once the training and test datasets have been created and curated, the next step is to begin a test session 706.” [0049] “Test scripts can be created by system users via admin interface 202 and may comprise user utterances and chatbot utterances… For example, a user utterance may be a simple ‘hello’ to test the effectiveness of a given chatbot to responds to user greetings, and a chatbot utterance would be any appropriate (as defined by the test script creator) response to the ‘hello’ greeting… a user utterance list comprising various greetings may comprise utterances such as ‘hello’, ‘Hi’, ‘how are you’, ‘can you help me’, and the like.”);
displaying, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a call process of the digital assistant related to the debugging request ([0088] “Once a crawler session has been started the chatbot crawler will locate the locate the ‘conversation start message’ and crawl the conversation flow to detect one or more conversation paths according to chatbot responses 804. The crawler detects the buttons and the quick replies and makes conversations along them…Chatbot crawler engine 204 may create a flow chart of the conversation flow comprising each detected path's flow chart at step 808. This flow chart may be displayed, via admin interface 201, after a crawler session has completed along.”); and
displaying, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a debugging result for the debugging request ([0077] “As a last step 614, the results of each test case (i.e., execution of one or more test scripts) may be sent to a user interface for display and review by a platform 100 user.”);
wherein the call process is performed at least in part based on the model ([0018] “a run-time stack for a chat bot processing may comprise a plurality of components configured to manage chat bot processing so that a chat bot is able to interface with one or more applications/services to provide chat bot functionality,” [0079] “Platform 100 has a variety of tools that support in gathering and augmenting datasets for training and testing. For example, platform 100 includes a test case wizard to download the conversation model of a given NLP provider and convert it to test scripts for test cases which can be used by chatbot NLP engine 206 instantly.” [0086] “To reach the best coverage it is necessary to define all possible conversations for a given conversation model (e.g., chatbot),” wherein the “conversation model”, i.e. “chatbot”, disclosed in Willshire has been shown to perform the equivalent of the claimed “call process”.).
With further regard to Claim 1, Willshire does not teach the following, however, Grunberg teaches:
wherein the call process comprises a call progress and a time for executing the call process ([0037] “profile analyzer 216 renders visualizations for executable code 218 in real time as executable code 218 is being run.” [0021] “The visualizations, by displaying relationship between functions within the application, number of times each function was called, time taken by functions to execute, time taken by each function instance relative to the application's execution time, time taken by all instance of a function relative to the application's execution time, etc,” wherein the “time taken by functions to execute” is the claimed “time for executing the call process”. Further, [0037] “profile analyzer 216 not only provides a visualization for a function call hierarchy, but provides updated visualizations in real time. The updated visualizations provide a limited animation to further display the progress of executable code's 218 function hierarchy as the code is run. In one embodiment, the visualizations discussed below in FIGS. 7A-C contain special colorizations for functions that have been marked by the user and commands for quickly finding marked functions.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire with the function call execution information as taught by Grunberg in order to “provide an application programmer with a visual analysis of executable code and runtime statistics associated with the executable code. The runtime statistics enable an application programmer to focus his or her time and development efforts on specific portions of an application” (Grunberg [0021]).
With further regard to Claim 1, Willshire in view of Grunberg does not teach the following, however, Taylor teaches:
displaying, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a determination process of one or more modular function blocks of the digital assistant related to the debugging request, wherein the determination process is performed at least in part based on a model ([0027] “the diagnostic middleware component 108 may be configured to copy inbound and outbound activities from a run-time stack for a chat bot 102… and propagate such data to the diagnostic visualization state component 104 for subsequent diagnostic processing. Examples of subsequent diagnostic processing comprise but are not limited to: emulating data traffic (e.g., inbound and outbound activities of components of the run-time stack for a chat bot 102) within a graphical user interface of a chat bot diagnostic tool (provided through the diagnostic visualization state component 104),” wherein the “inbound and outbound activities of components of the run-time stack for a chat bot” are the “modular function blocks”. [0050] “FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary processing device view 300 of a debugging data visualization of an exemplary chat bot diagnostic tool.” [0053] “Processing device view 300 further comprises the chat bot code pane 306. The chat bot code pane 306 provides a visual representation of coding of conversation task state of a chat bot application/service relative to message activity that the chat bot has received and processed. The chat bot code pane 306 provides a developer with a way to visualize, through code of the chat bot application/service, when a conversation task state of a chat bot application/service changes.” [0001] “Chat bots are computer programs providing artificial intelligence that is trained to conduct conversations with users,” wherein the “determination process” of the “chat bot” being based at least in part on a model is disclosed above by Willshire in view of Grunberg, i.e. Willshire [0085]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg with the displaying of a determination process as taught by Taylor as “This enables the chat bot diagnostic tool to observe data traffic and filter the data traffic to identify relevant data for debugging a chat bot” (Taylor [0004]).
