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 .
Notice to Applicant
Claims 1, 11, and 17 have been amended. Now, claims 1-20 remain pending.
Drawings
The objections of the drawings of Figures 3A and 3B is hereby withdrawn pursuant to the new drawings provided on March 19, 2026.
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.
Claims 1-20 are directed to managing information within an organization and facilitate interactions between users within the organization and outside the organization, which is considered Managing Personal Behavior or Relationships or Interactions Between People. Managing Personal Behavior or Relationships or Interactions Between People fall within a subject matter grouping of abstract ideas which the Courts have considered ineligible (Certain methods of organizing human activity). The claims do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, and do not include additional elements that provide an inventive concept (are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the abstract idea).
Under step 1 of the Alice/Mayo framework, it must be considered whether the claims are directed to one of the four statutory classes of invention. In the instant case, claim 1-10 recite a method and at least one step. Claims 11-16 recite a system comprising a processor and non-transitory computer readable medium. Claims 17-20 recite a non-transitory computer readable medium storing executable computer program instructions. Therefore, the claims are each directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention (process, manufacture, apparatus).
Under step 2A of the Alice/Mayo framework, it must be considered whether the claims are “directed to” an abstract idea. That is, whether the claims recite an abstract idea and fail to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
Regarding independent claim 1, the claim sets forth a process in which managing information within an organization and facilitate interactions between users within the organization and outside the organization, including through the facilitation of Managing Personal Behavior or Relationships or Interactions Between People, in the following limitations:
generating that correlates (i) user interaction data associated with content items, against (ii) treatment of topics, from a set of topics, in multiple meeting recording files;
wherein each of the meeting recording files is a digital file that contains a record of at least a portion of a digital meeting between two or more users;
determining use data that represents interactions by users with information items maintained;
assigning a topic assessment metric to each of a plurality of meeting recording files, wherein the topic assessment metric describes treatment of each of multiple topics in the plurality of meeting recording files, and wherein assigning the topic assessment metric includes, for a respective meeting recording file:
generating a vector representation of a portion of the respective meeting recording file;
matching the portion of the respective meeting recording file to a candidate topic based on a similarity metric between the vector representation of the portion and a vector representation of the candidate topic;
applying to the portion of the respective meeting recording file, when applied configured to output the topic assessment metric for the treatment of the candidate topic for the portion of the meeting recording file;
selecting a subset of the use data and the plurality of meeting recording files; and
populating based on the selected subset of the use data and one or more topic assessment metrics associated with the plurality of meeting recording files.
The above-recited limitations manage information within an organization and facilitate interactions between users within the organization and outside the organization. This arrangement amounts to Managing Personal Behavior or Relationships or Interactions Between People. Such concepts have been considered ineligible certain methods of organizing human activity by the Courts (See MPEP 2106.04(a)).
Claim 1 does recite additional elements:
an interactive user interface;
maintained by a content management platform;
stored by the content management platform;
of the content management platform;
by the content management platform;
a scoring model.
These additional elements merely amount to the general application of the abstract idea to a technological environment (“an interactive user interface”; “maintained by a content management platform”; “stored by the content management platform”; “of the content management platform”; “by the content management platform”; “a scoring model”.) and insignificant pre-and-post solution activity (generating, determining, assigning, matching, applying, selecting, populating). The specification makes clear the general-purpose nature of the technological environment. Paragraphs 13, 16, 36, 91, 97, and 102-104 indicate that while exemplary general purpose systems may be specific for descriptive purposes, any elements or combinations of elements capable of implementing the claimed invention are acceptable. That is, the technology used to implement the invention is not specific or integral to the claim.
Therefore, considered both individually and as an ordered combination, the additional elements do no more than generally link the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment or field of use. That is, given the generality with which the additional limitations are recited, the limitations do not implement the abstract idea with, or use the abstract idea in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim. Additionally, the claims do not reflect an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field, do not apply or use the abstract idea to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition, do not effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing; and do not apply or use the abstract idea in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the abstract idea. Accordingly, the Examiner concludes that the claim fails to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, and is therefore “directed to” the abstract idea.
