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 communication is responsive to Amendment, filed 10/30/2025.
Claims 1-3, 6-12, 15-17 are pending in this application. This action is made Final.
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 of this title, 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 set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
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.
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.
Claims 1-3, 6-12, 15-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lillard et al. (US Pat No. 9,848,082), in view of O’BRIEN et al. (US Pub No. 2023/0388263).
As to claims 1, 9, Lillard teaches a system for data base management and resolution of data queries, the system comprising:
a non-transitory storage device (i.e. As shown in FIG. 12, the processing system 1200 may include one or more processors 1201 that may communicate with other elements within the processing system 1200 via a bus 1205, col. 32, lines 19-29);
a computing system operatively connected to the storage device and adapted to communicate with a resolution agent and with multiple operations agents, the computing system including a processor (i.e. The logical operations described herein may be implemented (1) as a sequence of computer implemented acts or one or more program modules running on a computing system and/or (2) as interconnected machine logic circuits or circuit modules within the computing system, col. 33, lines 16-35);
an application stored in the storage device and including executable code that is executed causing the processor to (i.e. The contents of the response may be suggested to the agent. Thus, an artificial intelligence application could suggest a response (i.e., a draft response) to the agent, which the agent may accept, edit, or replace. In many instances, based on the keywords, a suitable draft response may be determined by the speech analytics module or some other module, and the agent is asked to verify the contents. Providing the agent with a draft response avoids the agent from having to type in the response from the beginning. In many instances, the contents of a response may be similar for a particular circumstance, col. 8, lines 3-13; The agent may use various user-interface techniques to interact with the system, and the nature of the additional information requested may vary from application to application, col. 7, lines 48-55):
store data associated with the operations agents, the data including contact information and responsibilities information for each of the operation agents (i.e. There may be agents working in separate groups which address product enquiries, returns, orders, or billing issues. Knowing at a high level which category the enquiry involves may ensure that the enquiry is handled by the appropriate agent skills group. Otherwise, the enquiry may be processed by an individual who is not qualified and has to then forward the work item to an appropriate group. While a skill level may be determined by the number dialed, the keywords may provide further granularity as to the nature of the skill required, col. 19, lines 52-64; The agent assist information record (“AAIR”) 630 can be structured in various ways, and is described as a record in this embodiment. The AAIR 630 is the collection of information that is obtained and gathered in one logical structure that includes all the information itself, or location information where to locate that information, which may be useful when the agent prepares a response to a particular voice message. In other embodiments, the AAIR 630 may comprises separate, but linked structures, so as to make up a single logical structure, col. 22, line 62 to col. 23, line 4; The AAIR can be stored in an AAIR database 685 with other AAIRs, allowing ready access from a central location when agents are available to process the responses, col. 23, lines 5-20);
in response to data query received from an external source, execute a machine learning algorithm that generates a list of ones of the operations agents by analyzing the data query to identify the external source and keywords in the data query and search for matches to the external source and the keywords in responses to previous data queries to identify associated ones of the operational agents that then added to the list (i.e. a new AAIR is added to the AAIR database. It will then monitor the status of a pool of agents to ascertain which agent is available, col. 23, lines 37-50; an ordered list of agents are defined and the first voice message is handled by the first agent on the list, the second voice message on the second agent on the list, col. 24, lines 20-37; Turning to FIG. 1, the process begins with Phase 1 that is the Message Receipt phase 102. The Message Receipt phase begins with the receipt of an incoming communication from the remote party, which may be in the form of a voice call from a remote party. In other embodiments, an incoming email or SMS text message could be received, col. 5, lines 3-15; The purpose of determining the keywords is multi-purpose; the keywords may be potentially used to identify knowledge base resources, identify the nature of the enquiry, and potentially identify a proposed response to the enquiry. It should be recognized that other functions may be performed using the keywords. The keywords may indicate at a high level whether the customer enquiry is, for example: a general question, a customer complaint, a specific specialized enquiry, product related questions, etc. Identifying the overall nature of the enquiry may be useful to determine a skill set of an agent needed to address the caller's enquiry, the priority in responding to the issue, and other resources required by the agent to response to the enquiry, col. 19, lines 25-38);