With further regard to Claim 1, Willshire in view of Grunberg and Taylor does not teach the following, however, Browne teaches:
displaying, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a determination process of one or more modular function blocks of the digital assistant related to the debugging request ([0036] “FIG. 2 provides a block diagram illustrating an AI system with an AI engine and visual debugging module,” wherein the “AI system” is equivalent to the “digital assistant” as discussed above by Willshire in view of Grunberg and Taylor. [0037] “The visual debugging module 213 of the GUI may have a tracking component and the visualization window… The visualization window… shows any of i) computations, ii) graphs, iii) data series and resulting outputs, and iv) any combination of these in the visualization window that the nodes of the AI model, such as a neural network, was thinking when it arrives at specific conclusion… the visualization window visually shows calculations and/or graphs of selected information while the data source, such as a simulation, is still going… This can show how the simulation arrives at its outcome,” wherein the visualization of what the AI system is “thinking” teaches the claimed “displaying… a determination process”.),
wherein the determination process of the one or more modular function blocks is performed at least in part based on a model, and is presented by presenting values output by the model ([0034] “The visual debugging module may provide a visualization window for each AI model while the one or more AI models are at least training with the learner module and one or more simulators.” [0037] “The visualization window… shows any of i) computations, ii) graphs, iii) data series and resulting outputs.”);
displaying, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a call process of the one or more modular function blocks of the digital assistant related to the debugging request, wherein the call process comprises a call progress for the one or more modular function blocks ([0041] “FIG. 5C provides a schematic illustrating a third visualization window 500C of a visual debugging module as the training graph 504 fills with training data such as when training of the AI model commences and simulation data are received. The training graph 504 begins to fill in from right to left as the training data is plotted,” wherein the information shown in the “visualization window” is equivalent to “displaying… a call process”. [0044] “data series… shown in the visualization window together. The selected data series can include actions taken by the AI model, states of the simulator, functions related to the training of the AI model, etc.”); and
wherein the call process of the one or more modular function blocks is performed at least in part based on the model ([0041] “FIG. 5C provides a schematic illustrating a third visualization window 500C of a visual debugging module as the training graph 504 fills with training data such as when training of the AI model commences”.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg and Taylor with the displaying of a determination and call process of modular functions as taught by Browne as “This allows a person viewing this information to glean insight into the explainability of how the predictions are being made/and/or training is progressing while the simulation is occurring” (Browne [0037]).
Claim 2:
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne teaches the method of claim 1. Willshire further teaches
wherein the debugging request comprises a test question to the digital assistant, and the debugging result comprises an expected response to the test question determined based on current configuration information of the digital assistant ([0049] “Test scripts can be created by system users via admin interface 202 and may comprise user utterances and chatbot utterances… For example, a user utterance may be a simple ‘hello’ to test the effectiveness of a given chatbot to responds to user greetings, and a chatbot utterance would be any appropriate (as defined by the test script creator) response to the ‘hello’ greeting… a user utterance list comprising various greetings may comprise utterances such as ‘hello’, ‘Hi’, ‘how are you’, ‘can you help me’, and the like… a test may be scripted, pre-defined or pre-recorded conversations written as a test script. A conversation can consist of a collection of: user inputs which are sent to the chatbot, chatbot responses which are expected to be received from the chatbot.”).
Claim 11:
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne teaches the method of claim 1. Willshire further teaches wherein receiving the debugging request comprises:
receiving, by an electronic device, the debugging request in a debugging area on the user interface ([0048] “Chatbot testing admin interface 202 allows platform users to configure, control, and monitor every aspect of their chatbot under test. Platform users can set up test cases and view a formatted summary about successful and failed test cases from previous or current platform 100 processes (e.g., contact center mapping, chatbot testing results data, IVR crawling results, etc.) which may be displayed and interacted with via chatbot testing admin interface 202.”).
Claim 21: (Currently Amended)
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne teaches the method of claim 1. Willshire teaches further comprising:
displaying, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a call result of the one or more modular function blocks ([0088] “Once a crawler session has been started the chatbot crawler will locate the locate the ‘conversation start message’ and crawl the conversation flow to detect one or more conversation paths according to chatbot responses 804. The crawler detects the buttons and the quick replies and makes conversations along them…Chatbot crawler engine 204 may create a flow chart of the conversation flow comprising each detected path's flow chart at step 808. This flow chart may be displayed, via admin interface 201, after a crawler session has completed along,” wherein the displayed “flow chart” comprises at least the claimed “call result”.).
