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 Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to 35 U.S.C. 112 rejection of claims 1-7 have been considered and found persuasive, and the rejection has been withdrawn.
Claim 7 has been cancelled.
Applicant's arguments with respect to 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection of claims 6-7 have been considered and found persuasive, and the rejection has been withdrawn.
Applicant's arguments with respect to 35 U.S.C. 101 Abstract Idea in regards to claims 1-6 have been considered, however are not found to be persuasive due to the following reasons. Examiner respectfully disagrees with the Applicant. See detailed reason for rejection below.
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 1-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Claims 1 and 6 are directed to the basic idea of evaluating a presentation by analyzing what a presenter says and comparing it to stored presentation notes. At a high level, the device (1) takes audio of a presenter, (2) identifies words/terms from the speech, (3) looks up stored “explanations” and related sentences/keywords tied to pages of the presentation material, and (4) decides whether the presenter covered those explanations and then scores the presentation. This is fundamentally information collection, comparison, and scoring, a type of data analysis.
The claims match what a person could do manually. A reviewer could listen to a talk, look at the slide-by-slide notes, and check whether the presenter said the expected points (the “sentences” tied to each explanation). The reviewer could also notice key topic words and use them to judge quality, and later update a checklist of good keywords based on what strong presenters tend to say. Because the claim is essentially automating this kind of human evaluation and check-listing (a mental process and a way of organizing a common human activity (presentation review)). It is directed to an abstract idea rather than a technological invention.
The claim does not focus on improving computer technology itself. It recites generic components like a processor, memory, and storage units, plus functional “units” that just describe what the software does (speech analysis, topic extraction, evaluation, keyword storage). Nothing in the claim requires a specific novel audio-processing technique, a novel speech-recognition method, a novel data structure, or an improvement in how computers operate.
Finally, the extra features (like extracting “topic words,” checking them against stored keywords, and storing new keywords from highly rated presentations) do not add an “inventive concept” that turns the abstract idea into patent-eligible subject matter. These are still routine, conventional information-processing steps: extract words, match words, and update a list based on results. The claim is written broadly in result-oriented language (e.g., “determine whether explanations have been uttered,” “evaluate,” “automatically store”), without limiting the invention to a specific technical solution.
The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the claims are (i) mere instructions to implement the idea on a computer, and/or (ii) recitation of generic computer structure that serves to perform generic computer functions that are well-understood, routine, and conventional activities previously known to the pertinent industry. Viewed as a whole, these additional claim element(s) do not provide meaningful limitation(s) to transform the abstract idea into a patent eligible application of the abstract idea such that the claim(s) amounts to significantly more than the abstract idea itself. Therefore, the claim(s) are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter. There is further no improvement to the computing device.
Dependent claims 2-5 further recite an abstract idea performable by a human and do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea as they do not provide steps other than what is conventionally known in presentation evaluations.
Claim 2, it is just the abstract idea of showing the user which required talking points were not yet said (a checklist/reminder), implemented with generic “read and display” computer functions.
Claim 3, it is just the abstract idea of presenting status information about slides and which explanations were covered (reporting/organizing information), using a generic display.
Claim 4, it is just the abstract idea of scoring a presentation by checking whether stored keywords appear in the speech (data comparison and evaluation), which is an abstract information-processing task on a generic computer.
Claim 5, it is just the abstract idea of calculating scores by comparing spoken terms to stored keywords and stored sentences and combining the results into a final score—routine data matching and mathematical/logic evaluation steps performed by generic computer components.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-6 would be allowed if the Applicant can overcome the 101 Abstract Idea set forth.
See Asadi et al. (“Real-Time Presentation Tracking Using Semantic Keyword Spotting”, 2016).
See Sekine (US 11,908,474).
See JP 7049010.
See Miyamoto et al. (US 7,739116).
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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SHREYANS A. PATEL
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2653
/SHREYANS A PATEL/Examiner, Art Unit 2659