enable the resolution agent to access the stored data and select a first of the operations agents from the list to respond to the data query (i.e. The next phase is Message Queuing 106. This involves determining which agent will handle sending the response. The process of determining which agent to select may be governed by various criteria and algorithms, including which agent has the appropriate skill set and which agent is currently available. Other factors may include which agent previously interacted with the customer or which agent has a matching or best suited personality/skill based on the customer and/or message contents. Other algorithms for selecting an agent may be employed. For example, an irate customer leaving a message regarding a service problem may be routed to a specific agent who is known to be well qualified in dealing with that particular issue. Other factors may be considered, such as current workload of agents, expected decreases in workload in the immediate future (e.g., during the present shift), skill level, experience, pay level, customer value, etc., col. 6, lines 50-67);
enable the resolution agent to create a message and send the message to the first operations agent (i.e. it may identify various keywords spoken by the caller in the message. The keywords may be then used to retrieve information resources from a knowledge base ... This information may be useful to retrieve printer return policies from a corporate knowledge base, which may be useful to the agent when generating a response. The keywords could also be displayed to the agent, to inform the agent of the gist of the message, col. 6, lines 20-39; The other function performed by audio processing may involve developing a transcript of the audio message. This is to be a word-for-word text representation of the voice message, which may be useful by itself to the agent, or to augment the information provided by displaying the keyword search results. The transcript may be used by an agent in subsequently reviewing the contents of the message for additional details that may not have been detected by the keywords. In some embodiments, reviewing a transcript of the message may be faster for an agent to review than listening to the audio of the voice message, col. 6, lines 39-49; The Response Generation phase 112 refers to the agent generating and providing a response to the original customer's enquiry, col. 7, line 56 to col. 8, line 2; The contents of the response may be suggested to the agent. Thus, an artificial intelligence application could suggest a response (i.e., a draft response) to the agent, which the agent may accept, edit, or replace. In many instances, based on the keywords, a suitable draft response may be determined by the speech analytics module or some other module, and the agent is asked to verify the contents, col. 8, lines 3-13; The Message Queuing phase involves scheduling the processing of a voice message by an agent for providing a response to the caller. Since the voice message will be linked to a particular AAIR, the message queuing operation can be thought of scheduling the next agent to process the AAIR, or vice versa (scheduling the next AAIR to an agent). Thus, selecting the agent to process a particular AAIR may also be referred to as: “selecting an agent to service a voice message,” “determining which agent should respond to a voice message,” or other similar phrases, col. 23, lines 21-31; This approach attempts to determine whether a necessary skill is required for responding to an enquiry, and if so, what that skill may be required, prior to selecting an agent. Once the necessary skills are determined, the required skill can be matched against a skill listing for agents, and an agent can be selected. Then, at an appropriate time, a notification can be sent to that agent informing them about the particular pending voice message that needs to be processed, col. 23, lines 59-67);
in response to no acknowledgement of the message received from the first operations agent within a first predetermined time period after the message was sent, resending the message to the first operation agent (i.e. This approach attempts to minimize the time between the creation of the AAIR (or when the caller leaves the message) and the time that an agent begins to work on responding to the voice message. A scheduling module will periodically check, or otherwise be informed, when a new AAIR is added to the AAIR database. It will then monitor the status of a pool of agents to ascertain which agent is available. In one embodiment, the first available agent is selected to handle the next AAIR. That agent may be indicated as busy to the call handling system (so that the same agent is not selected to handle other inbound or outbound voice calls or other communications). The selected agent may then be informed that an AAIR is available for them to handle, col. 23, lines 37-50; The selection of an appropriate agent can use any of the above identified algorithms for determining which agent should handle the message. Once that is determined, then that selected agent is provided with a message waiting indicator in operation 720 ... a request is received from the agent indicating the agent is now ready to process the message in operation 725, col. 25, lines 56-62);