Claims 12-13 and 26:
With regard to Claims 12-13 and 26, these claims are equivalent in scope to Claims 1-2 and 21 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claims 12-13 and 26 are rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claims 1-2 and 21.
With further regard to Claim 12, the claim recites additional elements not specifically addressed in the rejection of Claim 1. The Willshire reference also anticipates these additional elements of Claim 12, for example, wherein the electronic device for debugging a digital assistant comprises:
at least one processing unit; and at least one memory, the at least one memory being coupled to the at least one processing unit and storing an instruction for execution by the at least one processing unit, the instruction, when executed by the at least one processing unit, causing the electronic device to perform operations ([0093] “a computing device 10 may be configured or designed to function as a server system utilizing CPU 12, local memory 11 and/or remote memory 16, and interface(s) 15.” [0098] “the system of the present invention may employ one or more memories or memory modules (such as, for example, remote memory block 16 and local memory 11) configured to store data, program instructions for the general-purpose network operations, or other information relating to the functionality of the embodiments described herein.” [0100] “Computing device 20 includes processors 21 that may run software that carry out one or more functions or applications of embodiments of the invention, such as for example a client application 24.”).
Claim 20:
With regard to Claim 20, this claim is equivalent in scope to Claim 12 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claim 20 is rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claim 12.
Claims 6, 8 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne as applied to Claims 1 and 12 above, and further in view of Bienkowski et al. (US Patent 9,058,424; hereinafter “Bienkowski”).
Claim 6:
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne does not teach the following, however, Bienkowski teaches further comprising:
in response to receiving an update request for a configuration of at least one function block of the digital assistant related to the debugging request, updating, by the electronic device and as an updated configuration of the at least one function block, the configuration of the at least one function block (Col. 3 Ln. 21: “Assume, for overview 100, that a user has added a function, called ‘additionFunction,’ to a portion of code, as illustrated in FIG. 1A. The function adds two variables, named ‘x’ and ‘y,’ together to obtain an output, named ‘result.’” Col. 3 Ln. 42: “With reference to FIG. 1B, assume that at some later point in time, the user has altered the portion of code, such that the function now multiplies the variables ‘x’ and ‘y.’”); and
in response to receiving a predetermined operation on a control for activating re-debugging, generating, by the electronic device, an updated debugging result for the debugging request based on the updated configuration of the at least one function block (Col. 3 Ln. 44: “The computing device may detect this change to the function and may automatically, and possibly without the user's knowledge, run the unit test. In so doing, the computing device may identify that the value of the output, named ‘result,’ has changed from a value of 3 to a value of 2.” Col. 6 Ln. 51: “Decider component 410 may determine whether to execute a unit test based on detecting that a change has been made to the portion of code.” Col. 6 Ln. 63: “test generator component 415 may receive an indication, from decider component 410, that a unit test is to be generated for the portion of the code,” wherein the “Decider component…detecting that a change has been made” is the claimed “receiving a predetermined operation on a control” which results in “test generator component” generating a test, i.e. “activating re-debugging.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne with the re-debugging as taught by Bienkowski since “automatically generating and executing the unit tests may improve a user experience, and may save time and expense associated with creating or editing code” (Bienkowski Col. 3 Ln. 61).
Claim 8:
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne does not teach the following, however, Bienkowski teaches:
wherein the debugging request comprises an access test request for stored data related to the user, and the method further comprises: presenting, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a control for displaying the stored data; and in response to receiving a predetermined operation on the control for displaying the stored data, presenting a display card of the stored data on the user interface (Col. 18 Ln. 15: “FIG. 9D shows a user interface 940 that may be provided in response to selection of show history button 912. As shown in FIG. 9D, user interface 940 may include a correct results section 945 and an incorrect results section 950... correct results section 945 may include entries that provide test parameters (e.g., function, input values, an output value, a date, a time, etc.) for each unit test, that was executed on the portion of code, that did not result in detecting a condition,” wherein the “show history button” is the “control for displaying the stored data”.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne with the displaying of stored data as taught by Bienkowski in order to “facilitate the debugging of the portion of code” (Bienkowski Col. 9 Ln. 46).
Claim 17:
With regard to Claim 17, this claim is equivalent in scope to Claim 6 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claim 17 is rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claim 6.
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne as applied to Claim 1 above, and further in view of Gibson et al. (US Patent 7,743,090; hereinafter “Gibson”).
