DETAILED ACTION
This examination is in response to the RCE filed on 09/06/2026. Claims 1-20 are currently pending, wherein claims 1, 2, 6-8, 12-14 and 18 have been 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 .
Response to Amendment/Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 08/14/2026 regarding the rejection of claims 1-20 under §101 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues on page 8 of the response that “the claims are generally directed to the practical application of managing a plurality of segments of a data center document based upon a predetermined use of the data center document”. The Examiner respectfully disagrees.
Contrary to Applicant’s assertion, “managing a plurality of segments of a data center document based upon a predetermined use of the data center document” is itself an abstract idea. Furthermore, nowhere in the claimed invention are there any steps which improvement a technical element of the management system. In other words, there is no improvement to the functioning of a computer, nor is there any limitations which (1) apply the abstract idea to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis, (2) apply the judicial exception with or by use of a particular machine, (3) effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing which are indicative of integration into a practical application. Accordingly, the rejection under §101 is maintained.
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the rejections of claims 1-20 under §102 or §103 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites the limitation "the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments" in lines 12-13. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For examination purposes this limitation is interpreted as being “at least one of the …”
Claim 1 recites the limitation "the plurality of segments" in line 17. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For examination purposes this limitation is interpreted as being “the plurality of documentation segments …”.
Claim 7 recites the limitation "the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments" in lines 19-20. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For examination purposes this limitation is interpreted as being “at least one of the …”
Claim 7 recites the limitation "the plurality of segments" in line 24. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For examination purposes this limitation is interpreted as being “the plurality of documentation segments …”.
Claim 13 recites the limitation "the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments" in lines 13-14. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For examination purposes this limitation is interpreted as being “at least one of the …”
Claim 13 recites the limitation "the plurality of segments" in line 17. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For examination purposes this limitation is interpreted as being “the plurality of documentation segments …”.
Claims 2-6, 8-12, and 14-20 variously depend from independent claims 1, 7 or 13 and therefore, are rejected for the same reasons as claims 1, 7, and 13.
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 1-20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. Independent claims 1, 7 and 13 recite “identifying a data center document from a plurality of data center documents, the data center document being associate with a particular data center”, “parsing the data center document into a plurality of documentation segments, each of the plurality of documentation segments comprising a portion of the data center document”, “identifying a predetermined use for the data center document, the predetermined use of the data center document being based upon a particular data center associated with the data center document, the predetermined use of the data center document including a planned use of at least one of the plurality of documentation segments for a particular purpose”, “generating a summarization of at least one of the plurality of documentation segments” and “performing a data center documentation management operation, the data center documentation management operation managing the plurality of segments of the data center document based upon the predetermined use of the data center document and the summarization of the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments.”
The limitations of “identifying…”, “parsing…”, “identifying…”, “generating…” and “performing…” as drafted, are a process that, under a broadest reasonable interpretation, covers the abstract idea of “mental processes” because they cover concepts performed in the human mind, including observation, evaluation, judgement and opinion. See MPEP 2106.04(a)(2). That is, other than reciting “a processor” (claim 7), a “data bus” (claim 7), and a “computer-readable storage medium” (claims 7 and 13), nothing in the claimed elements preclude the steps from practically being performed by a person
identifying a data center document from a plurality of data center documents, the data center document being associate with a particular data center, the data center document comprising a plurality of documentation segments (e.g., by the person selecting a document ),
parsing the data center document into a plurality of documentation segments, each of the plurality of documentation segments comprising a portion of the data center document (e.g., by the person extracting or dividing the document into sections or paragraphs);
identifying a predetermined use for the data center document, the predetermined use of the data center document being based upon a particular data center associated with the data center document, the predetermined use of the data center document including a planned use of at least one of the plurality of documentation segments for a particular purpose (e.g., by the person determining/identifying what the document could/should be used for);
generating a summarization of at least one of the plurality of documentation segments (e.g., by the person summarizing the each of the extracted paragraphs/sections) and
performing a data center documentation management operation, the data center documentation management operation managing the plurality of segments of the data center document based upon the predetermined use of the data center document and the summarization of the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments (e.g., by the person, extracting and combining the summaries of those segments of the identified document that are relevant to the determined use).
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the additional elements of “a processor” (claim 7), a “data bus” (claim 7), and a “computer-readable storage medium” (claims 7 and 13) are all recited at a high-level of generality, and ¶[0018] of the Specification describes the use of a general-purpose processor, e.g., CPU. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Thus, the claims as a whole are directed to an abstract idea (Step 2A, prong two).
