DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This Action is responsive to the Application filed on 7/24/2024. Claims 1-18 and 29-30 are pending in the case.
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 29-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claims 29-30 recite one or more “storage devices” and a “computer storage media” storing instructions that perform various functions. In the Specification of the present application, the “storage devices” and “computer storage media” are expressly defined as including any medium that can store program code (see Paragraph 0088,0095). An open-ended description of the computer storage medium does not EXCLUDE non-statutory subject matter, i.e. signals/transmission medium, from the claimed invention. Thus, the broadest, reasonable interpretation of “storage devices” and “computer storage media” encompass non-statutory subject matter (transmission media) that is unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Accordingly, claims 29-30 fail to recite statutory subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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.
Claims 1-18 and 29-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AlA), second paragraph, as failing to set forth the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant regards as the invention. Independent claims 1 and 29-30 each recite “generating the respective encoder training input by processing a respective un-labeled audio data segment in the set of un-labeled audio data segments” but it is not clear how the un-labeled audio data segment is processed in the set of un-labeled audio data segments. In other words, it is not clear whether all of the audio data frames in the un-labeled audio data are processed or portions of the audio data frames processed to generate the encoder training input. It is also not clear how that prediction is correctly made. For all these reasons independent claims 1 and 29-30 are vague and indefinite.
Note however that claims 8-9 and paragraphs 0056-0060 of specification make it clear as to how an audio segment masking engine generate the encoder training input by masking out one or more sections of the respective un-labeled audio data segment. Amending independent claims 1 and 29-30 to recite this feature as is recited in claims 8-9 or described in paragraphs 0056-0060 of specification would remedy the issue.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Kim US 20200005766 A1 teaches a method for training an artificial neural network-based speech recognition model.
Chun Byung Ha US 20180268806 teaches text-speech synthesis using an autoencoder.
Gregor et al. US 20160232440 A1 teaches recurrent neural networks for data item generation.
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/MAHELET SHIBEROU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2171