Prosecution Insights
Last updated: April 19, 2026
Application No. 18/781,304

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR AUTOMATIC DETECTION AND FILLING OF INFORMATION GAPS IN A REFERENCE DATABASE

Non-Final OA §101§112§DP
Filed
Jul 23, 2024
Examiner
PYO, MONICA M
Art Unit
2161
Tech Center
2100 — Computer Architecture & Software
Assignee
Shopify Inc.
OA Round
3 (Non-Final)
83%
Grant Probability
Favorable
3-4
OA Rounds
3y 4m
To Grant
99%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 83% — above average
83%
Career Allow Rate
511 granted / 616 resolved
+28.0% vs TC avg
Strong +36% interview lift
Without
With
+35.6%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
3y 4m
Avg Prosecution
16 currently pending
Career history
632
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
23.2%
-16.8% vs TC avg
§103
40.3%
+0.3% vs TC avg
§102
10.7%
-29.3% vs TC avg
§112
17.2%
-22.8% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 616 resolved cases

Office Action

§101 §112 §DP
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status 1. 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 2. This communication is responsive to the RCE filed on 11/05/2025. 3. Claims 1-20 are currently pending in this Office action. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101 4. The 35 U.S.C. 101 rejections made in the prior Office action are withdrawn. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112 5. In view of the applicant’s explanation [page 14 of Remarks] and the claim amendment filed on 11/05/2025, the 35 U.S.C. 112, first paragraph and second paragraph rejections made in the prior Office action are withdrawn. Double Patenting 6. The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the claims at issue are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); and In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969). A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b). The USPTO internet Web site contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit http://www.uspto.gov/forms/. The filing date of the application will determine what form should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/eTD-info-I.jsp. 7. Claims 1, 11 and 20 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 5-6 and 15-16 of co-pending Application No. 18/768,340. Although the claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the reference claims are an obvious variation of the instant claims. Claims 5-6 and 15-16 of the reference application discloses a similar operation as the instant application except it does not disclose the claim limitation of “responsive to determining that the searching does not return a relevant synthetic question embedding that meets the similarity threshold, monitoring the ongoing chat session to detect an answer to the user query in a transcript of the chat session” However, Siebel discloses the feature of filtering out data records that have a relevance score below a configurable threshold value (col. 14, lns. 44-49; col. 14, lns. 60-col. 15, lns. 41) and it would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art to utilize the teachings of Krishnan in the system of reference application in view of improving the efficiency of the personalized intelligence system. Instant Application Application No. 18/768,340 Claim 1. A computer-implemented method comprising: responsive to receiving, by a computing device, a user query in an ongoing chat session, obtaining source text from a reference database for augmenting a large language model (LLM) in generating a response that answers the user query, by searching a vector database to identify a synthetic question embedding, based on a similarity between the synthetic question embedding and an embedding representation of the user query, wherein the synthetic question embedding represents a synthetic question that is answerable using a corresponding source text and wherein a relevance of the identified synthetic question embedding is based on a similarity threshold; responsive to determining that the searching does not return relevant synthetic question embedding that meets the similarity threshold, monitoring the ongoing chat session to detect an answer to the user query in a transcript of the chat session; generating a prompt to the LLM for generating a textual content for inclusion in the reference database, the prompt including the user query and the transcript; proving the prompt to the LLM to cause the LLM to generate the textual content; and automatically updating the corresponding source text or a different source text using the generated textual content. Claim 1. A computer-implemented method comprising: responsive to a user input, obtaining an input embedding associated with the user input; retrieving a synthetic question embedding from an embeddings database, based on a similarity to the input embedding; obtaining a source text based on a stored mapping between the synthetic question embedding and the source text; [Claim 4. The method of claim 1, wherein the embeddings database stores a plurality of embeddings defining an embedding space and wherein retrieving the synthetic question embedding from the embeddings database comprises: performing a vector similarity search operation within the embedding space to identify the synthetic question embedding, based on similarity measures between embeddings of the plurality of synthetic question embeddings and the input embedding. using a large language model (LLM), generating a textual response to the user input, based on the user input and the source text; and providing the generated textual response for display via a user device. It is noted that claims 11 and 20 of the present application recite the similar limitations of claims 15-16 of the Application No. 18/768,340, respectively, and are rejected due to the similar reasons set forth above. This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection because the patentably indistinct claims have not in fact been patented. Conclusion 8. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MONICA M PYO whose telephone number is (571)272-8192. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8am-4pm. 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, APU MOFIZ can be reached at 571-272-4080. 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. /MONICA M PYO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2161
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Prosecution Timeline

Jul 23, 2024
Application Filed
Mar 08, 2025
Non-Final Rejection — §101, §112, §DP
Jun 13, 2025
Response Filed
Aug 19, 2025
Final Rejection — §101, §112, §DP
Oct 16, 2025
Response after Non-Final Action
Oct 20, 2025
Response after Non-Final Action
Nov 05, 2025
Request for Continued Examination
Nov 14, 2025
Response after Non-Final Action
Feb 18, 2026
Non-Final Rejection — §101, §112, §DP (current)

Precedent Cases

Applications granted by this same examiner with similar technology

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Patent 12596723
DYNAMIC VALUATION SYSTEM USING OBJECT RELATIONSHIPS AND COMPOSITE OBJECT DATA
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Patent 12591751
NATURAL LANGUAGE GENERATION USING KNOWLEDGE GRAPH INCORPORATING TEXTUAL SUMMARIES
2y 5m to grant Granted Mar 31, 2026
Patent 12579175
METHOD AND DEVICE FOR GENERATING ANSWER TO NATURAL LANGUAGE QUESTION FOR DATA
2y 5m to grant Granted Mar 17, 2026
Patent 12579194
DIGITAL SUPPLEMENT ASSOCIATION AND RETRIEVAL FOR VISUAL SEARCH
2y 5m to grant Granted Mar 17, 2026
Study what changed to get past this examiner. Based on 5 most recent grants.

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Prosecution Projections

3-4
Expected OA Rounds
83%
Grant Probability
99%
With Interview (+35.6%)
3y 4m
Median Time to Grant
High
PTA Risk
Based on 616 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allow rate.

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