in response to no acknowledgement of the message received from the first operations agent within a second predetermined time period after the message was resent, enable the resolution agent to access the stored data and select a second of the operations agents from the list to respond to the data query (i.e. Once that is determined, then that selected agent is provided with a message waiting indicator in operation 720 ... a request is received from the agent indicating the agent is now ready to process the message in operation 725, col. 25, lines 56-62; This approach attempts to minimize the time between the creation of the AAIR (or when the caller leaves the message) and the time that an agent begins to work on responding to the voice message. A scheduling module will periodically check, or otherwise be informed, when a new AAIR is added to the AAIR database. It will then monitor the status of a pool of agents to ascertain which agent is available. In one embodiment, the first available agent is selected to handle the next AAIR. That agent may be indicated as busy to the call handling system (so that the same agent is not selected to handle other inbound or outbound voice calls or other communications). The selected agent may then be informed that an AAIR is available for them to handle, col. 23, lines 37-50), and
enable the resolution agent to send the message to the second operations agent (i.e. The selection of an appropriate agent can use any of the above identified algorithms for determining which agent should handle the message. Once that is determined, then that selected agent is provided with a message waiting indicator in operation 720 ... a request is received from the agent indicating the agent is now ready to process the message in operation 725, col. 25, lines 56-62; This approach distributes voice messaging service requests to a pool of available agents based on an equitable manner of some sort, which in this case is a round-robin approach. Specifically, in one embodiment, an ordered list of agents are defined and the first voice message is handled by the first agent on the list, the second voice message on the second agent on the list, etc. In one variation, this approach may assign the voice message to the next agent if the first agent is on a call. Once allocated to an agent, when the current work item is completed by the agent, the agent is then presented with the voice message to process. Thus, even an agent currently unavailable may be treated the same as if the agent is available. In another variation, agents on the list who are currently on a call are skipped, and the next agent on the list is examined to see if they are available. In this approach, the voice message is allocated to the next available agent on the list, col. 24, lines 20-37; While this approach may minimize the time for an agent being selected to respond to a voice message, it may interrupt other, more important, activities by allocating available agents to respond to voice messages. Further, the next available agent may not be the best agent suited for responding to the voice message. Thus, this algorithm for selecting an agent may be combined or augmented with other schemes, col. 23, lines 51-58).
Lillard do not seem to specifically teach the following limitations but O’BRIEN teaches:
a machine learning algorithm (i.e. the recipient contact record information from the received recipient message list, the recipient list information rating, and the other recipient-specific information may be input to a model (e.g., a regression model) or a machine learning system (such as an artificial intelligence system like a neural network, deep learning system, or the like), or a hybrid thereof, that may predict a probability of
a bounce for each contact, [0161]);
in response to no acknowledgement of the message received from the first operations agent within a first predetermined time period after the message was sent, resending the message to the first operation agent (i.e. If the sending of the email cannot be confirmed, or if its failure to send is confirmed, then the electronic message management system may choose to resend the email. In embodiments, it may continue to do so until a resend stop criteria is met, such as the email being successfully sent, an email being successfully received, a resend timeout or count limit being reached, and the like, [0066]; by resending an email only to those recipients on a list who have not already responded to the email, and the like, [0050]; the platform enables the end-to-end management of an electronic message campaign throughout the life cycle of a message, [0010]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill of the art having the teaching of Lillard, O’BRIEN before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Lillard to include the limitations as taught by O’BRIEN. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to make this combination in order to send a message, such as via a message transfer agent (e.g., a “send-call” sequence involving filtering and locking a recipient list, attempting to send an email, handling returns, resending emails, annotation, routing, and the like) in view of O’BRIEN ([0010]), as doing so would give the added benefit of having the platform enabled the end-to-end management of an electronic message campaign throughout the life cycle of a message, as taught by O’BRIEN ([0010]).
As to claims 2, 10, Lillard teaches the computing system includes an email system and the message is an email message communicated through the email system (i.e. Turning to FIG. 1, the process begins with Phase 1 that is the Message Receipt phase 102. The Message Receipt phase begins with the receipt of an incoming communication from the remote party, which may be in the form of a voice call from a remote party. In other embodiments, an incoming email or SMS text message could be received, although this may alter some of the processing functions, col. 5, lines 3-15).
