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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.
Applicant's submission filed on 04/28/2026 has been entered. Claims 1-3, 9, 11-13, 18 & 20 have been amended. Therefore, claims 1-20 are pending.
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s claim amendments and supporting arguments with respect to the § 101 rejection have been fully considered and are persuasive. The § 101 rejection of claims 1-20 has been withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the rejections of claims 1-20 under § 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejections have been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, new grounds of rejection are made in view of the newly identified prior art reference Leal.
Claim Objections
Claims 3, 6-9, 13 and 15-18 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claims 3 and 13 recite “a period of time”. For consistency with “time period” recited independent claims 1 and 11, claims 3 and 13 should be changed to recite “over a respective time period”.
Claims 6-9 and 15-18 each recite in their preamble “comprising:”. An example is claim 6, which begins with “The method of claim 1, comprising:”. These claims introduce new limitations and do not modify previously introduced limitations.
Therefore, they should each be introduced by changing their preamble to “further comprising:” (claims 6-9) or “further comprise:” (claims 15-18).
However, for claims 7, 8, 16 & 17, please follow the recommendations found in the § 112(b) rejection below.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112(b)
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 1-20 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.
Claims 1, 11 & 20 recite “merging . . . while keeping a recent value of the attribute in the plurality of data entries”. The term “recent” in the claims is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “recent” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention.
Further, the specification describes using “the most recent”, which is more definite than the relative language of “recent”. See Specification paragraphs [0024] and [0090].
Claims 6 and 15 recite “identifying a plurality of data entries”. This phrase was already introduced in the independent claims, and claims 6 and 15 should be amended to recite “identifying the [[a]] plurality of data entries”.
Claims 7, 8, 16 & 17 appear to describe modifications to the limitation in their respective independent claims “determining a current value of the attribute . . . in the summary record.”
Therefore, the preamble of claims 7, 8, 16 & 17 should be amended to recite (using claim 7 as an example): “The method of claim 6, wherein determining a current value of the attribute based on the consolidated data record of the attribute in the summary record comprises:”
Claims 7, 8, 16 & 17 each recite the phrase “data values”. This never appears in their respective independent claims, but the term “value” does.
Therefore, claims 7, 8, 16 & 17 should be amended to recite “determining that all [[data]] values”.
The remaining claims, not specifically rejected above, are rejected due to their dependency on a rejected independent 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
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, 2, 4, 6-12 & 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over
(i) Wong et al. (USPN 7,228,304 B1, hereinafter “Wong”) in view of
(ii) “Data Merging: Process, Challenges, and Best Practices for Combining Data from Multiple Sources” by Ehsan Elahi (published 11/15/2021, hereinafter “Elahi”), and further in view of
(iii) Leal et al. (US 2016/0036929 A1, hereinafter “Leal”).
Wong teaches:
1. A method comprising:
identifying an audit record that includes a plurality of data entries associated with an attribute of a user [Wong, column 3, lines 21-30];
generating a consolidated data record of the attribute in a summary record based on the plurality of data entries associated with the attribute [Wong, column 4, lines 26-41];
determining a current value of the attribute based on the consolidated data record of the attribute in the summary record [Wong, column 3, lines 31035 and column 4, lines 26-41]; and
storing the current value of the attribute in a final record for downstream processing [Wong, column 4, lines 26-41].
Wong does not explicitly teach the generating of the consolidated data record comprising: purging one or more data entries collected earlier than a predetermined time period, merging at least a portion of the plurality of data entries with a same session identifier while keeping a recent value of the attribute in the plurality of data entries, and merging at least a portion of the plurality of data entries with different session identifiers while keeping respective values of the attribute along with respective timestamps included in the plurality of data entries, each of the different session identifiers corresponding to user interaction with the application during a respective time period and via a respective different device of the user.
However, Elahi teaches the generating of the consolidated data record comprising:
purging one or more data entries collected earlier than a predetermined time period [Elahi, page 4, section “III. Data Filtering”],
merging at least a portion of the plurality of data entries with a same session identifier while keeping a recent value of the attribute in the plurality of data entries [Elahi, pages 5-6, section “III. Conditional Merge”], and
merging at least a portion of the plurality of data entries with different session identifiers while keeping respective values of the attribute along with respective timestamps included in the plurality of data entries [Elahi, page 5, section “I. Append Rows”],
each of the different session identifiers corresponding to user interaction with the application during a respective time period and via a respective different device of the user [Elahi, pages 5-6, section 2.III “Conditional Merge”, describing matching data from different datasets that do not share unique identifiers but are about the same products, which corresponds to data relating to a same user but appearing with different associated fields in different datasets].