Claim 7:
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne does not teach the following, however, Gibson teaches further comprising:
presenting, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a control for clearing a historical debugging record; and in response to receiving a predetermined operation on the control for clearing the historical debugging record, clearing, by the electronic device, the historical debugging record displayed on the user interface (Col. 10 Ln. 65: “User interface 700 allows the test results to be shown, saved, deleted, or shared with other users using the button at control pane 790a,” wherein deleting “test results” is “clearing the historical debugging record.” See also Fig. 7 showing a “Delete Test Results” button in “Control Pane 790a”.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne with the clearing of testing records as taught by Gibson in order to increase the amount of storage space available for testing since “Storage device 124 may store information used when testing the infrastructure associated with system 400 including test requests, tests, parameters, expected test results, actual test results, and user preferences” (Gibson Col. 7 Ln. 49).
Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor, Browne and Bienkowski as applied to Claim 8 above, and further in view of Bates et al. (US PGPUB 2003/0167459).
Claim 9:
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor, Browne and Bienkowski teaches all the limitations of claim 8 as described above. Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor, Browne and Bienkowski does not teach the following, however, Bates teaches:
wherein the stored data is invisible to other users different from the user ([0039] “FIG. 4 shows one embodiment of the access rules 144… Illustrative restriction type values include ‘absolute’ and ‘conditional’… conditional restriction type values allow users to specify conditions which, when satisfied, prevent a specified field from being displayed.”[0043] “Referring now to FIG. 7, an example of the Associated Values Displayed Table 148 to shown… the Associated Values Displayed Table 148 will be preserved (stored) for future debugging sessions by the same user. This may be useful in preventing a user from accessing the values associated with the associated values (for conditional type restrictions) by terminating the session and then initiating a new session…in one embodiment, each individual desiring to access the system 130 from the local system 110 is required to log in with a username and password. The Associated Values Displayed Table 148 created during that individual's debugging session is then associated with that user's log-in information and may be retrieved and utilized when the user (or other users of the same group were entity) logs in at a later time.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor, Browne and Bienkowski with the selectively visible data as taught by Bates for purposes of “debugging code without compromising confidential data” (Bates [0009]).
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne as applied to Claim 1 above, and further in view of Zheng et al. (US PGPUB 2022/0164463; hereinafter “Zheng”) and Bienkowski.
Claim 10:
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne teaches all the limitations of claim 1 as described above. Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne does not teach the following, however, Zheng teaches wherein the debugging request comprises an access test request for a task set by the user, and the method further comprises:
displaying the task set by the user; and presenting a display card of the set task set by the user on the user interface ([0015] “When a request is received and a task for processing of the request is initialized, the task-owned memory information corresponding to the request is written to the business data table. If a user needs to debug the task while the task is running, the debugging tool can verify whether the user has proper authorization to view the task business data by looking up the user in a role-based access control table to check the authorization of the user to specific program-owned data.” [0029] “The redacted debugging data 112 of block 307 can be generated by removing or masking any business data in the debugging data that the user is not authorized to access. In block 308, the redacted debugging data 112 is provided to the requesting user.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne with the displaying of task information as taught by Zheng since “the system data may be necessary for analyzing the error” (Zheng [0014]).
With further regard to Claim 10, Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor, Browne and Zheng does not teach the following, however, Bienkowski teaches:
presenting, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a control for displaying the [information] set by the user; and in response to receiving a predetermined operation on the control for displaying the [information] set by the user, presenting the display card of the [information] set by the user on the user interface (Col. 18 Ln. 15: “FIG. 9D shows a user interface 940 that may be provided in response to selection of show history button 912. As shown in FIG. 9D, user interface 940 may include a correct results section 945 and an incorrect results section 950... correct results section 945 may include entries that provide test parameters (e.g., function, input values, an output value, a date, a time, etc.) for each unit test, that was executed on the portion of code, that did not result in detecting a condition,” wherein the “show history button” is the “control for displaying” and further wherein the [information] is the “task” information discussed above in Zheng.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor, Browne and Zheng with the display control as taught by Bienkowski in order to “allow the administrator or developer of the bot system to visually monitor and analyze how end users are interacting with the bot system and how the bot system performs during the conversations with the end users to identify underperforming elements of and possible improvements to the bot system” (Subra [0006]).
Claims 24-25 and 28-29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne as applied to Claims 21 and 26 above, and further in view of Subramaniam et al. (US PGPUB 2020/0342032; hereinafter “Subra”).
