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 .
Claim Objections
Claims 4, 11 and 18 are objected to because of the following informalities: claims 4, 11 and 18 recite “receiving an indication the user modified…”. Examiner suggests “receiving an indication that the user modified…”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claims 5, 12 and 19 are objected to because of the following informalities: claims 6, 13 and 20 use the acronyms API, RPC and gRPC without first defining the terms. Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Independent Claims 1, 8, and 15 recites “issues for mitigation”. The phrase “issues for mitigation” is indefinite because the claim does not define what constitutes an “issue”, how an issue is identified, or what it means for an issue to be “for mitigation”.
The term lacks objective boundaries and is subject to varying interpretations.
The claims further recite “with respect to a set of categories”. The phrase “set of categories” is indefinite because the claim does not specify what the categories are, how many categories exist, or how categories are defined or selected. As such, the scope of the claim is unclear.
The claims recite the term “indications” is indefinite because it does not specify the form, content, or manner of presentation of the indications (e.g., highlight, visual maker), leaving uncertainty as to what satisfies the limitation.
The claims recite the phrase “degree of the detected issues” is indefinite because the claim fails to define how the degree is measured, calculated, or evaluated. It is unclear whether the degree refers to score, quality, or another metric.
The claims further recite the term “predetermined threshold” is indefinite because the claim does not specify when or how the threshold is predetermined or what metric is used to determine whether the threshold is satisfied.
The claims further recite the phrase “evaluation of the candidate text” is indefinite because the claim does not specify what the evaluation represents or how the evaluation is generated.
The claims further recite the phrase “pane user element” is indefinite because it is not a recognized structural term in the art and the claim fails to describe the structural characteristic or boundaries of such element.
Claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 depend from claims 1, 8, and 15 either directly or indirectly and are similarly rejected.
Claims 1, 5, 8, 12, 15, 19 recite the limitation "the model serving system". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
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.
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 1-2, 7-9, and 14-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Eisenstadt et al. (US 2025/0165721 A1) in view of Gray et al. (US 2025/0191481 A1).
Claim 1: Eisenstadt teaches A computer-implemented method, comprising:
displaying a user interface configured with an editor to allow a user to enter and edit an electronic document (“Eisenstadt”, Figs. 4A-5, [0026], [0032], [0041], UI 300 allows a user to edit output text 400);
for a sentence of the electronic document, detecting issues for mitigation in the sentence with respect to a set of categories; generating one or more indications over one or more phrases in the sentence, an indication generated for a phrase generated based on detection of a respective category associated with the phrase (“Eisenstadt”, Figs. 4A-5, Abstract, [0040]);
responsive to receiving a request from the user to rewrite the sentence, generating a prompt to a machine-learned language model, the prompt specifying at least a text of the sentence and a request to generate a set of candidate texts;
receiving, from the model serving system, a response generated by executing the machine-learned language model on the prompt (“Eisenstadt”, Figs. 4A-5, [0026], [0031]);
for a candidate text, detecting issues for mitigation in the candidate text to evaluate whether a degree of the detected issues in the candidate text is less than a predetermined threshold (“Eisenstadt”, [0030], [0033], [0042], [0043]).
Eisenstadt does not specifically teach generating a pane user element to present the candidate text and an evaluation of the candidate text to the user; and
responsive to receiving a selection of a candidate text, replacing the sentence in the editor with the selected text on the user interface in the electronic document. However, in the same field of invention, Gray teaches
generating a pane user element to present the candidate text and an evaluation of the candidate text to the user (“Gray”, Fig. 3, the panel 352, [0051]); and
responsive to receiving a selection of a candidate text, replacing the sentence in the editor with the selected text on the user interface in the electronic document (“Gray”, Figs. 3&4, [0054], [0059]-[0060]).
Therefore, considering the teachings of Eisenstadt and Gray, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add generating a pane element on the user interface to present the candidate starting texts and responsive to receiving a selection of a candidate starter text, inserting the selected candidate starter text as an input document into the editor of the interface, as taught by Gray, to the teachings of Eisenstadt because it reduces the time it takes a user to find and access relevant information and improves the basic user experience with respect to LLMs (e.g. see Gray paragraph 0025).