As to claims 3, 11, 12, Lillard teaches the message includes at least one of an identify of the external source, a summary of the data query, a response due date, an internal due date prior to the response due date, a link to the data query, and fields for providing the requested information (i.e. The Message Queuing phase involves scheduling the processing of a voice message by an agent for providing a response to the caller. Since the voice message will be linked to a particular AAIR, the message queuing operation can be thought of scheduling the next agent to process the AAIR, or vice versa (scheduling the next AAIR to an agent), col. 23, lines 21-31; various options can be presented to the caller as to whether they prefer: a voice recording callback response, an email response, a fax response, as well as the time of the callback, and the number where the callback is to occur, col. 17, lines 1-13; The purpose of determining the keywords is multi-purpose; the keywords may be potentially used to identify knowledge base resources, identify the nature of the enquiry, and potentially identify a proposed response to the enquiry, col. 19, lines 25-38; The knowledge base processing module 616 may not only identify relevant resources that may be useful to the agent in formulating the response to the caller, but it may also generate a draft text-based response, col. 22, lines 16-35; in lieu of providing a ULR to a web-page for checking the status, the knowledge base processing module could actually query the order status system for the information, and include that information in a draft response. APIs may be provided to various systems for account balance information, purchasing history, order status, exchange/return status, etc. The incorporation of API's for gathering information to other internal systems largely depends on the business of an enterprise. For example, an airline may incorporate APIs to various flight scheduling systems and/or ticketing systems. A bank may provide APIs into various checking/savings/credit card account systems. A manufacturer may have APIs into various product shipping, ordering, and account/billing systems. This level of sophistication allows the knowledge base processing module to anticipate what information may be required by the agent to adequately respond to the caller's enquiry, and therefore save time of the agent by providing the necessary resources available and/or a draft response. The output 620 of the draft response and resources are stored in a corresponding field 650 in the agent assist information record, col. 22, lines 36-61).
As to claims 6, 15, Lillard teaches a sum of the first predetermined time period and the second predetermined time period is less than a time between the sending of the message and an internal due date for the first operations agent to provide a response to the data query (i.e. The IVR may also provide an estimated time of the response and confirm the channel type of the response (e.g., audio or text), col. 17, lines 25-41; The allowable time/dates may be coordinated with the agent's work schedule, so that the callback may be scheduled only when the agent is scheduled to work, col. 26, lines 20-40).
As to claims 7, 16, Lillard teaches in response to an acknowledgement from the first operations agent indicates unavailability of not being able to respond by an internal due date, the processor enables the resolution agent to access the stored data, to select a second of the operations agents to respond to the data query, and to send the message to the second operations agent (i.e. The selection of an appropriate agent can use any of the above identified algorithms for determining which agent should handle the message. Once that is determined, then that selected agent is provided with a message waiting indicator in operation 720 ... a request is received from the agent indicating the agent is now ready to process the message in operation 725, col. 25, lines 56-62; This approach distributes voice messaging service requests to a pool of available agents based on an equitable manner of some sort, which in this case is a round-robin approach. Specifically, in one embodiment, an ordered list of agents are defined and the first voice message is handled by the first agent on the list, the second voice message on the second agent on the list, etc. In one variation, this approach may assign the voice message to the next agent if the first agent is on a call. Once allocated to an agent, when the current work item is completed by the agent, the agent is then presented with the voice message to process. Thus, even an agent currently unavailable may be treated the same as if the agent is available. In another variation, agents on the list who are currently on a call are skipped, and the next agent on the list is examined to see if they are available. In this approach, the voice message is allocated to the next available agent on the list, col. 24, lines 20-37; While this approach may minimize the time for an agent being selected to respond to a voice message, it may interrupt other, more important, activities by allocating available agents to respond to voice messages. Further, the next available agent may not be the best agent suited for responding to the voice message. Thus, this algorithm for selecting an agent may be combined or augmented with other schemes, col. 23, lines 51-58).
As to claims 8, 17, Lillard teaches in response to the first operations agent is not able to respond between the internal due date and a response due date, the processor enables the resolution agent to access the stored data, to select a second of the operations agents to respond to the data query, and to send the message to the second operations agent (i.e. The allowable time/dates may be coordinated with the agent's work schedule, so that the callback may be scheduled only when the agent is scheduled to work ... The agent may also be prompted with various ‘quick-select’ options allowing the agent to schedule the callback for a similar time the following day for the same agent, a different agent, or for when the next available agent is available, col. 26, lines 20-40).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to claims 1-3, 6-12, 15-17 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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 extension fee 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MIRANDA LE whose telephone number is (571)272-4112. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7AM-5PM.
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/MIRANDA LE/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2153
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