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.
Claims 18-31 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e. abstract idea) without significantly more. The claim recites generating GUI portions with sub-windows in a timeline based on task statuses.
Claim 18 recites monitoring information sources, detecting an event reported, collecting plurality of documents and generating a summary report. The underlying concept merely relies on methods of organizing human activity, as drafted, is a method that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers monitoring reporting of events and gathering documents to generate a report. That is, other than reciting generating a summary based on “metadata”, nothing in the claim elements precludes the steps from practically being performed manually. For example, but for the “metadata” language, the context of the claim encompasses the user manually monitoring, collecting and generating summary. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the “Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claim only recites additional elements “metadata”. The “metadata” is recited at a high-level of generality such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, this additional element does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element “metadata” amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. The claim is not patent eligible.
Claims 19-31 do not include elements that amount to significantly more than the abstract idea and are also rejected under the same rational.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 18, 25-29 & 31 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by DAVE et al. (U.S. Pub 2015/0154249) hereinafter Dave.
As per Claim 18, Dave teaches A method of operating a multi-reference event summarization system, the method comprising: - monitoring one or more information sources; (Fig. 1, ¶7, ¶29, ¶30 wherien data streams extraction 100, which may include an ingestion module 102 for extracting data streams from a plurality of sources wherien ingestion module 102 may collect, scan or receive data streams from a variety of sources, which may include a combination of web pages, social media, Short Message Service ("SMS"), Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary ("RSS") feeds, and similar networked electronic messaging services and protocols. Such sources may be Facebook.RTM. 108, Twitter.RTM. 110, an RSS feed from a news source 112, and SMS feeds 114.)
- detecting an event reported in at least one of the information sources; (Fig.2, ¶7, ¶37 wherein detecting events based on input data from a plurality of sources wherein allow for the detection of events happening, and their proper association to disambiguated entities through text analysis of different sources)
- collecting a reference set associated with the event from the one or more information sources, wherein the reference set comprises a plurality of documents; and (Fig. 2, ¶35, ¶36, ¶37 wherein ingestion module 102 may take keywords and/or metadata from data streams and then may compare them against models and/or templates in databases 104 wherein an event model 206 may be "explosion"; a person can manually identify in a document 204 relating to an explosion the co-occurrence of keywords such as "bomb" and/or "fire". The user may then assign a weighted value to each keyword, depending on the repetition or the co-occurrence of these keywords with others in a plurality of documents 204 related to explosions, and associate those with an event model 206 for "explosion" stored in database 208)
- generating a summary of the event by assembling and organizing data from at least some of the plurality of documents based on metadata about each of the plurality of documents or the one or more information sources from which each of the plurality of documents was collected. (¶7 wherein ingestion modules may base their scanning or collecting of data streams on keywords, metadata, tags, relevant information attached (for pictures and videos), geographic location and time. Ingestion modules may provide live data streams to a cloud system, which may process such information filtering and summarizing such information in a seamless operation. The system may allow for the detection of events happening, and their proper association to disambiguated entities through text analysis of different sources)
As per Claim 25, the rejection of claim 18 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave further teaches wherein collecting the reference set associated with the event further includes collecting supplemental information to provide background for the event. (¶28, ¶29, ¶42 wherein an event-based communication system, which may enable embodiments to gather and communicate event-related information between "ingestion modules," which may then perform verification and validation of events detected by ingestion modules, by comparing detections of the same events (in parallel) at each of the other ingestion modules wherien an event model 306 may be associated with the event "explosion"; computer software 302 can automatically identify in a document 304 relating to an explosion the co-occurrence of keywords such as "bomb" and/or "fire" wherein ingestion module 102 for extracting data streams from a plurality of sources. Such sources may include social media, news sources, and/or any other sources that contain information related to events)