Claims 1, 7 and 13 do not include any additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because, as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of “a processor” (claim 7), a “data bus” (claim 7), and a “computer-readable storage medium” (claims 7 and 13) amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer components. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept (Step 2B).
With respect to dependent claims 2, 8, and 14, these claims are directed the identified use being a document summarization operations. These limitations also relate to the abstract idea of “mental processes.” That is nothing in the claimed elements preclude the steps from practically being performed by a person summarizing the identified document. No additional elements are present.
With respect to dependent claims 3, 9, and 15 these claims are directed to parsing the plurality of documentation segments into respective artificial intelligence embeddings. These limitations also relate to the abstract idea of “mental processes.” That is nothing in the claimed elements preclude the steps from practically being performed by a person generating simple embeddings from the text of the document segments. No additional elements are present.
With respect to dependent claims 4, 10, and 16 these claims are directed to utilizing the embeddings to generate a mean centered matrix. These limitations also relate to the abstract idea of “mental processes.” That is nothing in the claimed elements preclude the steps from practically being performed by a person generating the mean centered matrix utilizing a simple calculation. No additional elements are present.
With respect to dependent claims 5-6, 11-12, and 17-18 these claims are directed to utilizing principal components representing a plurality of weighted (i.e., factor loading) segment factors to generate the documentation summaries. These limitations also relate to the abstract idea of “mental processes.” That is nothing in the claimed elements preclude the steps from practically being performed by a person utilizing principal components to generate the documentation summaries. No additional elements are present.
With respect to dependent claims 19 and 20 these claims are directed to the location of the computer readable storage medium. The additional element of a server is recited at a high-level of generality, and as noted above the Specification describes the use of a general-purpose processor, e.g., CPU. Accordingly, this additional element does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Thus, the claims as a whole are directed to an abstract idea (Step 2A, prong two). The same analysis applies here in 2B, i.e., mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot integrate a judicial exception into a practical application at Step 2A or provide an inventive concept in Step 2B. Step 2B = No, claims 19 and 20 do not provide an inventive concept (significantly more than the abstract idea).
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or non-obviousness.
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.
Claims 1, 2, 7, 8, 13, 14 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mander et al. (US 2019/0355455 A1; herein “Mander”), further in view of XXX.
Regarding claims 1, 7 and 13, Mander teaches a computer-implementable method for performing a data center monitoring and management operation, a system comprising a processor, a data bus coupled to the processor (¶[005] teaches “a document tracking panel apparatus including memory including instructions for execution and at least one processor.” ), and a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (¶[006] teaches “…provide a computer-readable storage medium including instructions which, when executed, cause at least one processor…” ), the method comprising:
identifying a data center document from a plurality of data center documents, the data center document being associated with a particular data center (Fig. 11, Data center 1112; ¶[0091] teaches “interface unit 1110 transmits the medical information to data center 1112…medical information is stored in data center 1112…which enables medical images and corresponding medical information to be transmitted and stored together”; ¶[0093] teaches “…data center 1112 of Fig. 11 is an archive to store information such as images, data, medical reports, and/or more generally, patient medical records…can also serve as a central conduit to information located at other sources…” ¶[0038] teaches the processing system “provides a dynamic document tracking and patient care interface with primary, secondary, tertiary, etc., levels of information and interaction within the bounds of the primary interface…gathering of documentation and tasks relevant to a patient’s care…”);
identifying a predetermined use for the data center document, the predetermined use of the data center document being based upon a particular data center associated with the data center document (¶[0023] teaches “…different graphical user interface to track documentation availability and status…provide improved patient documentation as well as processing to enable a computer to retrieve, organize, process, display, and facilitate interaction with patient information”, the predetermined use of the data center document including a planned use of at least one of the plurality of documentation segments for a particular purpose (¶[0024] teaches “…can integrate with and operate in a variety of healthcare environments and impact a variety of healthcare scenarios and data through sensing, decision support, work-flow management and control” Thus, the interface/system adjusts the display and organization of document/segments based on an predefined use of the segments/data, for example “vitals”, “risk, social & family history”, “suggested literature” … as shown in Fig.4A and 4B); and,
performing a data center documentation management operation, the data center documentation management operation managing the plurality of segments of the data center document based upon the predetermined use of the data center document and the summarization of the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments (¶[0025] teaches “…information loaded in the primary workspace and selected, modified, and/or otherwise interacted with by a user, operating system, other application, etc., is propagated to a secondary interface that pops up over, pops out of, displays to the side of, etc., the primary workspace” providing display and navigation of information is interpreted as a data center documentation management operation).
