DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Claim Objections
Claims 7, 8, 15, and 16 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claims 7 and 16 is missing the appropriate article: “a CAPTCHA type”.
Claim 8 is missing the appropriate article: “the CAPTCHA type”.
Claim 15 is missing the appropriate article: “a policy”.
Claim 16 is missing the appropriate article: “a type of template”.
Appropriate correction is required.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to as failing to comply with 37 CFR 1.84(p)(5) because they include the following reference character(s) not mentioned in the description: all references depicted in Figs. 13-18, including the illustrations entirely, are not discussed or described in the DETAILED DESCRIPTION of the specifications. Their relevancy to the claimed invention is unclear. Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d), or amendment to the specification to add the reference character(s) in the description in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(b) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
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 20 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because claim 20 is directed to a “system” comprising of various components (“composer[s], “validator[s]”, “engine”, and “generator”). The originally filed specifications fail to define the aforementioned components as explicitly only hardware. Thus, under broadest reasonable interpretation, the “system” can be viewed as a software system comprising of program modules and/or software components. Software per se is not patent eligible subject matter.
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 10, 12, 17, and 20 are 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 applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 10 recites the limitation "the style transfer process". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claims 10 and 20 recite “Neural Style Transfer (NST) or other noise levels” and “a privacy policy and other client-specific requirements”, respectively (emphasis added). It is unclear to how much of these “other” features are/are not included in the limitations. Thus, the resulting claim does not clearly set forth the metes and bounds of the patent protection desired. See MPEP § 2173.05(c).
Claim 12 recites “a prompt” and is dependent on claim 1, which also recites “a prompt”. It is unclear if these two prompts were intended to be the same, or referring to two distinct prompts.
Claim 17 recites the limitation “wherein the preference to add Neural Style Transfer (NST)...”. The “wherein” clause is further describing a non-existent feature. There are no prior step(s), including in parent claim 1, of having/requiring a preference to add NST.
Claim 20 recites the limitation "the compliance validation engine". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-9, 11, 13-16, and 18-19 are allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
The claimed invention is directed to generating Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) images utilizing a combination of three broad domains that include large language models (LLM), text-to-image generation artificial intelligence (AI) models, and Neural Style Transfer (NST). See [0021] of the originally filed specifications.
The concept of generating CAPTCHAs using generative AI models were previously known in the art. For example, US 2024/0320310 (Callegari) discloses generating a plurality of images for CAPTCHA using AI based on prompts of a plurality of categories of variables. See [0047]-[0048]. In another example, US 2024/0273177 (Chitragar) discloses generating CAPTCHA images based on generated set of attributes. See [0035]. In another example, Jia, X., Xiao, J. & Wu, C. TICS: text–image-based semantic CAPTCHA synthesis via multi-condition adversarial learning. Visual Computer 38, 963–975 (2022) discloses a generative adversarial network (GAN) method of generating CAPTCHAs from a source image and text description. See pg. 964.
However, Callegari, Chitragar, and Jia fail to disclose “generating an image using the valid sentence and a structured knowledge graph”, wherein the valid compliant sentence is generated from a prompt (Emphasis added). At best, [0032] of Callegari merely discloses obtaining one or more prompts to generate CAPTCHA images. Additionally, the generated set of attributes for generate a CAPTCHA in [0039] of Chitragar are simply referred as separate words. Likewise, Jia only inputs text description for generating a CAPTCHA image. Furthermore, neither of the discussed prior arts disclose checking for compliance in any form for both a generated sentence and generated image using a valid, compliant generated sentence; or employing a structured knowledge graph (e.g., extracted features of the valid sentence; see claim 20) to generate the image that would be used in a CAPTACH instance.
See additional prior arts relevant to the field/scope of the claimed invention in Conclusion.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 2025/0131187: Evaluation questions and a structured output from a generative AI system are subjected to an evaluation process to provide feedback to the output. See [0030].
US 2025/0124022: A user prompt is validated for compliance with a policy prior to inputting to a generative AI model. The output of the generative AI model further serves as input a validator to validate the output with policies. See [0039] & [0045].
US 2024/0378394: A natural language input is provided to a LLM to generate a plurality of candidate LLM responses. The response that best complies with a set of response criteria is selected. See [0144].
US 2024/0295953: Several metrics can be used to evaluate the quality of an image generated by an automated image generator. See [0017].
US 2021/0081719: In a generative adversarial network, images generated by a generator network are evaluated as real or artificial by a discriminator network. Images that are identified as artificial are passed back to the generator as backpropagation to improve accuracy of future image generations. See [0058].
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ROBERT B LEUNG whose telephone number is (571)270-1453. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Thurs: 10am-7pm ET.
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/ROBERT B LEUNG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2494