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 .
This action is in response to the communication filed on August 17, 2026.
Claims 1-11 are pending in this action. Claims 1 has been amended. Claims 8-11 have been newly added.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1-11 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Ding et al. (US 2021/0200956).
As per claim 1, Ding discloses, an information processing system, comprising:
at least one processor (Paragraph 0109); and
at least one memory device storing a plurality of instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor (Paragraphs 0109-0112), cause the at least one processor to:
acquire a question based on input from a user (Paragraphs 0024-0026);
acquire answer basis information corresponding to the question from a database (Paragraphs 0048 and 0053-0054);
request a language model to create an answer to the question based on the acquired answer basis information and acquire a model answer from the language model (Paragraphs 0067-0070);
determine whether the model answer matches the acquired answer basis information; and generate an answer to be output to the user based on a result of the determination and the model answer (Fig. 1, element 105).
As per claim 2, Ding discloses, the information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of instructions cause the at least one processor to determine whether the model answer matches the acquired answer basis information based on whether each of a plurality of words included in the model answer is included in words included in the answer basis information (Paragraphs 0048-0049. “semantic representation”).
As per claim 3, Ding discloses, he information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of instructions cause the at least one processor to generate an answer including the model answer and information for identifying the answer basis information, when it is determined that the model answer matches the acquired answer basis information (Paragraphs 0048-0049).
As per claim 4, Ding discloses, the information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of instructions cause the at least one processor to generate an answer including the model answer and information indicating that a reliability of the model answer is low, when it is determined that the model answer does not match the acquired answer basis information (Paragraph 0055, “calculate the confidence”).
As per claim 5, Ding discloses, he information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of instructions cause the at least one processor to request a language model to create an answer to the question based on the question and the acquired answer basis information, and acquire a model answer from the language model (Paragraphs 0069-0070).
As per claim 8, Ding discloses, the information processing system according to claim 1, wherein the plurality of instructions cause the at least one processor to: input the question into a feature extraction model to extract a first feature vector as a query vector; search a feature database for a second feature vector similar to the query vector; and obtain the answer basis information from the database corresponding to the second feature vector (Paragraphs 0029-0047).
As per claim 9, Ding discloses, the information processing system according to claim 8, wherein the feature database comprises a plurality of knowledge documents, and wherein the answer basis information is obtained from a knowledge document from among the plurality of knowledge documents based on the second feature vector (Paragraphs 0048-0049).
As per claim 9, Ding discloses, the information processing system according to claim 9, wherein the feature database comprises a plurality of vectors extracted from the plurality of knowledge documents (Fig. 2).
As per claim 10, Ding discloses, the information processing system according to claim 8, wherein the plurality of instructions cause the at least one processor to search the feature database for the second feature vector similar to the query vector based on a calculated cosine similarity (Paragraphs 0061-0063 and 0077-0079).
As per claim 6 and 7, they are analyzed and thus rejected for the same reasons set forth in the rejection of claim 1, because the corresponding claims have similar limitations.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Abul K. Azad whose telephone number is (571) 272-7599. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, Bhavesh Mehta, can be reached at (571) 272-7453.
Any response to this action should be mailed to:
Commissioner for Patents
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, VA 22313-1450
Or faxed to: (571) 273-8300.
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October 1, 2026
/ABUL K AZAD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2656
