DETAILED ACTION
This action is responsive to the application filed 8/29/2024.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 16 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Rajendran, et al., U.S. PGPUB No. 2018/0267960 (“Rajendran”).
With regard to Claim 16, Rajendran teaches a computer-implemented method comprising:
determining a template-based caption describing a data chart according to an insight template ([0022] describes that a processor generates insights by mapping statistical data with one or more predefined narratives);
performing a step for generating an augmented insight describing the data chart in natural language phrases ([0022] describes that natural language processing can be used to generate a contextual summary of the chart using the one or more generated insights); and
providing the augmented insight for display on a client device ([0033] describes that the contextual summaries can be presented to an end user).
With regard to Claim 18, Rajendran teaches providing the augmented insight for display comprises providing an insight interface depicting the data chart and the augmented insight together. [0035] and Table 1 show that insights are displayed explaining a chart, where the chart is displayed as shown in Fig. 2B.
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 17 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajendran, in view of Liu, et al., U.S. PGPUB No. 2024/0346254 (“Liu”).
With regard to Claim 17, Rajendran, in view of Liu teaches comparing a placeholder insight generated by a natural language model to a distilled placeholder insight generated by a distilled insight model; and modifying parameters of the distilled insight model based on comparing the placeholder insight to the distilled placeholder insight.
Rajendran teaches a natural language generation task for insights, as described above. Liu teaches at [0029]-[0032] that a language generation system can receive inputs and learn a policy used to generate a natural language output. The natural language output can be provided to a large language model, which can assess aspects of the generated output. The large language model can fine tune the language generation system in order that the natural language system can more closely mimic the output of the large language model, as also described at [0052]. [0035] describes that the language generation system can utilize a domain-specific small language model.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time this application was filed to modify Rajendran to use a small language model trained as described in Liu. As describes at [0004] of Liu, a small language model provides advantages of lower resource consumption and greater adaptability, while the techniques described in the reference allow for also leveraging the benefits of large language models. Therefore, one of skill in the art would have sought the modification, to improve Rajendran by reducing resource consumption of natural language generation, while still retaining access to the power afforded by large language models.
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajendran, in view of Liu, and in view of Yang, et al., U.S. PGPUB No. 2021/0097425 (“Yang”).
With regard to Claim 19, Yang teaches generating a modified training caption from a template-based training caption by replacing an entity name with a placeholder name; and generating, utilizing an insight model to process the modified training caption, a distilled placeholder insight using the placeholder name. [0036]-[0037] describes that insight templates used for generating narrative insights include user-generated data. Templates include text as well as placeholders, meaning users can generate the template data and use a placeholder in place of a particular entity. Liu teaches using a distilled model for natural language generation at [0029]-[0032].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time this application was filed to combine Yang with Liu, to improve system functioning by enabling the use of small language models for insight generation. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time this application was filed to combine Yang and Liu with Rajendran, to improve system functioning by enabling better user control over the narrative generation by template authoring, as well as by reducing resource consumption of natural language generation.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-15 are allowable over the prior art. Claim 20 is objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
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/KEITH D BLOOMQUIST/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2171
7/10/2026
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