Claim 24:
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne teaches all the limitations of claim 21 as described above. Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne does not teach the following, however, Subra teaches wherein displaying the call process and the at least one of the determining process or the call result comprises:
presenting, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a second control for activating a display of the call process, and at least one of a first control for activating displaying of the determination process, or a third control for activating a display of the call result; and in response to receiving a first predetermined operation on the second control and a second predetermined operation on at least one of the first control or the third control, displaying the call process corresponding to the second control and the at least one of the determination process or the call result corresponding to the at least one of the first control or the third control ([0154] “FIG. 6J depicts an interface screen 650… Each row returned by the report shows the transcript of the conversation and the path that carried it. The user can see this dialog within the context of a chat window by clicking View Conversations.” [0156] “interface screen 655 shows the user-skill bot conversation within a panel called Conversation…The bot-user chat is in the Conversation panel itself, with the user's utterances on the right and the skill bot's replies on the left,” wherein the “View Conversation” Button shown in Fig. 6J of Subra is the “third control” since it displays a bot conversation response, i.e. a “call result”.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor and Browne with the display control as taught by Subra in order to “allow the administrator or developer of the bot system to visually monitor and analyze how end users are interacting with the bot system and how the bot system performs during the conversations with the end users to identify underperforming elements of and possible improvements to the bot system” (Subra [0006]).
Claim 25:
Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor, Browne and Subra teaches all the limitations of claim 24 as described above. Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor, Browne and Subra does not teach the following, however, Subra teaches further comprising:
presenting, by the electronic device and on the user interface, a fifth control for ceasing displaying of the calling process and at least one of a fourth control for ceasing displaying of the determination process, or a sixth control for ceasing displaying of the calling result; and in response to receiving a third predetermined operation on the fifth control and a fourth predetermined operation on at least one of the fourth control or the sixth control, ceasing, by the electronic device, displaying of the call process corresponding to the fifth control and ceasing displaying of at least one of the determination process or the call result corresponding to the at least one of the fourth control or the sixth control. ([0156] “FIG. 6K shows… interface screen 655 shows the user-skill bot conversation within a panel called Conversation…The bot-user chat is in the Conversation panel itself, with the user's utterances on the right and the skill bot's replies on the left,” wherein the “Close” Button shown in Fig. 6K of Subra is the “sixth control” since it closes the display of a bot conversation response, i.e. “ceasing display of the calling result”.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the method as disclosed by Willshire in view of Grunberg, Taylor, Browne and Subra with the display control as taught by Subra in order to “allow the administrator or developer of the bot system to visually monitor and analyze how end users are interacting with the bot system and how the bot system performs during the conversations with the end users to identify underperforming elements of and possible improvements to the bot system” (Subra [0006]).
Claims 28-29:
With regard to Claims 28-29, these claims are equivalent in scope to Claims 24-25 rejected above, merely having a different independent claim type, and as such Claims 28-29 are rejected under the same grounds and for the same reasons as discussed above with regard to Claims 24-25.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments, see Pages 9-14 of the Remarks filed December 29, 2025, with respect to the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 of Claims 1-2, 6-13, 17, 20-21, 24-26 and 28-29 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
With respect to the Applicant’s argument, Page 12 Paragraph 4 of the Remarks, that “Taylor only discloses the visualization of ‘code,’ which is not related to the ‘modular’ functional blocks recited in amended Claim 1 and does not provide the ‘determination process’ of functional blocks and its related features,” the Office respectfully disagrees. The Office contends that the previously cited Taylor et al. (US PGPUB 2020/0409818) reference does teach a portion of the newly amended language recited in independent claims 1, 12 and 20 since the Taylor reference discusses the visualization of “components of the run-time stack for a chat bot” (Taylor [0027]), wherein “components” are a type of modular function block. The Office respectfully directs the Applicant’s attention to the newly modified rejections of claims 1, 12 and 20 above for further explanation regarding how the Taylor reference has been interpreted as teaching the newly amended language of independent claims 1, 12 and 20.
With respect to the Applicant’s arguments that the remaining portions of the newly amended language recited in independent claims 1, 12 and 20 is not taught by the previously cited prior art, this argument has been fully considered but is moot in view of the newly cited Browne et al. (US PGPUB 2018/0357152) reference as discussed above in the respective rejections.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure is as follows:
Belagali (US PGPUB 2020/0125345) discloses a system and method for creating deployable applications and the associated source code using reusable components, including capabilities for supporting run-time visual debugging by connecting to a live application.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Joanne G. Macasiano whose telephone number is (571)270-7749. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Thursday, 10:30 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Standard Time.
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/JOANNE G MACASIANO/Examiner, Art Unit 2197