As per Claim 26, the rejection of claim 25 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave further teaches wherein before collecting supplemental information the system considers one or more of the following: persons' names related to the event, the location of the event, and the type of the event that occurred. (¶18, ¶32, ¶33 wherein entity extraction" refers to information processing methods for extracting information such as names, places, and organizations wherien Ingestion modules 102 may have access to one or more of databases 104 containing templates wherein templates may define an event (e.g., kidnapping) in terms of semantic roles for the entities involved (e.g., perpetrator, victim, date time))
As per Claim 27, the rejection of claim 26 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave further teaches wherein collecting supplemental information the system considers preferences or background of one or more system administrators or users, including one or more of the following: knowledge level of the one or more system administrators or users regarding a type of the event, knowledge level of the one or more system administrators or users regarding one or more persons or locations involved with the event. ( ¶32, ¶33 wherein entity extraction" refers to information processing methods for extracting information such as names, places, and organizations wherien ingestion modules 102 may have access to one or more of databases 104 containing templates wherein templates may define an event (e.g., kidnapping) in terms of semantic roles for the entities involved (e.g., perpetrator, victim, date time))
As per Claim 28, the rejection of claim 27 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave further teaches wherein the preferences or background of the one or more system administrators or users is dynamically updated as summaries are generated for use by one or more system administrators or users. (¶33 wherein Templates may define an event (e.g., kidnapping) in terms of semantic roles for the entities involved (e.g., perpetrator, victim, date time). Such databases 104 may be able to facilitate automated learning by ingestion module 102. Thus, new information and corrections may be automatically updated in a database 104.)
As per Claim 29, the rejection of claim 18 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave further teaches wherein generating the summary of the event by assembling and organizing data from at least some of the plurality of documents is based on preferences of one or more system administrators or users. (¶37, ¶40, ¶41, ¶42 wherien n event model 206 may be "explosion"; a person can manually identify in a document 204 relating to an explosion the co-occurrence of keywords such as "bomb" and/or "fire". The user may then assign a weighted value to each keyword, depending on the repetition or the co-occurrence of these keywords with others in a plurality of documents 204 related to explosions, and associate those with an event model 206 for "explosion" stored in database 208 wherien a person 308 may semi-supervise training process 300 by evaluating and correcting information tagged and assigned to specific events wherien n event model 306 may be associated with the event "explosion"; computer software 302 can automatically identify in a document 304 relating to an explosion the co-occurrence of keywords such as "bomb" and/or "fire". Computer software 302 may then assign a weight to each word depending on the repetition or the co-occurrence of these keywords with others in a plurality of documents 304 related to explosions, and associate those with an event model 306 for explosion stored in database 310)
As per Claim 31, the rejection of claim 18 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave further teaches wherein monitoring the one or more information sources comprises annotating non-text references that may comprise one or more of audio, image and video data. (¶7, ¶46 wherien ingestion modules may base their scanning or collecting of data streams on keywords, metadata, tags, relevant information attached (for pictures and videos), geographic location and time wherein an optimized ingestion module 102 may be customized for specific data stream sources wherien A specific data stream source may be a single source or a group of sources gathered by common topic, type of data received (e.g., text, images, videos))
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.
Claim(s) 19-24 & 30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dave in view of White et al. (U.S. Pub 2014/0379436) hereinafter White.
As per Claim 19, the rejection of claim 18 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave previously taught collecting the reference set associated with the event. However, Dave does not explicitly teach further comprising: calculating an event relevancy score for the event and collecting the reference set associated with the event only if the event relevancy score meets criteria.
