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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/13/2024 and 04/23/2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
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)(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.
Claims 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by U.S. Publication No. 2016/0080573 (“Chisti”).
Regarding claim 1, Chisti discloses a system comprising:
call flow logic to direct a call along a directed graph of one or more call processing nodes ([0033 contact center algorithmically assigns contacts arriving at the contact center to agents available to handle those contacts);
at least one of the nodes comprising a call queue ([0033]the contact center may have contacts waiting in one or more queues for an agent to become available for assignment); and the at least one node comprising the call queue configured with a control to balance (a) contributions of first-in, first-out priority to the call queue ([0036] the most common assignment method withing a queue is first in first out FIFO), and (2) matching of the call to agent attributes, in determining a service priority of calls in the call queue ([0039] contacts or agents are assigned into different “skill groups” or “queues” prior to applying a FIFO assignment strategy within each such skill group or queue).
Regarding claim 8, Chisti discloses a method comprising:
directing a call along a call flow comprising one or more nodes, at least one of the nodes comprising a call queue ([0033 contact center algorithmically assigns contacts arriving at the contact center to agents available to handle those contacts, the contact center may have contacts waiting in one or more queues for an agent to become available for assignment); and configuring the at least one node comprising the call queue with a control to balance (a) contributions of first-in, first-out priority in the call queue ([0036] the most common assignment method withing a queue is first in first out FIFO), and (2) matching of the call to agent attributes, in determining a service priority of calls in the call queue ([0039] contacts or agents are assigned into different “skill groups” or “queues” prior to applying a FIFO assignment strategy within each such skill group or queue). .
Regarding claims 3 and 10, Chisti discloses the system of claim 1, wherein the at least one node comprising the call queue is configured with one or more tags associating the at least one node with properties of a human agent ([0038] contact centers may seek to assign contacts to agents with whom they have had a recent previous interaction. Additionally, agents in an L1 scenario may be selected sequentially based on a “labelling strategy” in which a recurrent algorithmic ordering of agent assignment is predefined (“Agent 1”, “Agent 2”, “Agent 3”, “Agent 1”, “Agent 2”, “Agent 3”, “Agent 1”, etc.).
Regarding claims 4 and 11, Chisti discloses the system of claim 1, wherein the at least one node comprising the call queue is configured with a failsafe child node (a predefined or default routing queue, [0038] contacts may be randomly assigned to agents, irrespective of time of arrival, agent performance, or other variables. Alternatively, contact centers may seek to assign contacts to agents with whom they have had a recent previous interaction).
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 5, 7, 12 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Publication No. 2016/0080573 (“Chisti”) in view of U.S. Publication No. 2002/0131399 (“Philonenko”).
Regarding claims 5 and 12, Chisti does not specify the system of claim 1, wherein the at least one node comprising the call queue is configured to: apply an inherent queue tag to the call upon the call entering the at least one node; and remove the inherent queue tag upon exit of the call from the at least one node.
In the same field of endeavor, Philonenko discloses a routing system for routing communication events comprising at least one data queue for queuing incoming events. The system includes a method for processing communication events in a queue according to priority assigned per event. One or more of the queue nodes is configured to apply an inherent queue tag to the call upon the call entering the queue node; and remove the inherent queue tag upon exit of the call from the queue node ([0045] incoming calls are first assigned a priority tag, corresponding to the claimed inherent tag, priority tag is removed when call is routed to agent).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Chisti to apply an inherent priority tag as disclosed by Philonenko in order to process calls with enhanced priority transacting the value contribution to the satisfaction of both parties.
Regarding claims 7 and 14, Chisti in view of Philonenko discloses the system of claim 5, wherein the at least one node comprising the call queue is further configured to: on condition that no active agents are assigned agent tags matching tags applied to the call, route the call to a configured failsafe route or node; and on condition that the failsafe route or node comprises a queue node, configure the queue node of the failsafe route as a failsafe queue to strip the call of tags applied to the call that affect routing of the call (Philonenko, [0119] fairness algorithm is employed on top of the priority assignment [0130] if a fairness algorithm is employed for separate routing systems wherein there is, for example, a 7 priority or higher, then priority may be considered over statistical figures regarding number of DN awards. If no priority level is 7 or higher than the fairness routine may be instructed to ignore priority and stick to a round robin or other statistical award system, the round robin corresponding to the failsafe route).
Claims 6 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Publication No. 2016/0080573 (“Chisti”) in view of U.S. Publication No. 2002/0131399 (“Philonenko”) and further in view of U.S. Publication No. 2017/0068976 (“Wawrzynowicz”).
Regarding claims 6 and 13, Chisti in view of Philonenko does not specify the system of claim 5, wherein the at least one node comprising the call queue is further configured to: apply to the call an agent-provided tag provided by an agent servicing the at least one node; and retain the agent-provided tag on the call upon the exit of the call from the at least one node.
In a similar field of endeavor, Wawrzynowicz discloses during a communication a customer may express an opinion on a particular aspect of the enterprise, and the representative can tag the call for escalation, review, and management feedback. In the case of solicited feedback, the categories are input based on the question that is posed by the representative, established by a leadership team, for solicited feedback (or be implemented via data tagging) ([0051]).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Philonenko to include a manual tag on a call by an agent as disclosed by Wawrzynowicz in order to allow for escalation, review or management feedback for a call after initial call routing (e.g. from the queue) has been completed.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2 and 9 are 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
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JIRAPON TULOP whose telephone number is (571)270-7491. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Friday, 10:00AM-6:00PM.
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/JIRAPON TULOP/Examiner, Art Unit 2693
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