Wong and Elahi are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, data merging. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Wong with the data transformation techniques taught by Elahi to improve data preprocessing and formatting of multiple data sources and layouts before further processing. Wong identifies the problem presented in column 1, lines 41-50: “A significant hurdle faced by most organizations seeking to perform auditing operations is that different systems may record information about events or operations in many different ways and in many different data formats. Moreover, the set of information that is recorded may differ from system to system. In addition, it may be difficult or impossible to correlate the information from the different systems to a related activity or set of activities, since multiple jumps between systems may result in loss of information about the original requestor for the activity.”
The combination of Wong and Elahi does not teach, but Leal teaches:
the same session identifier corresponding to a time period of user interaction with an application running on a device, the time period of user interaction beginning when the user initiates interaction with the application and ending when the user interaction is terminated [Leal, ¶¶ 0045 & 0046].
Wong, Elahi, and Leal are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, data merging. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Wong and Elahi with the user tracking techniques of Leal to uniquely identifier a user across different devices and sessions. See Leal, paragraph [0021].
The combination of Wong, Elahi, and Leal teaches:
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of data entries of the attribute is associated with a user identifier, and wherein the user identifier corresponds to one or more session identifiers across a plurality of user devices [Wong, column 2, line 61 to column 3, line 8].
4. The method of claim 1, wherein the audit record is stored in a low-cost archive data storage for long-term data backup retention, and wherein the summary record and the final record are stored in one or more key-value databases [Wong, column 3, lines 36-47 and column 4, lines 32-36].
6. The method of claim 1, comprising: identifying a plurality of data entries in the consolidated data record of the attribute from the summary record [Wong, column 4, line 60 to column 5, line 4].
7. The method of claim 6, comprising: determining that all data values of the attribute in the plurality of data entries correspond to a value; and identifying the value as the current value of the attribute to be stored in the final record [Wong, column 4, line 60 to column 5, line 4].
8. The method of claim 6, comprising: determining that all data values of the attribute in the plurality of data entries correspond to different values; determining a value as the current value of the attribute, the value representing conflicting values collected for the attribute; and storing the value as the current value of the attribute in the final record [Elahi, page 8, section “6. Keeping Data Synchronized Across Systems”].
9. The method of claim 1, comprising: receiving a request to reconstruct a data record from the plurality of data entries of the attribute associated with a user identifier; and reconstructing the data record based on the audit record and the final record generated based on the plurality of data entries, the data record including the user identifier, a session identifier, and a value of the attribute collected at a timestamp [Wong, column 4, line 60 to column 5, line 4].
10. The method of claim 1, wherein one or more of the audit record, the summary record, and the final record comprise one or more database rows, and wherein one or more of the audit record, the summary record, and the final record comprise one or more JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) objects [Wong, column 3, lines 36-47].
Claims 11 & 12 recite limitations similar to those recited in claims 1 & 2, respectively, and are rejected for the same reasons discussed above.
Claims 15-19 recite limitations similar to those recited in claims 6-10, respectively, and are rejected for the same reasons discussed above.
Claim 20 recites limitations similar to those recited in claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons discussed above.
Claims 3, 5, 12 & 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over
(i) Wong et al. (USPN 7,228,304 B1, hereinafter “Wong”) in view of
(ii) “Data Merging: Process, Challenges, and Best Practices for Combining Data from Multiple Sources” by Ehsan Elahi (published 11/15/2021, hereinafter “Elahi”), in view of
(iii) Leal et al. (US 2016/0036929 A1, hereinafter “Leal”), and further in view of
(iv) Koura et al. (US 2016/0196579 A1, hereinafter “Koura”).
The combination of Wong, Elahi, and Leal teaches:
3. The method of claim 1, but does not explicitly teach “wherein the attribute corresponds to consent preference configured by a user associated with a user identifier, and wherein the plurality of data entries of the attribute includes the consent preference configured by the user over a period of time across a plurality of user devices.”
However, Koura teaches wherein the attribute corresponds to consent preference configured by a user associated with a user identifier, and wherein the plurality of data records of the attribute includes the consent preference configured by the user over a period of time across a plurality of user devices [Koura, ¶ 0046].
Wong, Elahi, Leal, and Koura are analogous art because they are in the same field of endeavor, data merging. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the combination of Wong, Elahi, and Leal with the data trail analysis techniques taught by Koura to achieve the predictable result of improving data formatting and tracking when working with multiple data sources for improved data collection and reporting.
5. The method of claim 1, wherein the summary record is configured to allow a number of data entries up to a threshold value, wherein the audit record, the summary record, and the final record are associated with a user profile, wherein the user profile includes a plurality of summary records associated with the attribute, and wherein the current value of the attribute is determined based on the consolidated data record of the attribute across the plurality of summary records [Koura, ¶ 0034].
Claim 13 recites limitations similar to those recited in claim 3 and is rejected for the same reasons discussed above.
Claim 14 recites limitations similar to those recited in claims 4 & 5 and is rejected for the same reasons discussed above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Scott A. Waldron whose telephone number is (571)272-5898. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 9:00 am - 5:00 pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ajay Bhatia can be reached at (571) 272-3906. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Scott A. Waldron/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2156
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