White teaches further comprising: calculating an event relevancy score for the event and collecting the reference set associated with the event only if the event relevancy score meets criteria. (Fig. 1, Fig. 3, Fig. 4, ¶71, ¶72 wherien determining the relevance of the holiday to a first-party content provider wherein the threshold used to determine whether a holiday is of relevance to a particular first-party content provider may be hardcoded or otherwise fixed in the content selection service, set manually by a content provider, may be specific to a type of performance metric wherien a relevancy score may be determined by the content selection service to represent the overall relevancy of the holiday to the content provider wherein , process 400 may include a decision step at which process 400 branches depending on the relevancy of the holiday to the content provider (step 406). In some implementations, a relevancy score calculated in step 404 may be compared to a threshold value in step 406 to determine whether or not the holiday is currently of relevance to the content provider. If the holiday under analysis is determined not to be of relevance (e.g., its relevancy score is below a threshold value), process 400 may conclude or steps 402-404 may be repeated until a holiday is determined to be of relevance to the first-party content provider. If the holiday is determined to be relevant, however, process 400 may proceed to the execution of steps 408-412 to generate and provide a holiday performance report to the provider regarding the holiday)
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to utilize the teaching of holiday performance reports of White with the teaching of data ingestion module for event detection of Dave because White teaches an improved method of generating a holiday performance report for a first-party content provider. The method includes retrieving, from a storage device, a definition for a holiday event that includes a time period associated with the holiday event. The method also includes calculating, by one or more processors, a relevancy score for the holiday event. The method further includes comparing the relevancy score to a threshold value to determine whether the holiday event is of relevance to the first-party content provider. The method additionally includes retrieving historical performance metrics for the first-party content provider during one or more previous occurrences of the holiday event. The method yet further includes generating a holiday performance report based on the historical performance metrics. The method also includes providing the holiday performance report to an electronic device associated with the first-party content provider. (¶2)
As per Claim 20, the rejection of claim 19 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave as modified further teaches wherein the criteria comprises at least one of the following: the at least one information sources reporting the event, content of the event, timing between the event and publication of the plurality of documents, and historical preferences of the system administrators or users. (Fig. 4, ¶73 wherein decision step 400 includes retrieving historical performance metrics for the content provider from the holiday period and/or from one or more time periods surrounding the holiday period (step 408). The historical performance data may include performance metrics from the current year, the previous year, and/or from multiple years prior to the current year. Performance metrics may include, but are not limited to, metrics regarding traffic to the provider's website, usage metrics of a provider's application or other form of content, an impression count, a click count, a conversion count, or the like. The performance metrics may also include calculated metrics, such as average or weighted average values (e.g., a weighted average of traffic metrics in prior years may be weighted to give the highest weighting to the year immediately prior to the current year). The performance metrics may also include rates or other calculated values relative to one another, such as click through rates, conversion rates, or the like; as taught by White)
As per Claim 21, the rejection of claim 20 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave as modified further teaches further comprising: receiving feedback from one or more system administrators or users that a particular event is not relevant. (¶37 wherien an event model 206 may be "explosion"; a person can manually identify in a document 204 relating to an explosion the co-occurrence of keywords such as "bomb" and/or "fire". The user may then assign a weighted value to each keyword, depending on the repetition or the co-occurrence of these keywords with others in a plurality of documents 204 related to explosions, and associate those with an event model 206 for "explosion" stored in database 208; as taught by Dave; 72 wherien If the holiday under analysis is determined not to be of relevance (e.g., its relevancy score is below a threshold value), process 400 may conclude; as taught by White)
As per Claim 22, the rejection of claim 21 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave as modified further teaches wherein receiving feedback from one or more system administrators or users that a particular event is not relevant may comprise one or more of the following: manually indicating that the particular event is not relevant and failing to read summaries of the particular event. (Fig. 4, ¶21, ¶33, ¶50 wherien Templates may define an event (e.g., kidnapping) in terms of semantic roles for the entities involved (e.g., perpetrator, victim, date time). Such databases 104 may be able to facilitate automated learning by ingestion module 102. This automated training and correcting may be performed as a semi-supervised process, a supervised process,. The training process may allow human users to manually update templates, and event models, among others, as well as to check system when required wherien noise data refers to a plurality of not relevant, not related and useless data, which may be attached to data streams wherien by applying check 408 means that ingestion module 102 may avoid delivering data streams that are redundant or not related with the event or topic (noise) at "do not send data streams" step 410, and the ingestion module operation 400 may end)
