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 .
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.
Claim 6 is rejected 35 U.S.C. 101 as not falling within one of the four statutory categories of invention and directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because claim 9 recites “[a] program for implementing…” and is not limited to the statutory categories of invention and therefore rejected as being software per se. In other words, “a program” is neither a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. A non-limiting example of acceptable language would be: “A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a computer program executable by using at least one processor”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
Claims 1-4 and 6-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Beranek et al. (US Pub 2005/0283475) in view of Kantor et al. (US Pub 2016/0117314).
Regarding claim 1, Beranek discloses method, the method comprising,
by the computer:
a voice analyzing step of analyzing a voice about a conversation to obtain a voice word, the voice word being a word included in the conversation (see para 0039-0041);
a word group analyzing step of analyzing which of a plurality of keywords matches the voice word (see abstract; para 0009-0012, 0041);
Beranek does not disclose a question answer creating step of creating a question and an answer to the question, using the voice word; and
a question-and-answer set obtaining step of obtaining, using a keyword that is determined to match the question being classified and an answer to the question, a question and an answer about the keyword, the question and the answer being to be recorded in a question-and-answer collection.
Kantor discloses a question answer creating step of creating a question and an answer to the question, using the voice word (see abstract; para 0003, para 0033-0045; 0057-0062, 0066-0068); and
a question-and-answer set obtaining step of obtaining, using a keyword that is determined to match the question being classified and an answer to the question, a question and an answer about the keyword (para 0033-0045; 0057-0062, 0066-0068), the question and the answer being to be recorded in a question-and-answer collection (para 0073 - question/answer corpora database 510; para 0088, 0093);
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Beranek with the teachings of Kantor in order to use resource-efficient method for automatic question generation for automated testing systems (Kantor, para 0002, 0005).
Regarding claim 2, Beranek discloses further comprising:
a keyword candidate extracting step of obtaining a candidate for a keyword from the voice word (see para 0041, 0043); and
a keyword updating step of updating, using the candidate for the keyword extracted in the keyword candidate extracting step, a keyword registered in a keyword dictionary, to update a plurality of registered keywords (para 0021,0043, 0049), wherein
the plurality of keywords in the word group analyzing step are the plurality of registered keywords that are obtained by the keyword updating step (para 0021 – “rules may be invoked which associates newly monitored keywords with the context of the new topic area. A rule may be triggered by an utterance of one or more keywords and may cause new keywords or phrases to be activated for monitoring”,0043, 0049).
Regarding claim 3, Kantor discloses further comprising
a category analyzing step of analyzing a category of the question and the answer (para 0055, 0056), wherein
the question-and-answer collection stores the question and the answer in the category analyzed in the category analyzing step, the question and the answer being to be recorded in the question-and-answer collection (para 0066-069, 0082).
Regarding claim 4, Kantor discloses further comprising:
a content related word reading step of reading, by the computer, a content related word that is related to content included in a presentation material about the conversation (para 0050-0055);
a content related word determining step of determining whether the keyword is the content related word (para 0054-0055 – target phrase); and
a content obtaining step of, when the keyword is the content related word, storing the content in the question-and-answer collection in association with the question and the answer to be recorded in the question-and-answer collection (para 0057; 0069; see fig. 6).
Regarding claim 6, see rejection of claim 1.
Regarding claim 7, see rejection of claim 1 (see para 0020 of Kantor disclosing non-transitory storage).
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Beranek et al. (US Pub 2005/0283475) in view of Kantor et al. (US Pub 2016/0117314) and in further view of Lavery et al. (US Pub 2023/0106058).
Regarding claim 5, Beranek in view of Kantor discloses the method of claim 1.
Beranek in view of Kantor does not disclose wherein the question-and-answer collection stores a page of a presentation material related to the content in association with the content.
Lavery discloses wherein the question-and-answer collection stores a page of a presentation material related to the content in association with the content (see para 0027).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Beranek in view of Kantor with the teachings of Lavery in order to have a single document for presentation for easier readability.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NAFIZ E HOQUE whose telephone number is (571)270-1811. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-5.
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/NAFIZ E HOQUE/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2693