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
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 5/11/26 has been entered.
In amendments dated 5/11/26, Applicant amended claims 1 and 8, canceled no claims, and added no new claims. Claims 1-12 are presented for examination.
Rejections under35 U.S.C. 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 1-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to mental processes without significantly more. Independent claims 1 and 8 each recites determining, by the one or more data processors, degrees of similarity among the technical subject matter areas of the technical documents through a hierarchical taxonomy code similarity model and a text clustering model; wherein the hierarchical taxonomy code similarity model determines the degrees of similarity among the technical documents' hierarchical taxonomy codes based upon the technical documents' network of parent-child subject matter code relationships within the hierarchical technical subject matter taxonomy, wherein the hierarchical technical subject matter taxonomy includes hundreds of at least thousands of nodes with multiple parent-child relationships at varying levels of depth, and wherein the hierarchical taxonomy code similarity model: (a) analyzes degrees of relationships of parent-child technical subject matter codes between the technical documents; wherein the analyzed degrees of relationships vary among the technical documents; (b) calculates a degree of similarity score based upon the analyzed degrees of relationships; wherein the text clustering model determines the degrees of similarity among the technical documents by generating a first set of clusters that cluster together the technical documents of similar technical subject matter areas; and restructuring, by the one or more data processors, at least a portion of the first set of clusters of the technical documents into a second set of clusters based upon the degrees of similarity from the hierarchical taxonomy code similarity model and the determined degrees of similarity from the text clustering model; declustering the first set of clusters to create a data set where each technical document in a cluster is separately paired with all other technical documents in the cluster and determining a text clustering document-to-document similarity score for the separately paired documents; and determining overall document similarity scores based both upon the determined similarity scores for the declustered first set of clusters and upon the determined degrees of similarity using the hierarchical taxonomy code similarity model. Determining degrees of similarity, analyzing degrees of relationships of subject matter codes, calculating a degree of similarity score, restructuring clusters of documents, declustering a set of clusters are each recited broadly, and determining an overall document similarity score are each mental processes accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Each claim recites an additional element of receiving, by one or more data processors, the technical documents which are associated with multiple taxonomy codes for describing different technical subject matter areas of the technical documents, wherein the taxonomy codes are associated with a hierarchical technical subject matter taxonomy which establishes a network of parent-child technical subject matter code relationships for describing technical subject matter at different levels of detail, which is an input step and insignificant extra-solution activity. Claim 8 recites one or more processors and a memory storage device, which are generic components of a computer system. Examiner notes specification paragraph 0004 discusses the document clustering process as time-consuming because of unstructured documents, and said process provides poor results with clusters having too many unrelated documents. Paragraph 0005 states it is desirable to organize electronic documents with an improved clustering or grouping approach. Examiner believes the claims describe such an approach at a high level but the claim steps do not recite a particular improvement in any technology or function of a computer per MPEP 2106.04(d) and do not recite any unconventional steps in the invention per MPEP 2106.05(a). Therefore, the recited mental processes are not integrated into a practical application. Taking the claimed invention as a whole, receiving technical documents amounts to receiving data across a network per specification paragraph 0035 and figure 1, which is routine and conventional per the list of such activities in MPEP 2106.05(d) part II. The one or more processors and memory storage device are still generic components of a computer system. Therefore, the claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the recited mental processes.
Claims 2 and 9 each recites wherein the determined overall document similarity scores, the determined similarity scores for the declustered first set of clusters, and the determined degrees of similarity using the hierarchical taxonomy code similarity model each range from 0-100 to indicate document similarity, and scores in a range of values are mental processes accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Claims 3 and 10 each recites wherein the second set of clusters are synthesized clusters that are generated based upon the determined overall document similarity scores, and generating synthesized clusters is recited broadly and is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper.