As per Claim 23, the rejection of claim 20 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave as modified further teaches further comprising: receiving feedback from one or more system administrators or users that a particular event is relevant.( ¶37 wherien an event model 206 may be "explosion"; a person can manually identify in a document 204 relating to an explosion the co-occurrence of keywords such as "bomb" and/or "fire". The user may then assign a weighted value to each keyword, depending on the repetition or the co-occurrence of these keywords with others in a plurality of documents 204 related to explosions, and associate those with an event model 206 for "explosion" stored in database 208; as taught by Dave; ¶72 wherien if the holiday is determined to be relevant, however, process 400 may proceed to the execution of steps 408-412 to generate and provide a holiday performance report to the provider regarding the holiday. ; as taught by White;)
As per Claim 24, the rejection of claim 23 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave as modified further teaches wherein receiving feedback from one or more system administrators or users that a particular event is relevant may comprise one or more of the following: manually indicating that the particular event is relevant or manually searching for the particular event. .(¶37 wherien an event model 206 may be "explosion"; a person can manually identify in a document 204 relating to an explosion the co-occurrence of keywords such as "bomb" and/or "fire". The user may then assign a weighted value to each keyword, depending on the repetition or the co-occurrence of these keywords with others in a plurality of documents 204 related to explosions, and associate those with an event model 206 for "explosion" stored in database 208; as taught by Dave)
As per Claim 30, the rejection of claim 29 is hereby incorporated by reference; Dave previously taught the summary of the event. However, Dave does not explicitly teach wherein the summary of the event has an order and a length, the method further comprising generating the summary order and length based on the preferences of one or more system administrators or users.
White teaches wherein the summary of the event has an order and a length, the method further comprising generating the summary order and length based on the preferences of one or more system administrators or users. (¶54, ¶55, ¶66 wherien holiday event definitions 306 may also include one or more time periods relative to the holiday. In some cases, a holiday may be assigned to a longer or shorter time period than when the holiday actually occurs. For example, Memorial Day, which occurs each year on the final Monday of May, may be assigned a time period that includes the entire weekend in holiday event definitions 306 (e.g., for purposes of analysis and reporting, the entire weekend may be treated separately from other time periods) wherien a first-party content provider may be allowed to define one or more holiday events of interest to the provider wherien memory 312 may also include a holiday report generator 314 configured to generate one or more reports using data from holiday analyzer 312)
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was filed to utilize the teaching of holiday performance reports of White with the teaching of data ingestion module for event detection of Dave because White teaches an improved method of generating a holiday performance report for a first-party content provider. The method includes retrieving, from a storage device, a definition for a holiday event that includes a time period associated with the holiday event. The method also includes calculating, by one or more processors, a relevancy score for the holiday event. The method further includes comparing the relevancy score to a threshold value to determine whether the holiday event is of relevance to the first-party content provider. The method additionally includes retrieving historical performance metrics for the first-party content provider during one or more previous occurrences of the holiday event. The method yet further includes generating a holiday performance report based on the historical performance metrics. The method also includes providing the holiday performance report to an electronic device associated with the first-party content provider. (¶2)
Related Art
Related Art not relied upon Jacquet et al. (U.S. Pub 2015/0127323) for teaching a method for computing similarity includes extracting corpus statistics for triples from a corpus of text documents. Each triple includes a predicate and first and second arguments of the predicate. Documents in the corpus are clustered to form a set of clusters based on textual similarity and temporal similarity.
Inquiry
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANGIE BADAWI whose telephone number is (571)270-7590. The examiner can normally be reached Monday thru Wednesday 9:00am - 5:00pm EST with Thursdays and Fridays off.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Fred Ehichioya can be reached at (571) 272-4034. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/ANGIE BADAWI/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2179
Prosecution Insights