Under step 2B of the Alice/Mayo framework, it must finally be considered whether the claim includes any additional element or combination of elements that provide an inventive concept (i.e., whether the additional element or elements are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the abstract idea). As indicated above, considered both individually and as an ordered combination, the additional elements do not implement the abstract idea with, or use the abstract idea in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim, do not reflect an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field, do not apply or use the abstract idea to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition, do not effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing, and do not apply or use the abstract idea in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the abstract idea
Further, the additional elements (recited above) simply append well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception. Communicating information (i.e., receiving or transmitting data over a network) has been repeatedly considered well-understood, routine, and conventional activity by the Courts (See MPEP 2106.05(d)). Accordingly, the Examiner asserts that the additional elements, considered both individually, and as an ordered combination, do not provide an inventive concept, and the claim is ineligible for patent.
Independent Claims 11 and 17 are parallel in scope to claim 1 and ineligible for similar reasons.
Dependent claims
Dependent claims 2-10, 12-16, and 18-20 add further limitations which are also directed to an abstract idea.
For example, regarding dependent claims 2, 12, and 18, these claims recite, in part, wherein assigning the topic assessment metric further includes:
generating a snippet of a first meeting recording file that includes at least the portion of the first meeting recording file;
wherein the snippet is matched to a first candidate topic based on a similarity metric between a vector representation associated with the snippet and a vector representation of the first candidate topic; and
sending the snippet and the first candidate topic to validate whether the snippet includes a discussion of the first candidate topic by participants in a meeting associated with the first meeting recording file.
Such a recitation merely embellishes the abstract idea of managing information within an organization and facilitate interactions between users within the organization and outside the organization, which is considered Managing Personal Behavior or Relationships or Interactions Between People. While the claim does set forth the additional limitation of “to a large language model (LLM)”, this recitation is similar to the additional limitations in claim 1, as it does no more than generally link the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment. As such, it does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, and does not provide an inventive concept. Accordingly, the claim does not confer eligibility on the claimed invention and is ineligible for similar reasons to claim 1.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed March 19, 2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues that the claimed invention is not merely an organization of human activity and that the recited steps provide a technical advancement to manage digital content and identify interactions by users with the digital content; that the claimed invention is rooted in computer technology and is not a mental process; and that the claimed invention provides a technical solution for determining treatment of topics in digital content based on interactions of users with the digital content, thereby providing "significantly more".
In response, Examiner respectfully disagrees. The claims nor specification shows an improvement to the function of the user interface. The concept of determining how specific topics are treated in digital content of an organization, does not relate to the improvement to the function of the computer itself or an improvement to technology. In particular, independent claim 1 only recites additional elements of using an interactive user interface (Specification ¶ 0024), a content management platform (Specification ¶ 0034), and a scoring model, (Specification ¶ 0015-16). The elements in these claims are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., an interactive user interface, a content management platform, and a scoring model), such that the claims are directed to utilizing general purpose computer components. As such, the limitations amount to no more than adding the words “apply it” (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea. See MPEP 2106.05(f). Thus, the claims are not patent eligible.
The additional elements as outlined above in the current 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection are recited as a tool to apply data to an model and report the results (MPEP § 2106.05(f)(2) see case involving a commonplace business method or mathematical algorithm being applied on a general purpose computer within the “Other examples.. i.”) amounting to instruction to implement the abstract idea using a general purpose computer. Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. V. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347, 1357 (2014). It is further noted that the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claims include embodiments that amount to methods of organizing human activity. Examiner finds the claims recite mere instructions to implement the abstract idea on a computer and uses the computer as a tool to perform the abstract idea without reciting any improvements to a technology, technological process or computer-related technology. The method does not improve the computer or technology and can be performed using a generic computer. As written in the claims, ‘an interactive user interface, a content management platform, and a scoring model’ is the standard computing functions of generating, determining, assigning, matching, applying, selecting and populating data of a user.
As a result, there are no meaningful limitations in the claim that transform the exception into a patent eligible application such that the claim amounts to significantly more than the exception itself, and the claims are properly rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter. Thus, the claims do not recite additional limitations that integrate the exception into a Practical Application.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
DIGITAL PROCESSING SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR VIRTUAL FILE-BASED ELECTRONIC WHITE BOARD IN COLLABORATIVE WORK SYSTEMS (US 20210342785 A1) teaches enabling and optimizing workflows in collaborative work systems.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Amber Misiaszek whose telephone number is 571-270-1362. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00-5:30, First Friday Off.
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/AMBER A MISIASZEK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3682