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 .
Response to Amendment
Applicants’ amendment filed on 07/17/26 has been entered. Claims 19, 21, 22, 36-37 have been amended. Claims 1-18 have been canceled previously. New claims 38-40 have been added. Claims 19-40 are still pending in this application, with claims 19, 36-37 being independent.
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 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 of this title, 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 19, 23-25, 27-31, 33-37 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0178627 to Firby et al. (“Firby”) and U.S. Patent No. 10,382,143 to Gorsha (“Gorsha”) in further view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0091425 to Kane (“Kane”).
As to claims 19, 36 and 37, Firby discloses a computer-implemented method, a system, and one or more non-transitory computer storage media storing instructions, the computer-implemented method comprising: (a) obtaining a first speech sample from a user [paragraph 0032, Fig. 2: 220]; (b) determining that said speech sample does not satisfy at least one quality control requirement of a plurality of quality control requirements [paragraph 0032: “background noise is too high…”, “noise level is greater than a threshold…”, also see paragraphs 0013, 0033]; (c) providing said instruction associated with said quality control requirement to said user [paragraphs 0013, 0032-0033]; and (d) prompting said user to provide said second speech sample [paragraph 0033: “please repeat the message again”]. Firby also discloses similar features in Figs. 3 and 5: paragraphs 0034-0036, 0042-0046].
Firby does not expressly disclose wherein said first speech sample is a portion of an automated interview at an interview terminal and using a processing node located no more than 1,000 kilometers from said interview terminal.
In the same or similar field of invention, Gorsha discloses the feature of wherein said first speech sample is a portion of an automated interview at an interview terminal [Gorsha column 6 lines 29-56, Fig. 1: 20a, 20b] and using a processing node located no more than 1,000 kilometers from said interview terminal [Gorsha column 4 line 58 to column 5 line 1].
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify Firby to have feature of wherein said first speech sample is a portion of an automated interview at an interview terminal and using a processing node located no more than 1,000 kilometers from said interview terminal as taught by Gorsha. The suggestion/motivation would have been to provide a method and system for more reliably identifying a portion of a transmitted sound recording that has been fragmented, e.g., by jitter spikes, as a sound marker [Gorsha column 1 lines 36-39].
Firby and Gorsha do not expressly disclose wherein said determination occurs in a time period of at most about 5 seconds from (a).
In the same or similar field of invention, Kane discloses the feature of said determination occurs in a time period of at most about 5 seconds [Kane paragraph 0052, also see paragraphs 0035-0037].
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify Firby and Gorsha to have feature of said determination occurs in a time period of at most about 5 seconds as taught by Kane. The suggestion/motivation would have been to develop VoicePrint matching for suspect identification in multi-speaker environment ("voice-in-a-crowd"). These algorithms will be designed to separate voices in multi-speaker environments to obtain the identification of the speakers [Kane paragraph 0012].
As to claim 23, Firby discloses repeating (a) - (d) to prompt said user to provide a third speech sample [paragraphs 0033, 0036, 0066]. Firby discloses that the dialog system can correlate failed attempts (more than 1) to interpret recognized text with the corresponding background noise. For example, the dialog system can consider whether the recognized text was interpreted correctly, the number of times (more than one) the user had to repeat him/herself. This implies more than one repeat attempts and thus user providing third speech sample.
As to claim 24, Firby discloses wherein (a) - (d) is repeated less than three times [paragraphs 0033, 0036, Figs. 4, 5].
As to claim 25, Firby discloses further comprising repeating (a) - (c) for said second speech sample [paragraphs 0033, 0036]. Firby discloses an output message to the user requesting the user to repeat the audible speech signal. This implies repeating (a) – (c) for second speech sample.
As to claim 27, Gorsha discloses wherein said automated interview is an automated audio-only interview [Gorsha column 6 lines 3-12, ]. In addition, the same motivation is used as the rejection of claim 19.
As to claim 28, Gorsha discloses wherein said automated interview is configured to determine a level of risk of said user [Gorsha column 6 lines 18-21, 44-47, column 7 lines 4-28]. In addition, the same motivation is used as the rejection of claim 19.
As to claim 29, Firby discloses wherein, where said first speech sample is determined to satisfy said at least one quality control requirement, skipping (c) and (d) [paragraphs 0032, 0043, Fig.5: only continues to steps 514-526 when speech is not recognized/understood].
As to claim 30, Firby discloses wherein said determining is performed in real-time [paragraphs 0013-14].
As to claim 31, Firby discloses wherein said providing said instruction comprises providing an auditory instruction to said user [paragraphs 0033, 0035-36].
As to claim 33, Firby discloses wherein (b) further comprises determining that said first speech sample satisfies each quality control requirement of said plurality of quality control requirements [paragraphs 0032, 0034, 0042-43: “If the recognized speech is understandable, the dialog system can proceed to execute actions…” This implies speech sample satisfies each quality control requirement].
As to claim 34, Firby discloses wherein said at least one quality control requirement is selected from the group consisting of a missing response, vocal volume, speed, and a presence or absence of background noise [paragraph 0032: “background noise is too high…”, “noise level is greater than a threshold…”].
As to claim 35, Firby discloses wherein each quality control requirement of said plurality of quality control requirements is associated with an instruction that indicates (i) that said quality control requirement was not satisfied [paragraphs 0032-33], and (ii) how to satisfy said quality control requirement in a second speech sample [paragraphs 0013, 0033: “background noise is too loud”].
