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 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 6-10 and 16-19 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 6 refers to “the parallel gateway.” There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. Claims 7-9 and 16-19 require commensurate subject matter; therefore, they are indefinite for the same reason.
Claim 10 refers to “the next step.” 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 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 nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1, 6, 10, 11, 16, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hirzel (US 2019/0066694) and further in view of Gadde (US 2020/0342175).
Regarding claim 1, Hirzel teaches: A computer-implemented method for resolving and validating data provided to an application programming interface (API) from a conversational system, comprising:
identifying, by one or more processors, in a specification for a task API (¶ 63, “At 502, an API specification is received that includes information associated with invoking an API call”), one or more operations comprising a workflow (¶ 63, “At 506, based on parsing the API specification, a conversational bot specification is constructed. For instance, a finite state machine may be constructed”), wherein a final task of the workflow comprises a call to the task API (¶ 67, “At 516, it is determined whether the instructions contain a call to an API. At 518, if the instructions instruct to call the API, a computer code to invoke the API call is executed”);
determining whether to utilize the dialogue manager to generate a prompt to gather a new input (¶ 65, “At 512, the natural language prompt or response is generated based on the instructions. The natural language prompt or response is generated, for instance, responsive to the instructions containing a prompt to be presented to a user”) or whether to execute the task API (¶ 67, “At 518, if the instructions instruct to call the API, a computer code to invoke the API call is executed”).
Hirzel does not teach; however, Gadde discloses: each operation comprises obtaining specific data to fill a slot to call the task API (¶ 80, “A composite entity can be view as a container or bag that has slots for holding a set of data items” and ¶ 75, “Entity resolver 240 is configured to parse a composite entity definition 254 that has been configured for the composite entity associated with the indication 214 to determine, from the contents of the composite entity definition 254, what data items are required from a user” and ¶ 111, “When a data item needs to be validated through some backend processing (e.g., via an application-program interface (API) call to a software application)”);
generating, by the one or more processors, for each slot, resolution and validation rules (¶ 115, “a composite entity can be configured with validation rules and/or extraction rules”);
generating, by the one or more processors, a gateway comprising the resolution and validation rules (¶ 72, “the digital assistant 210 is provided with a dialog engine 230 and an entity resolver 240” and ¶ 75, “Entity resolver 240 is configured to parse a composite entity definition 254 that has been configured for the composite entity associated with the indication 214 to determine, from the contents of the composite entity definition 254, what data items are required from a user”), wherein the generating the gateway comprises connecting the resolution and validation rules to the gateway between the conversational system and a dialogue manager (¶ 74, “The dialog engine 230 can invoke components associated with the states that have been configured in a dialog flow definition”); and
applying, by the one or more processors, the gateway to resolve each utterance obtained via the conversational system to a slot (¶ 77, “the System.ResolveEntities component can iterate through the data items specified in composite entity definition 254 and converse with a user 208 to obtain the data items”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, at the effective filing date of the invention, to have applied the known technique of each operation comprises obtaining specific data to fill a slot to call the task API; generating, by the one or more processors, for each slot, resolution and validation rules; generating, by the one or more processors, a gateway comprising the resolution and validation rules, wherein the generating the gateway comprises connecting the resolution and validation rules to the gateway between the conversational system and a dialogue manager; and applying, by the one or more processors, the gateway to resolve each utterance obtained via the conversational system to a slot, as taught by Gadde, in the same way to the method for resolving and validating data, as taught by Hirzel. Both inventions are in the field of natural-language chatbot systems, and combining them would have predictably resulted in a system configured to “efficiently obtain, from a user, data items that the chatbot will process in connection with performing the task,” as indicated by Gadde (¶ 7).
Regarding claim 6, Gadde teaches: The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein applying, the parallel gateway to resolve each utterance comprises: determining, by the one or more processors, if the utterance is an API task (¶ 53, “the skill bot can resolve user input utterances to one of its configured intents”); and based on determining that the utterance is an API task, marking a conversation comprising the utterance as within a scope of the task API (¶ 113, “the intents represent tasks that the chatbot is capable of performing” and ¶ 67, “If a particular skill bot is selected, then the user utterance is routed to that skill bot for further processing”).
Regarding claim 10, Hirzel teaches: The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the next step is selected from the group consisting of: sending a response schema to the dialogue manager for it to create response or calling an additional API (¶ 69, “the dialogue flow may include invoking multiple API calls, wherein the multiple API calls are invoked in a single dialogue”).
Claims 11, 16, and 20 recite commensurate subject matter as claims 1 and 6. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons.
Claim(s) 2-5 and 12-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hirzel and Gadde, as applied above, and further in view of Kuntawar (US 2013/0036176).
Regarding claim 2, Hirzel and Gadde do not teach; however, Kuntawar discloses: the gateway comprises a parallel gateway (¶ 4, “A gateway, represented graphically as a diamond, represents the beginning or end of a parallel branch, such as a decision point or a merging point, i.e., a gateway can be used to branch an incoming flow into multiple parallel flows or merge multiple parallel flows into a single outgoing flow”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, at the effective filing date of the invention, to have applied the known technique of the gateway comprises a parallel gateway, as taught by Kuntawar, in the same way to the gateway, as taught by Hirzel and Gadde. Both inventions are in the field of processing workflows using gateways, and combining them would have predictably resulted in “BPM gateway token flow without strict gateway flow,” as indicated by Kuntawar (¶ 2).
