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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending. Claims 1, 9 and 15 are independent.
Apparent priority 10/08/2024.
This action is Non-Final.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
The Supreme Court has long held that “[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable.” Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 2354 (2014) (quoting Assoc. for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc., 133 S. Ct. 2107, 2116 (2013) (internal quotation marks omitted)). The “abstract ideas” category embodies the longstanding rule that an idea, by itself, is not patentable. Alice Corp., 134S. Ct. at 2355 (quoting Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63, 67 (1972).
In Alice, the Supreme Court sets forth an analytical “framework for distinguishing patents that claim laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas [or mental processes ] from those that claim patent-eligible applications of those concepts.” Id. at 2355 (citing Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 132 S. Ct. 1289, 1296–97 (2012)). The first step in the analysis is to “determine whether the claims at issue are directed to one of those patent-ineligible concepts.” Id. If the claims are directed to a patent-ineligible concept, the second step in the analysis is to consider the elements of the claims “individually and ‘as an ordered combination’” to determine whether there are additional elements that “‘transform the nature of the claim’ into a patent-eligible application.” Id. (quoting Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1298, 1297). In other words, the second step is to “search for an ‘inventive concept’—i.e., an element or combination of elements that is ‘sufficient to ensure that the patent in practice amounts to significantly more than a patent upon the [ineligible concept] itself’”. Id. (brackets in original) (quoting Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1294). The prohibition against patenting an abstract idea “‘cannot be circumvented by attempting to limit the use of the formula to a particular technological environment’ or adding ‘insignificant post-solution activity.’” Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 610–11 (2010) (citation omitted).
Step 1: This part of the eligibility analysis evaluates whether the claim falls within any statutory category. See MPEP 2106.03. Independent Claim 1 recites the system comprising at least one processor and at least one memory that stores executable instructions that facilitate performance of operations comprising iteratively inputting contexts to an LLM based on description summarizations, refinement queries and query-answer pair examples retrieved from a database, and thus is an apparatus. An apparatus is a statutory category of invention. Independent Claim 9 recites a method comprising steps that recite similar subject matter to Claim 1. A method or process is a Statutory category of invention. Independent claim 15 recites a non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions that perform steps similar to those recited in claim 9. A non-transitory computer-readable medium is a statutory category of invention. Dependent claims 2-8, 10-14 and 16-20 are dependent on claims 1, 9 and 15, respectively, and therefore recite their respective statutory classes.
Step 2A, Prong One: This part of the eligibility analysis evaluates whether the claim recites a judicial exception. As explained in MPEP 2106.04, subsection II, a claim “recites” a judicial exception when the judicial exception is “set forth” or “described” in the claim. In applying the framework set out in Alice, examiner found Applicant’s claims 1, 9 and 15 are directed to a patent-ineligible abstract concept of interacting with a language model based on outputs of the language model to create a user guided feedback loop. The steps of Applicant’s claims 1-20 are an abstract concept that would fall under the judicial exception of mental processes. Specifically, the claims recite the step of “inputting a first context to a large language model to produce a first output, wherein the first context comprises a description of a first computing system other than the system and a prompt to summarize the description, and wherein the first output comprises a summary of the first computing system.” The claim does not place any limits on how the summary is produced by the large language model (hereinafter LLM). The limitation appears to be purely results driven because it is only reciting that an input is supplied to the LLM and an output is received. The limitation does not provide any description of the processes used to produce the output summary. Under broadest reasonable interpretation, such recitation may be related to supplying a human assistant (acting as the LLM) with a description of a first computing system and a request to summarize the description. A human assistant is capable of reading and understanding the description and produce a summary to be output to the user. Therefore, this step is directed to a mental process. Furthermore, the step of “identifying examples from a group of examples stored in a database based on a vectorization of an input document and a query, wherein respective examples of the group of examples identify respective input queries and respective answers corresponding to the respective input queries, and wherein at least one example of the group of examples relates to a second computing system other than the first computing system or the system” recites steps that are directed to mental processes. The claim does not place any limits on how the examples are identified. The recited “based on a vectorization of an input document and a query” is not positively recited such that a vectorization process is performed, the recited limitation may simply provide that a vector value (such as an index value or the like) representing the input document and a query, is received. Under the broadest reasonable interpretation, the identifying may simply involve a human operator receiving the vectorized or index value representing the input document and a query, and accessing a database of query-answer pairs organized by an indexing scheme, such that the human operator may access the database to match the received index value with the indexed query-answer pairs and identify any matching pairs. Further, the claim recites “inputting a second context to the large language model to produce a second output, wherein the second context comprises the summary of the first computing system, at least some of the examples, the input document, and the query, and wherein the second output comprises a response corresponding to the second context”. Similar to the first limitation, the recited language simply provides that an input is supplied to the LLM and an output is received. The claim does not place any limits on how the output response is produced or how the inputted data is selected and supplied to the LLM, the inputs may simply be collected by a human user from the outputs of the previous steps and fed back to the same previously used LLM. Thus, under the broadest reasonable interpretation the claim elements are directed to any process of organizing data and supplying the organized data to the human operator (acting as the LLM) for further analysis. Further, the claim recites “inputting a third context to the large language model to produce a third output, wherein the third context comprises the summary of the first computing system, the at least some of the examples, the second output, and first user input data indicative of a refinement query”. Similar to the first limitation, the recited language simply provides that an input is supplied to the LLM and an output is received. The claim does not place any limits on how the output response is produced or how the inputted data is selected and supplied to the LLM, the inputs may simply be collected by a human user from the outputs of the previous steps and fed back to the same previously used LLM. Thus, under the broadest reasonable interpretation the claim elements are directed to any process of organizing data and supplying the organized data to the human operator (acting as the LLM) for further analysis. Finally, the claim recites the step of “updating a process applicable to the identifying of the examples from the database based on second user input data indicative of a grade of a quality of the third output”. The recited limitation does not place any limits on how the “process” is updated, how the “process” applies to the identifying of the examples or how the grade of a quality of the third output is obtained. The claim fails to provide any meaningful description of how the recited “process” is associated with the identifying of the examples. Further, under broadest reasonable interpretation, the second user input data indicative of a grade of a quality of the third output may simply correspond to a quality value supplied as feedback from a human operator. Thus, the claims recite limitations that taken in combination, recite at least a series of mental processes.
