DETAILED ACTION
Status of the Claims
The following is a non-final Office Action in response to claims filed 03 September 2024.
Claim 1 is pending.
Claim 1 have been examined.
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority
Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed application(s) 17/870,152 which claims priority to provisional 63/224,010 under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, or 365(c) is acknowledged.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112(a), or 35 USC § 112, first paragraph
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112, first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
Claim 1 recites the limitation "…match education, salary and other predefined employment-related data." The specification lacks sufficient description and support for this step. The current application fails to comply with the requirement that it must describe the technology that is sought to be patented. The claim seeks to patent a method to " match education, salary and other predefined employment-related data " while the specification does not describe such matching with sufficient particularity such that one skilled in the art would recognize that the applicant had possession of the claimed invention at the time the application was filed. As a requirement of this title, the applicant has an obligation to disclose the technologic knowledge upon which the patent is based. The specification simply states the use of some deep neural networks and different embodiments with hypothetical examples drafted in vagaries that lack any actual details. There is no further discussion, in the drawings, provisional application, the claims, or the specification, describing the particular technologic knowledge upon which the claimed invention is based. Examiner asserts that this is evidence that this step was not described in such a way as to convey that the inventors had possession of the claimed invention at the time the application was filed.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112(b) or 35 USC § 112 (pre-AIA ) second paragraph
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as failing to set forth the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant(s) regard as their invention. The claims are generally narrative and indefinite, failing to conform to current U.S. practice. They appear to be a general recitation of the intended use of match using neural networks.
Claim 1 is also rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites “other predefined employment-related data” which is vague, subjective and thus indefinite.
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.
Claim 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claims are directed to a process (an act, or series of acts or steps), a machine (a concrete thing, consisting of parts, or of certain devices and combination of devices), and a manufacture (an article produced from raw or prepared materials by giving these materials new forms, qualities, properties, or combinations, whether by hand labor or by machinery). Thus, each of the claims falls within one of the four statutory categories (Step 1). However, the claim(s) recite(s) An automated business method, said method comprising: using two or more integrated neural networks to match education, salary and other predefined employment-related data which is an abstract idea of organizing human activities as well as the abstract idea of performing computations in accordance with a mathematical formula on that data.
The limitations of “using two or more integrated neural networks to match education, salary and other predefined employment-related data,” as drafted, is a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers organizing human activities--fundamental economic principles or practices (including hedging, insurance, mitigating risk); commercial or legal interactions (including agreements in the form of contracts; legal obligations; advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations); managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions) and/or mathematical concepts—mathematical relationships, mathematical formulas or equations, mathematical calculations (Step 2A Prong 1). That is, nothing in the claim element precludes the step from the methods of organizing human interactions grouping or from the mathematical concept grouping (there is no additional structure whatsoever in the claims, drawings, or specification). For example, “using two or more integrated neural networks to match education, salary and other predefined employment-related data” in the context of this claim encompasses the user manually applying mathematical concepts of neural networks to collected and organized human resources data which is a or mathematical concept of a neural network algorithm being applied to a set of data collected or organized as a function of a business relation/fundamental economic practice/commercial or legal interaction/managing personal behavior. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation as a mathematical concepts, while some of the limitations may be based on organized human activities, then it falls within the “Mathematical Concepts” and/or “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activities” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim(s) recite(s) an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application (Step 2A Prong Two). The claims, drawings nor specifications positively recite any structure whatsoever which is thus directed towards an abstract idea. There are no additional elements that meaningfully limit the practical application of the abstract idea. As such, claim is directed to an abstract idea, even when considered as a whole.
The claim does not include a combination of additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception (Step 2B). As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application (Step 2A Prong 2), the claims, drawings nor specifications positively recite any structure whatsoever which is thus directed towards an abstract idea. Therefore, there is no additional elements to consider, and there is no inventive concept in the claim. As such, the claim(s) is/are not patent eligible, even when considered as a whole.
Claims 1 is therefore not eligible subject matter, even when considered as a whole.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
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) 1 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Young (US PG Pub. 2019/0171928).
As per claim 1, Young discloses an automated business method, said method comprising (Examples may include subject matter such as a method, means for performing acts of the method, at least one machine-readable medium including instructions that, when performed by a machine cause the machine to performs acts of the method, or of an apparatus or system for customized input/output for machine learning in predictive models, according to embodiments and examples described herein, Young ¶65):
using two or more integrated neural networks to match education, salary and other predefined employment-related data (Thus, while only two convolutional layers are shown, in practice there may be fewer (e.g., one) or more than two convolutional layers. Vectorized layer 206 may vectorize the customized input layer 205 to fit into the socket layer 207. The socket layer 207 may also serve to validate the vectors coming from the customized input layer 205. This validation is more fully described in FIG. 5. Vectorized layer 208 connects the socket layer 207 to vectorize the results to connect to the first fully connected layer of the neural network, at 209. Vectorized layer 210 connects the first fully connected layer to the next set of fully connected layers 211, 212, 213, Young ¶27; candidates to employers, jobs to candidates, ¶37-¶39; salary, ¶43; assessing and matching people to jobs, ¶50 and ¶61-¶62).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure:
Cathey et al. (US Patent No. 11,847,615) System and method for job profile matching.
Stewart et al. (US Patent No. 11,663,397) Digital posting match recommendation apparatus and method.
Csar et al. (US Patent No. 11,610,109) Language agnostic machine learning model for title standardization.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANDREW B WHITAKER whose telephone number is (571)270-7563. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F, 8am-5pm, EST.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Lynda Jasmin can be reached on (571) 272-6782. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ANDREW B WHITAKER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3629