Regarding claim 3, Hirzel teaches: The computer-implemented method of claim 2, further comprising: generating, by the one or more processors, meta-data from the API specification (Hirzel, ¶ 26, “there are entities generated from parameters found in the API (e.g., Swagger) specification, for instance, @text, @source, and @target”), wherein applying the parallel gateway to resolve each utterance comprises utilizing a conversational user interface of the dialogue manager to map each utterance to the task API (Gadde, ¶ 77, “generate a user interface for output to a user 208” and ¶ 69, “a dialog engine usually encounters is an “Intent” state that calls a “System.Intent” component to resolve a user intent represented in a user utterance to a particular intent configured for the chatbot (e.g., using the rules-based or machine-learning based classifier associated with the chatbot)”).
Regarding claim 4, Hirzel teaches: The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein applying the gateway to resolve each utterance obtained via the conversational system to a slot, wherein the applying comprises generating the new prompt, wherein generating the new prompt comprises utilizing the meta-data (¶ 65, “At 512, the natural language prompt or response is generated based on the instructions. The natural language prompt or response is generated, for instance, responsive to the instructions containing a prompt to be presented to a user, for example, for asking for confirmation or a question”).
Regarding claim 5, Hirzel teaches: The computer-implemented method of claim 4, wherein generating the new prompt comprises generating a user interface prompt based on an item selected from the group consisting of: an un-fulfilled slot in a schema or a natural language prompt (¶ 65, “At 512, the natural language prompt or response is generated based on the instructions. The natural language prompt or response is generated, for instance, responsive to the instructions containing a prompt to be presented to a user, for example, for asking for confirmation or a question”).
Claims 12-15 recite commensurate subject matter as claims 2-5. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons.
Claim(s) 7-9 and 17-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hirzel and Gadde, as applied above, and further in view of Nguyen (US 2006/0009973).
Regarding claim 7, Hirzel and Gadde do not teach; however, Nguyen discloses: determining, by the one or more processors, a dialogue state for the conversation (¶ 67, “Each slot object also maintains a number of state variables or flags used during the execution of a multi-slot dialog to indicate the enabled and filled state (among other state variables) for the corresponding slot”); pre-filling, by the one or more processors, the dialogue state for each slot based on the utterance (¶ 49, “When the slot values from the turn are confirmed either explicitly or implicitly, the slots are filled with their respective values at block 808”); and updating, by the one or more processors, a progress indicator for the workflow based on the pre-filling (¶ 67, “A filled flag is set to true when a slot value has been accepted after any applicable confirmation/clarification”).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, at the effective filing date of the invention, to have applied the known technique of determining, by the one or more processors, a dialogue state for the conversation; pre-filling, by the one or more processors, the dialogue state for each slot based on the utterance; and updating, by the one or more processors, a progress indicator for the workflow based on the pre-filling, as taught by Nguyen, in the same way to the conversation, as taught by Hirzel and Gadde. Both inventions are in the field of processing systems based on natural language processing, and combining them would have predictably resulted in a system configured to “collect multiple pieces of related information for the purpose of accomplishing a specific goal or topic,” as indicated by Nguyen (¶ 2).
Regarding claim 8, Hirzel and Nguyen teaches: The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprising: based on the progress indicator, determining, by the one or more processors, if the slots are filled (Nguyen, ¶ 50, “If all slots in the current segment are filled, then the system determines if there are any additional segment(s) of slots at decision block 812”); and based on determining that the slots are filled, executing the task API (Hirzel, ¶ 67, “At 516, it is determined whether the instructions contain a call to an API. At 518, if the instructions instruct to call the API, a computer code to invoke the API call is executed”).
Regarding claim 9, Nguyen teaches: The computer-implemented method of claim 7, further comprising: based on the progress indicator, determining, by the one or more processors, if the slots are filled (¶ 50, “the system determines if there are any remaining unfilled slots in the current segment at decision block 810”); and based on determining that the slots are not filled, determining a next step (¶ 50, “if there are remaining unfilled slots in the current segment and/or if there are additional segment(s) of slots, the dialog 800 returns to block 802 to initiated the next exchange”).
Claims 17-19 recite commensurate subject matter as claims 7-8. Therefore, they are rejected for the same reasons.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Ahmad (US 2023/0377567) teaches “automated conversation orchestration system that is configured to interconnect a plurality of natural language processing agents” (¶ 10), which relates to the disclosed conversational middleware/orchestration and processing.
Bharadwaj (US 11,488,601) teaches “[a]utomated assistant 120 may generate and provide to the user (via client device 106) natural language output that solicits input for any parameters that cannot be obtained from user data and/or input provided in connection with specifying an intent to the automated assistant” (col. 29-34), which relates to the disclosed prompting for missing values.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JACOB D DASCOMB whose telephone number is (571)272-9993. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00-5:00.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Pierre Vital can be reached at (571) 272-4215. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JACOB D DASCOMB/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2198
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