Although Mander teaches providing improved patient documentation as well as processing to enable a computer to retrieve, organize, process, display and facilitate interaction with patient information, Mander fails to explicitly disclose parsing the data center document into a plurality of documentation segments, each of the plurality of documentation segments comprising a portion of the data center document and generating a summarization of at least one of the plurality of documentation segments.
Sharpe teaches a method and system for analyzing ingested regulations, creating object models, and allowing versioning of regulations or object models for the regulations that indicate applicable topics and categories. More specifically, Sharpe teaches parsing regulation document into a plurality of documentation segments, each of the plurality of documentation segments comprising a portion of the data center document (col. 8, lines 56-58 teaches “”The server computer may analyze or examine (201) the data 200 to segment or parse the data 200 into various components or sections.”; col. 10, lines 46-49 teaches “…the server computer may…segment and parse the document…and add any or all of this information to the regulation object model for that particular regulation.”; and “col. 11, lines 21-26 teaches “The electronic device may segment (block 310) the set of regulatory information into a set of structured texts that may include, for example, a header, footer, title, body, sections, sub-sections, paragraphs, lists, sub-lists, citations, references, or any other type of information block indicated in the format of the original document…”); and
generating a summarization of at least one of the plurality of documentation segments (Col. 11, lines 50-52 teaches “The electronic device may generate (block 325), based on the set of sentences, a summary of the regulation and/or its segments).
Mander differs from the claimed invention, as defined in claims 1, 7 and 13, in that Mander fails to explicitly disclose that the summarization of the document segments includes parsing the document into a plurality of documentation segments and generating a summary for at least one of the documentation segments. Parsing a document into a plurality of segments and generating a summary for the segments is known in the art as evidenced by Sharpe. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to have parse the patient information documents into segments and generating section summaries as taught by Sharpe in the summarization process taught by Mander is it merely constitutes the combination of known processes to achieve the predictable result of summarizing the information within the document based on the topics included therein.
Regarding claims 2, 8 and 14, the combination of Mander and Sharpe teaches all of the elements of claims 1, 7 and 13 (see detailed element listing above). In addition, Mander further teaches the data center document management operation includes a data center document summarization operation, the data center summarization operation generating a summarization of the data center document (¶[0035] teaches “…patient record interface 400 that opens a document summary interface portion 410 when an item on the interface 400 is clicked or otherwise selected. The documentation summary interface portion 410 provides a summary of available documents that have been determined to be relevant to one or more of the patient, healthcare practitioner, patient encounter, image/exam study, reason for exam, patient condition, patient care plan, healthcare protocol workflow, etc. …” ).
Regarding claim 19, the combination of Mander and Sharpe teaches all of the elements of claim 13 (see detailed element listing above). In addition, Mander further teaches the computer executable instructions are deployable to a client system (Fig. 11, workstation 1114) from a server system (Fig. 11, datacenter 1112) at a remote location (See Fig. 11 the workstation 1114 is interpreted as a client system at a remote location via network 1124, see also ¶[0096] teaches “users (e.g., a patient and/or care provider) can access functionality provided by system 1100 via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) implementation over a cloud or other computer network”).
Regarding claim 20, the combination of Mander and Sharpe teaches all of the elements of claim 13 (see detailed element listing above). In addition, Mander further teaches the computer executable instructions are provided by a service provider to a user on an on-demand basis (¶[0096] teaches “users (e.g., a patient and/or care provider) can access functionality provided by system 1100 via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) implementation over a cloud or other computer network”).
Claims 3, 5, 9, 11, 15 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Mander and Sharpe as applied to claims 1, 7 and 13 above, and further in view of Wang et al. (US 2024/0037375 A1; herein “Wang”).
Regarding claims 3, 9, and 15, the combination of Mander and Sharpe teaches all of the elements of claims 2, 8 and 14 (see detailed element listing above). In addition, Mander further teaches in ¶[0035] that a “machine learning algorithm can be used to compare available documents to the one or more relevancy criteria…to generate a set of relevant documents to drive the summary interface portion 410”. However, Mander fails to explicitly disclose that the summarization of the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments parses the plurality of documentation segments into respective artificial intelligence embeddings as recite din claims 3, 9, and 15.
