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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This is the initial office action based on the application filed on May 31st, 2024, which claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Examiner Notes
Examiner cites particular columns and line numbers in the references as applied to the claims below for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may apply as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant 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.
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.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 are pending in the application and have been examined below, of which, claims 1, 11, and 16 are presented in independent form.
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Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements filed on June 5th, 2024. The complied IDS have been placed in the application file and the information referred to therein has been considered as to the merits.
Claim Objections
Claims 1, 11, and 16 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1, 11, and 16 recite the limitation “guiding generation of subsequent tokens” in lines 16, 14, and 12, respectively. They should be -- guiding the generation of the subsequent tokens --.
Appropriate correction is required.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
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 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention recites a judicial exception, is directed to that judicial exception, an abstract idea, as it has not been integrated into practical application and the claims further do not recite significantly more than the judicial exception. Examiner has evaluated the claims under the framework provided in the 2019 Patent Eligibility Guidance published in the Federal Register 01/07/2019 and has provided such analysis below.
Step 1: Claims 1-10 and 16-20 are directed to systems and fall within the statutory category of machines; and Claims 11-15 are directed to methods and fall within the statutory category of processes. Therefore, “Are the claims to a process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter?” Yes.
In order to evaluate the Step 2A inquiry “Is the claim directed to a law of nature, a natural phenomenon or an abstract idea?” we must determine, at Step 2A Prong 1, whether the claim recites a law of nature, a natural phenomenon or an abstract idea and further whether the claim recites additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
Claims 1, 11, and 16: recite the limitations of “
obtaining program code that was input into a user interface of an integrated development environment;
analyzing the program code using a language model to cause the language model to generate a suggestion for completing the program code;
monitoring tokens generated by the language model using a code monitor as the language model is generating the tokens, the tokens representing partial code that has been generated by the language model based on the program code;
identifying a trigger point in the partial code using the code monitor;
querying a static analysis tool using the code monitor to obtain constraints on generation of subsequent tokens based on repository-level syntactic and semantic knowledge in response to detecting the trigger point; and
guiding generation of subsequent tokens by the language model based on the constraints to cause the language model to generate a syntactically and semantically correct suggestion for completing the program code.”
Step 2A Prong 1:
Steps (a), (b), and (d) as drafted, can be done in human mind with the aid of pen and paper (mental process).
Step 2A Prong 2:
Claims 1, 11, and 16: The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claims recite the following additional elements – “data processing system,” “a processor,” “a memory storing executable instructions,” “program code,” “user interface,” “integrated development environment” “language model,” “static analysis tool,” and “code monitor”, which are merely recitations of generic computing components and functions merely applying the abstract idea using (see MPEP § 2106.05(f)) which does not integrate a judicial exception into practical application. Furthermore, steps (c), (e) and (f) are merely applying the abstract idea and field of use/technological environment.
Therefore, “Do the claims recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application? No, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application and they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
After having evaluating the inquires set forth in Steps 2A Prong 1 and 2, it has been concluded that claims 1 and 20 not only recite a judicial exception but that the claim is directed to the judicial exception as the judicial exception has not been integrated into practical application.
Step 2B:
Claims 1, 11, and 16: The additional elements, considering them both individually and in combination, do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
Therefore, “Do the claims recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No, these additional elements, alone or in combination, do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
Having concluded analysis within the provided framework, claims 1, 11, and 16 do not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Regarding claims 2, 12, and 17, the claims recite additional element recitations of “converting the constraints to masks for modifying logits of the language model, the logits representing a plurality of candidate tokens for the subsequent tokens; and modifying the logits of the language model using the masks to cause the language model to eliminate candidates for the subsequent tokens that are inconsistent with the constraints from the static analysis tool” which is merely a field of use/technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) which does not integrate the judicial exception into practical application. Moreover, claims 2, 12, and 17 do not recite any other additional elements and for the same reasons as above with regard to integration into practical application and whether additional elements amount to significantly more, claims 2, 12, and 17 also fail both Step 2A prong 2, thus the claims are directed to the judicial exception as they have not been integrated into practical application, and fail Step 2B as not amounting to significantly more. Therefore, claims 2, 12, and 17 do not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Regarding claims 3, 13, and 18, the claims recite additional element recitations of “performing an update operation in which the constraints obtained from the static analysis tool are updated based on the subsequent tokens generated by the language model to generate updated constraints” which is merely a field of use/technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) which does not integrate the judicial exception into practical application. Moreover, claims 3, 13, and 18 do not recite any other additional elements and for the same reasons as above with regard to integration into practical application and whether additional elements amount to significantly more, claims 3, 13, and 18 also fail both Step 2A prong 2, thus the claims are directed to the judicial exception as they have not been integrated into practical application, and fail Step 2B as not amounting to significantly more. Therefore, claims 3, 13, and 18 do not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Regarding claims 4, 14, and 19, the claims recite additional element recitations of “guiding the generation of a subsequent token by the language model based on the updated constraints” which is merely a field of use/technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) which