Step 2A, Prong Two: This part of the eligibility analysis evaluates whether the claim as a whole integrates the recited judicial exception into a practical application of the exception. This evaluation is performed by (1) identifying whether there are any additional elements recited in the claim beyond the judicial exception, and (2) evaluating those additional elements individually and in combination to determine whether the claim as a whole integrates the exception into a practical application. See MPEP 2106.04(d).
As discussed above, the claims recite “a large language model”. The examiner has found, however, that the large language model provides no further detail about how it processes the data and how it produces the outputs, and is recited at such a high-level of generality that this limitation is merely a post-solution step. Therefore, this step is an insignificant extra-solution activity and does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. See MPEP 2106.05(g). Furthermore, independent Claim 5 further recites “at least one processor” and “at least one memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, facilitate performance of operations” as additional elements beyond the judicial exception. However, these additional elements do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea because the additional elements constitute a generic computer environment. Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2357. The Claims need meaningful limitations that go beyond generally linking the use of an abstract idea to a particular technological environment. Therefore, the steps are all abstract and the Claim as a whole is abstract. “[S]imply appending generic computer functionality to lend speed or efficiency to the performance of an otherwise abstract concept does not meaningfully limit claim scope for purposes of patent eligibility.” CLS Bank, 2013 U.S. App. LEXIS 9493, at *29 (citing Bancorp, 687 F.3d at 1278, and Dealertrack, Inc. v. Huber, 674 F.3d 1315, 1333-34 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (finding that the claimed computer-aided clearinghouse process is a patent-ineligible abstract idea)); SiRF Tech., Inc. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 601 F.3d 1319, 1333 (Fed. Cir. 2010) (“In order for the addition of a machine to impose a meaningful limit on the scope of a claim, it must play a significant part in permitting the claimed method to be performed, rather than function solely as an obvious mechanism for permitting a solution to be achieved more quickly, i.e., through the utilization of a computer for performing calculations.”). Additionally, dependent claims 2-8, 10-14 and 16-20 do not provide any additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. The claims simply describe limitations of character length of the produced summary, further limits of what the description of the description of the first computing system comprises, and a further input to the LLM that produces a further output. The recited limitations in the dependent claims do not provide any meaningful recitations beyond the abstract idea.
Step 2B: This part of the eligibility analysis evaluates whether the claim as a whole amounts to significantly more than the recited exception, i.e., whether any additional element, or combination of additional elements, adds an inventive concept to the claim. See MPEP 2106.05.
At step 2A, prong two, the additional elements of the large language model and the “processor” and “memory” were found to be insignificant extra-solution activity and a generic computer environment. At Step 2B, the re-evaluation of the insignificant extra-solution activity consideration takes into account whether or not the extra-solution activity is well understood, routine, and conventional in the field. See MPEP 2106.05(g). Here, the element of a large language model is an extra-solution step that is recited at a high level of generality. Therefore, this limitation remains insignificant extra-solution activity even upon reconsideration and does not amount to significantly more. Even when considered in combination, these additional elements represent mere instructions to apply an exception and insignificant extra-solution activity, and therefore do not provide an inventive concept. Additionally, dependent claims 2-8, 10-14 and 16-20 do not add an inventive concept.
In conclusion, Examiner notes that none of recited steps in Applicant's claims 1-20 refer to a specific machine by reciting structural limitations of any apparatus or to any specific operations that would cause a machine to be the mechanism to perform these steps. Although the claims may be processed by a computing system having a processor, the computing system is merely a general purpose computing system. Therefore, all of the claims 1-20 are abstract.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. The prior art made of record and not relied upon includes:
Gardner (US PG Pub 20250061290) discloses a method of generating summaries of content items using one or more large language models (LLMs) is disclosed. A first content item is identified. The first content item includes a set of sub-content items. A level of abstraction is determined for the content item. A prompt is automatically engineered for providing to the one or more LLMs. The prompt includes a reference to the first content item and the level of the abstraction for the first content item. A response to the prompt is received from the LLM. The response includes a second content item. The second content item includes a representation of the first content item that is generated by the LLM. The representation omits or simplifies one or more of the set of sub-content items based on the level of abstraction. The representation is used to control an output that is communicated to a target device (Gardner; Abstract).
Zhang (US PG Pub 20260064746) discloses techniques for multimodal document retrieval are disclosed herein. Multimodal documents that include both textual and graphical components are retrieved from a knowledge base by a multimodal retrieval augmented generation (RAG) agent in response to a query. The documents and/or components or chunks thereof are retrievable by the RAG agent from the knowledge base using the semantic summaries and/or vector search of embeddings in the knowledge base that are generated from text extracted from processing non-textual components of the data. The RAG agent classifies the query type to determine whether to use a semantic match for text or image summaries, full text semantic search, vector cosine similarity search, and/or other multimodal vector search. The RAG agent performs types of searches selected based on the modality used to generate the response to the query (Zhang; Abstract).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Rodrigo A Chavez whose telephone number is (571)270-0139. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 9-6 ET.
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/RODRIGO A CHAVEZ/Examiner, Art Unit 2658
/RICHEMOND DORVIL/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2658
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