Claim 2: Eisenstadt and Gray teach the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising:
responsive to user interaction with the indication for the phrase on the user interface, generating an interface element describing the detected category of bias associated with the phrase and an element for the user to request rewriting of the sentence (“Eisenstadt”, Figs. 4A-5, Abstract, [0040]-[0043]).
Claim 7: Eisenstadt and Gray teach the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving an application programming interface (API) request specifying input text, the input text including two or more sentences;
evaluating the input text to detect bias with respect to the set of categories;
identifying one or more biased sentences in the input text based on the evaluations;
obtaining candidate replacement sentences for the biased sentences;
replacing the one or more biased sentences in the input text with a respective candidate replacement text to generate a revised version of the text; and
providing the revised version of the text as a response to the API request (“Eisenstadt”, [0032], [0033], [0040]-[0043]).
Claim 8: Claim 8 is directed to a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium for implementing the method steps of claim 1. Therefore, claim 8 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 9: Claim 9 is directed to the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8 for implementing the method steps of claim 2. Therefore, claim 9 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 14: Claim 14 is directed to the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8 for implementing the method steps of claim 7. Therefore, claim 14 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 15: Claim 15 is directed to a computer system for implementing the method steps of claim 1. Therefore, claim 15 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 16: Claim 16 is directed to the computer system of claim 15 for implementing the method steps of claim 2. Therefore, claim 16 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claims 3, 5, 10, 12, 17, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Eisenstadt et al. (US 2025/0165721 A1) in view of Gray et al. (US 2025/0191481 A1) and further in view of Alikaniotis et al. (US 11,763,085 B1).
Claim 3: Eisenstadt and Gray teach the computer-implemented method of claim 1, however, Eisenstadt and Gray do not teach the following feature, taught by Alikaniotis who teaches wherein detecting issues for mitigation in the candidate text further comprises:
applying a set of features to the candidate text, wherein a feature corresponds to detection of a respective category of bias, and wherein applying the feature to the candidate text generates an impact score for the category of bias (“Alikaniotis”, col 7 lines 45-48, col 10 lines 4-6, col 18 lines 37-57 and Fig. 5A);
generating an evaluation score for the candidate text by combining impact scores across the set of features (“Alikaniotis” col 12 lines 20-25, col 14 lines 21-27); and
determining whether the evaluation score is less than the predetermined threshold (“Alikaniotis” col 15 lines 47-52, col 19 lines 7-12).
Therefore, considering the teachings of Eisenstadt, Gray and Alikaniotis, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add wherein detecting issues for mitigation in the candidate starter text further comprises: applying a set of features to the candidate starter text, wherein a feature corresponds to detection of a respective category of bias and wherein applying the feature to the candidate starter text generates an impact score for the category of bias, generating an evaluation score for the candidate starter text by combining impact scores across the set of features, and determining whether the evaluation score is less than the predetermined threshold, as taught by Alikaniotis, to the teachings of Eisenstadt and Gray because it improves the detection of the tone of written text and reduces the transmission of text containing errors (e.g. see Alikaniotis col 2 lines 47-61).
Claim 5: Eisenstadt and Gray teach the computer-implemented method of claim 1, however, Eisenstadt and Gray do not teach the following feature, taught by Alikaniotis who teaches further comprising:
providing the prompt to the model serving system via an API call to an endpoint of the model serving system, wherein the API call follows one or a combination of a REST API communication protocol, a RPC protocol, or a gRPC protocol (“Alikaniotis” col 3 lines 40-44, col 19 lines 44-53).
The motivation to combine is the same as that used for claim 1.
Claim 10: Claim 10 is directed to the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8 for implementing the method steps of claim 3. Therefore, claim 10 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 12: Claim 12 is directed to the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8 for implementing the method steps of claim 5. Therefore, claim 12 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 17: Claim 17 is directed to the computer system of claim 15 for implementing the method steps of claim 3. Therefore, claim 17 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 19: Claim 19 is directed to the computer system of claim 15 for implementing the method steps of claim 5. Therefore, claim 19 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claims 4, 11 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Eisenstadt et al. (US 2025/0165721 A1) in view of Gray et al. (US 2025/0191481 A1), as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Liu et al. (US 2019/0370629 A1).