does not integrate the judicial exception into practical application. Moreover, claims 4, 14, and 19 do not recite any other additional elements and for the same reasons as above with regard to integration into practical application and whether additional elements amount to significantly more, claims 4, 14, and 19 also fail both Step 2A prong 2, thus the claims are directed to the judicial exception as they have not been integrated into practical application, and fail Step 2B as not amounting to significantly more. Therefore, claims 4, 14, and 19 do not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Regarding claims 5, 15, and 20, the claims recite additional element recitations of “setting a value of logits associated with the plurality of candidate tokens for the subsequent tokens that are inconsistent with the constraints by setting the logits to a negative value” which is merely a field of use/technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) which does not integrate the judicial exception into practical application. Moreover, claims 5, 15, and 20 do not recite any other additional elements and for the same reasons as above with regard to integration into practical application and whether additional elements amount to significantly more, claims 5, 15, and 20 also fail both Step 2A prong 2, thus the claims are directed to the judicial exception as they have not been integrated into practical application, and fail Step 2B as not amounting to significantly more. Therefore, claims 5, 15, and 20 do not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Regarding claim 6: the claim recites additional element recitations of “wherein the static analysis tool provides the constraints based on context information based on a code repository” which is merely a field of use/technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) which does not integrate the judicial exception into practical application. Moreover, claim 6 does not recite any other additional elements and for the same reasons as above with regard to integration into practical application and whether additional elements amount to significantly more, claim 6 also fails both Step 2A prong 2, thus the claim is directed to the judicial exception as it has not been integrated into practical application, and fails Step 2B as not amounting to significantly more. Therefore, claim 6 does not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Regarding claim 7: the claim recites additional element recitations of “wherein the context information includes external dependencies, intermediate artifacts, or both” which is merely a field of use/technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) which does not integrate the judicial exception into practical application. Moreover, claim 7 does not recite any other additional elements and for the same reasons as above with regard to integration into practical application and whether additional elements amount to significantly more, claim 7 also fails both Step 2A prong 2, thus the claim is directed to the judicial exception as it has not been integrated into practical application, and fails Step 2B as not amounting to significantly more. Therefore, claim 7 does not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Regarding claim 8: the claim recites additional element recitations of “wherein the constraints comprise one or more legal dereference names, a valid number of arguments, or a valid application programming interface (API) call consistent with an API ordering contract” which is merely a field of use/technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) which does not integrate the judicial exception into practical application. Moreover, claim 8 does not recite any other additional elements and for the same reasons as above with regard to integration into practical application and whether additional elements amount to significantly more, claim 8 also fails both Step 2A prong 2, thus the claim is directed to the judicial exception as it has not been integrated into practical application, and fails Step 2B as not amounting to significantly more. Therefore, claim 8 does not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Regarding claim 9: the claim recites additional element recitations of “wherein the constraints are static analysis constraints that ensure that the program code complies with a set of programming standards” which is merely a field of use/technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) which does not integrate the judicial exception into practical application. Moreover, claim 9 does not recite any other additional elements and for the same reasons as above with regard to integration into practical application and whether additional elements amount to significantly more, claim 9 also fails both Step 2A prong 2, thus the claim is directed to the judicial exception as it has not been integrated into practical application, and fails Step 2B as not amounting to significantly more. Therefore, claim 9 does not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Regarding claim 10: the claim recites additional element recitations of “wherein the code monitor communicates with the static analysis tool using Language Server Protocol” which is merely a field of use/technological environment (see MPEP § 2106.05(h)) which does not integrate the judicial exception into practical application. Moreover, claim 10 does not recite any other additional elements and for the same reasons as above with regard to integration into practical application and whether additional elements amount to significantly more, claim 10 also fails both Step 2A prong 2, thus the claim is directed to the judicial exception as it has not been integrated into practical application, and fails Step 2B as not amounting to significantly more. Therefore, claim 10 does not recite patent eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Lakshya A Agrawal et al. (“Monitor-Guided Decoding of Code LMs with Static Analysis of Repository Context,” – IDS filed 6/5/2024) discloses monitor-guided decoding (MGD) where a monitor uses static analysis to guide the decoding. A monitor observes the coded generated by an LM and queries static analysis at pre-defined trigger points. The suggestions returned by the static analysis are converted to masks which are used for reshaping the logits (or equivalently, token-generation probabilities) produced by the LM in the subsequent decoding steps.
Disha Shrivastava et al. (“Repository-Level Prompt Generation for Large Language Models of Code,” – IDS filed 6/5/2024) discloses a framework called Repo-Level Prompt Generator that learns to generate example-specific prompts using prompt proposals. The prompt proposals take context from the entire repository, thereby incorporating both the structure of the repository and the context from other relevant files.
Savalle et al. (Pub. No.: US 2025/0060949) discloses using a large language model (LLM) for code generation for network analytics with coding hints by implementing a device to pause the generation of computer code. The device matches a block of the computer code to a hint regarding a portion of the block of computer code. The device inserts the hint into the computer code. The device resumes generation of the computer code by the language model, wherein the language model uses the hint to generate a new portion of the computer code.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to HANH THI MINH BUI whose telephone number is (571)270-1976. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday: 7-3.
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/HANH THI-MINH BUI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2192 June 8th, 2026
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