Claims 4 and 11 each recites wherein the determining the degrees of similarity among the technical subject matter areas of the technical documents includes determining the degrees of similarity through the hierarchical taxonomy code similarity model and the text clustering model and a cosine similarity model and a metadata similarity analysis model, and determining similarity is recited broadly and is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper; wherein overall document similarity scores are generated based upon document similarity analysis performed by the hierarchical taxonomy code similarity model and the text clustering model and the cosine similarity model and the metadata similarity analysis model, and generating document similarity scores is recited broadly and is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Claims 5 and 12 each recites wherein document similarity analysis models include the hierarchical taxonomy code similarity model and the text clustering model and the cosine similarity model and the metadata similarity analysis model, and including models in analysis software is recited broadly and is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper; wherein performances of each of the document similarity analysis models are analyzed for reconfiguring process flow of the document similarity analysis models used in the document similarity analysis, and analyzing said models is recited broadly and is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper.
Relevant Prior Art
During his search for prior art, Examiner found the following references to be relevant to Applicant's claimed invention. Each reference is listed on the Notice of References form included in this office action:
Lewis et al (US 9,367,814) teaches applying a classification algorithm to a corpus of documents representing a classification taxonomy, where each document is assigned a classification confidence level and documents below a threshold for said confidence level are disassociated from the classifications, does not teach reclustering the documents, declustering the documents into pairs, or determining overall document similarity scores based on determined similarity scores used different models (columns 1-2 lines 56-8, columns 9-13 lines 5-6 figure 2); and
Masuyama et al (EP 1669889 A1) teaches judging technical similarity between groups of technical documents using IPC symbols (hierarchical classification taxonomy) using similarity calculations based o the clusters, dopes not teach a degree of similarity among subject matter codes through IPC symbols and taxonomy and clustering models, degree of relationships between subject matter codes, a degree of similarity score, declustering into pairs of documents, or overall document similarity scores (paragraphs 0030, 0060, 0111-0121 figure 8).
Responses to Applicant’s Remarks
Regarding objections to the specification for informalities in paragraphs 0035, 0040, and 0057, in view of amendments to these paragraphs, these objections are withdrawn. Regarding rejections for Obviousness Type Double Patenting on claims 1-12 over claims 1, 4-11, and 14-18 of U.S. Patent No. 11,494,419, and also over claims 1-12 of U.S. Patent No. 12,079,247 in view of the article “Catalogue of Life: 2016 Annual Checklist,” while Applicant stated in Remarks page 11 that Applicant will file a Terminal Disclaimer, Applicant's amendments overcome these rejections and they are withdrawn. Regarding rejections of claims 1-12 under 35 U.S.C. 101 for reciting mental processes without significantly more, Applicant’s arguments have been considered but are not persuasive. On pages 10-11 of his Remarks Applicant asserts “the technical complexity of performing the method of claim 1 does not allow a mental process to perform such a method and provides technical improvements.” Examiner disagrees and notes the amended limitations (“(a) analyzes degrees of relationships of parent-child technical subject matter codes between the technical documents; wherein the analyzed degrees of relationships vary among the technical documents;” and “(b) calculates a degree of similarity score based upon the analyzed degrees of relationships;”) are each recited broadly and without details showing how the invention analyzes the degrees of relationships or calculates a degree of similarity score, and a BRI of each limitation includes performance using a physical aid such as pen and paper. Thus Examiner believes they are mental processes per MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)(III) ("The courts do not distinguish between mental processes that are performed entirely in the human mind and mental processes that require a human to use a physical aid (e.g., pen and paper or a slide rule) to perform the claim limitation.") as shown in the rejections above.
As for the amendments providing technical improvements, Examiner notes specification paragraph 0004 describes the problems in the technology, namely that a text clustering process can be very time consuming to implement properly and frequently provides poor results with clusters having an unacceptable number of unrelated documents, and Examiner still does not see where the claims recite specific improvements showing how the invention addresses these improvements. Per MPEP 2106/04(d)(1) states “Second, if the specification sets forth an improvement in technology, the claim must be evaluated to ensure that the claim itself reflects the disclosed improvement. That is, the claim includes the components or steps of the invention that provide the improvement described in the specification.” Examiner notes specification paragraphs 0046-0057 describe details of how the declustering and other steps not claimed eliminate unrelated documents from clusters. Thus Examiner does not believe the claims recite a practical application.
Inquiry
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BRUCE M MOSER whose telephone number is (571)270-1718. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9a-5p.
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/BRUCE M MOSER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2154 8/6/26
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