Claim 4: Eisenstadt and Gray teach the computer-implemented method of claim 1, however, Eisenstadt and Gray do not teach the following feature, taught by Liu who teaches further comprising:
evaluating each sentence of one or more sentences of the electronic document and storing the evaluations of the one or more sentences in a cache storage;
receiving an indication the user modified an existing sentence or added a new sentence to the input document; evaluating the modified sentence or the new sentence of the input document; (“Liu”, paragraphs 0029, 0075);
presenting the evaluation of the modified sentence or the new sentence in the editor (“Liu”, paragraphs 0037, 0042); and
retrieving the evaluations of sentences that are unchanged from the cache storage without reevaluating the unchanged sentences (“Liu”, paragraph 0041).
Therefore, considering the teachings of Eisenstadt, Gray and Liu, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add further comprising: evaluating each sentence of one or more sentences of the input document and storing the evaluations of the one or more sentences in a cache storage; receiving an indication of the user modified an existing sentence or added a new sentence to the input document; evaluating the modified sentence or the new sentence of the input document, presenting the evaluation of the modified sentence or the new sentence in the editor, and retrieving the evaluations of sentences that are unchanged from the cache storage without reevaluating the unchanged sentences, as taught by Liu, to the teachings of Eisenstadt and Gray because caching reduces the latency of a response (e.g. see Liu paragraph 0020).
Claim 11: Claim 11 is directed to the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8 for implementing the method steps of claim 4. Therefore, claim 11 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 18: Claim 18 is directed to the computer system of claim 15 for implementing the method steps of claim 4. Therefore, claim 18 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claims 6, 13, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Eisenstadt et al. (US 2025/0165721 A1) in view of Gray et al. (US 2025/0191481 A1), as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Carbune et al. (US 2025/0209261 A1).
Claim 6: Eisenstadt and Gray teach the computer-implemented method of claim 1, however, Eisenstadt and Gray do not teach the following feature, taught by Carbune who teaches generating the prompt further comprises:
identifying one or more pieces of personal identifiable information (PII) entities in the prompt; identifying one or more placeholder entities for the one or more PII entities;
generating a modified prompt by replacing the PII entities with respective placeholder entities; and responsive to receiving the response, replacing the placeholder entities with the respective PII entities in the response (“Carbune” paragraph 0037).
Therefore, considering the teachings of Eisenstadt, Gray and Carbune, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to add generating the prompt further comprises: identifying one or more pieces of personal identifiable information (PII) entities in the prompt; identifying one or more placeholder entries for the one or more PII entries; generating a modified prompt by replacing the PII entities with respective placeholder entities; and responsive to receiving the response, replacing the placeholder entities with the respective PII entities in the response, as taught by Carbune, to the teachings of Eisenstadt and Gray because redacting personally identifiable information sent server side allows for an increase in privacy (e.g. see Carbune paragraph 0022).
Claim 13: Claim 13 is directed to the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 8 for implementing the method steps of claim 6. Therefore, claim 13 is rejected under similar rationale.
Claim 20: Claim 20 is directed to the computer system of claim 15 for implementing the method steps of claim 6. Therefore, claim 20 is rejected under similar rationale.
Conclusion
Examiner has cited particular columns and line and/or paragraph numbers in the references applied to the claims above for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings of the art and are applied to specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested from the applicant in preparing responses, to fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the Examiner.
The examiner requests, in response to this Office action, support be shown for language added to any original claims on amendment and any new claims. That is, indicate support for newly added claim language by specifically pointing to page(s) and line no(s) in the specification and/or drawing figure(s). This will assist the examiner in prosecuting the application.
When responding to this office action, Applicant is advised to clearly point out the patentable novelty which he or she thinks the claims present, in view of the state of the art disclosed by the references cited or the objections made. He or she must also show how the amendments avoid such references or objections See 37 CFR 1.111(c).
Point of Contact
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHUONG H NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)270-1300. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:30-4:00 PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, William Bashore can be reached at 571-272-4088. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/PHUONG H NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2174
Prosecution Insights