As to claims 38, 39 and 40, Gorsha discloses wherein said first speech sample is a single word [Gorsha column 7 lines 23-28: “short (yes or no) answer”]. In addition, the same motivation is used as the rejection of claims 19, 36 and 37.
Claims 20-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0178627 to Firby et al. (“Firby”), U.S. Patent No. 10,382,143 to Gorsha (“Gorsha”) and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0091425 to Kane (“Kane”) in further view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20170187880 to Raanani et al. (“Raanani”).
As to claim 20, Firby, Gorsha and Kane disclose the method of claim 19 [see rejection of claim 19].
Firby, Gorsha and Kane do not expressly disclose wherein each quality control requirement of said plurality of quality control requirements is associated with a different priority rating.
In the same or similar field of invention, Raanani discloses the feature of wherein each quality control requirement of said plurality of quality control requirements is associated with a different priority rating [Raanani paragraphs 0028, 0030, 0031, 0034]. As per Raanani, feature generation component 111 generates the features 115 by analyzing call data using various techniques [Raanani paragraph 0019]. Features 115 includes background noise [Raanani paragraph 0028], speech rate/speed, speech volume [paragraph 0030], and silence time (missing response) [Raanani paragraph 0031]. The features (115) can have different weight [Raanani paragraph 0034].
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify Firby, Gorsha and Kane to have wherein each quality control requirement of said plurality of quality control requirements is associated with a different priority rating as taught by Raanani. The suggestion/motivation would have been to generate a set of features that can help in predictive analysis of the outcome of the calls [Raanani paragraph 0033].
As to claim 21, Raanani discloses regarding generating a priority ratings for different quality control requirements (see rejection of claim 20). Further, determining that said first speech sample does not satisfy two or more different quality control requirements of said plurality of quality control requirements and providing said instruction associated with a highest priority rating of said different priority ratings, is an implementation choice. At the time the invention was made, it would have been an obvious matter of implementation choice to a person of ordinary skill in the art to provide instruction based on highest priority ratings, since it has been held that absent persuasive evidence that a particular shape of a claimed apparatus was significant, that shape is a matter of design choice that one of ordinary skill in the art would find obvious. In Gardner v. TEC Systems, Inc., 725 F.2d 1338, 220 USPQ 777 (Fed. Cir. 1984), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 830, 225 USPQ 232 (1984). Note applicant has not provided any criticality for the claimed different priority ratings.
As to claim 22, Raanani discloses regarding generating a priority ratings for different quality control requirements [see rejection of claim 20]. Further, wherein said quality control requirements have a priority rating, from highest to lowest, of a missing response, too low of vocal volume, too fast of a response, too slow of a response, too loud of a response, and a presence of background noise, is an implementation choice. At the time the invention was made, it would have been an obvious matter of implementation choice to a person of ordinary skill in the art to provide different scale of priority ratings based on the user need, since it has been held that absent persuasive evidence that a particular shape of a claimed apparatus was significant, that shape is a matter of design choice that one of ordinary skill in the art would find obvious. In Gardner v. TEC Systems, Inc., 725 F.2d 1338, 220 USPQ 777 (Fed. Cir. 1984), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 830, 225 USPQ 232 (1984). Note applicant has not provided any criticality for the claimed different priority ratings.
Claims 26 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0178627 to Firby et al. (“Firby”), U.S. Patent No. 10,382,143 to Gorsha (“Gorsha”) and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0091425 to Kane (“Kane”) in further view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2019/0109804 to Fu et al. (“Fu”).
As to claim 26, Firby, Gorsha and Kane disclose the method of claim 25 [see rejection of claim 25].
Firby, Gorsha and Kane do not expressly disclose where said second speech sample is determined not to satisfy said at least one quality control requirement, said second speech sample is discarded. Even though, it is obvious and well known in the art to discard the speech sample when quality control requirement is not satisfied.
In the same or similar field of invention, Fu discloses the feature of where said second speech sample is determined not to satisfy said at least one quality control requirement, said second speech sample is discarded [Fu paragraph 0073]. As per Fu, the frames/samples that don’t appear to be voiced (missing response) may be removed.
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify Firby, Gorsha and Kane to have feature of where said second speech sample is determined not to satisfy said at least one quality control requirement, said second speech sample is discarded as taught by Fu. The suggestion/motivation would have been to avoid error in the computation by removing non voiced frames, since these frames likely to be white noise [paragraph 0073].
Claim 32 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2017/0178627 to Firby et al. (“Firby”), U.S. Patent No. 10,382,143 to Gorsha (“Gorsha”) and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0091425 to Kane (“Kane”) in further view of U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2019/0392852 to Hijazi et al. (“Hijazi”).
As to claim 32, Firby, Gorsha and Kane disclose the method of claim 19 [see rejection of claim 19].
Firby, Gorsha and Kane do not expressly disclose wherein said first speech sample is less than 5 seconds long.
In the same or similar field of invention, Hijazi discloses the feature of wherein said first speech sample is less than 5 seconds long [Hijazi paragraph 0072].
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify Firby, Gorsha and Kane to have feature of wherein said first speech sample is less than 5 seconds long as taught by Hijazi. The suggestion/motivation would have been to provide the appropriate duration (e.g., 1 second, 2 seconds, or 5 seconds) of the window of audio samples to span multiple phonemes or words in a target language of speech to provide sufficient context for classification and/or audio enhancement processing [Hijazi paragraph 0072].
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 19-40 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANTIM G SHAH whose telephone number is (571)270-5214. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri 7:30am-4pm.
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/ANTIM G SHAH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2693
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