Wang teaches an “AI-based knowledge distillation and paper production computing system processes instructions to leverage network science and machine learning tools to analyze papers with respect to a given topic to find relevant scientific publications, organize and group publications based on topic similarity and relation to the topic in general, and distill and summarize the message and content of these publications into a coherent set of statements” (Wang, Abstract). In addition, Wang teaches the summarization of the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments parses the plurality of documentation segments into respective artificial intelligence embeddings (¶[0070] teaches “To find keywords and overlap among all the candidate papers…applies TF-IDF…to obtain a long TF-IDF vector with many keywords for every paper” and ¶[0072] teaches “Instead of keywords found using TF-IDF…may also use BERT to embed the abstracts of a papers and perform the same clustering using the average embedding vector…”).
The combination of Mander and Sharpe differs from the claimed invention, as defined in claims 3, 9, and 15, in that the combination fails to explicitly disclose that the summarization of the document segments includes parsing the segments into respective artificial intelligence embeddings. Parsing document segments into artificial intelligence embeddings in known in the art as evidenced by Wang. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to have utilized artificial intelligence embeddings to identify relevant segments as taught by Wang in the summarization process taught by the combination of Mander and Sharpe is it merely constitutes the combination of known processes to achieve the predictable result of identifying relevant or principal component segments.
Regarding claims 5, 11 and 17, the combination of Mander and Wang teaches all of the elements of claims 1, 7 and 13 (see detailed element listing above). However, the combination of Mander and Sharpe fails to disclose that the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments includes a plurality of principal components.
Wang teaches the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments includes a plurality of principal components (¶[0071] teaches “…the AI-based knowledge distillation and paper production computing system 200 may perform Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on various versions of K”).
The combination of Mander and Sharpe differs from the claimed invention, as defined in claims 5, 11, and 17, in that the combination fails to explicitly disclose that the summarization of the document segments includes performing PCA. Utilizing PCA to generate summaries in known in the art as evidenced by Wang. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the invention, to have utilized PCA based summarization as taught by Wang in the summarization process taught by the combination of Mander and Sharpe is it merely constitutes the combination of known processes to achieve the predictable result of identifying relevant or principal component segments.
Claims 4, 10 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of Mander, Sharpe and Wang as applied to claims 3, 9 and 15 above, and further in view of Yang et al. “Document Clustering based on Mutual Information and PCA Subspace”, 2011 2nd International Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Management Science and Electronic Commerce (AIMSEC), 2011, pp. 2983-2986 (herein “Yang”).
Regarding claims 4, 10 and 16, the combination of Mander, Sharpe and Wand teaches all of the elements of claims 3, 9 and 15 (see detailed element listing above). In addition, Wang further teaches the embedding are utilized to perform PCA analysis. However, the combination of Mander, Sharpe and Wang fails to explicitly disclose the respective artificial intelligence embeddings are used to generate a mean centered matrix.
Yang teaches a document clustering method that utilizes PCA subspace to cluster high dimensional data. More specifically, Yang disclose that the respective artificial intelligence embeddings are used to generate a mean centered matrix ( p. 2984, second column teaches “The notations on PCA and the covariance matrix…X represents the original data matrix.
y
i
=
x
i
-
x
-
, represents the centered data matrix…”).
The combination of Mander, Sharpe and Wand differs from the claimed invention, as defined by claims 4, 10, and 16, in that the combination fails to explicitly disclose the PCA processing includes generating a mean centered matrix. PCA processing which utilizes a mean centered matrix is known in the art as evidenced by Yang. Therefore, it would have been obvious to utilize mean-centered PCA processing as taught by Yang in the PCA processing taught by the combination of Mander, Sharpe and Wang to it merely constitutes the combination of known process of achieve the predictable result of ensuring the principal components represent the directions of maximum variance rather than the data’s distance from the origin.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6, 12, and 18 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) and §101 set forth in this Office action.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claims 6, 12 and 18, the combination of Mander, Sharpe and Wang fails to disclose or suggest “each of the plurality of principal components include a respective plurality of segment factors, each of the plurality of segment factors having associated factor loading” and “the summarization of the at least one of the plurality of documentation segments being used to generate a document summarization, the document summarization including ranking the plurality of documentation segments of the data center document using the associated factor loading of the respective plurality of segment factors” as recited in amended claims 6, 12 and 18.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PENNY L CAUDLE whose telephone number is (703)756-1432. The examiner can normally be reached M-Th 8:00 am to 5:00 pm eastern.
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/PENNY L CAUDLE/Examiner, Art Unit 2657
/DANIEL C WASHBURN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2657
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