Introduction
1. This office action is in response to Applicant’s submission filed on 11/25/2024. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application and have been examined.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
2. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
3. In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
4. Claims 1, 2, 9, 13, 14, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as unpatentable over U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 20250200084 (Liu) in view of U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 20260178629 (Chen).
With regard to Claim 1, Liu describes:
“A prompt tuning method, comprising:
guiding a first model to start a question answering process based on the original prompt, and requesting the first model to answer the original prompt according to the original prompt [[and context information]] obtained in the question answering process, (Paragraph 62 describes that the user triggers the beginning of a process where the prompt is used to answer a question.)
the question answering process including at least one of a process where the first model asks a question and the second model answers the question, and a process where the first model asks a question and answers the question; and (Paragraph 16 describes that a first model asks and answers a question.)
obtaining the answer to the original prompt generated by the first model.” (Paragraph 16 describes that the answer generated by a first model is displayed.)
Berg does not explicitly describe “receiving an original prompt input by a user;” or receiving context with the prompt.
However, paragraph 77 of Chen describes that a prompt and context information are received from a user and input into the model.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include the prompt and context input as described by Chen into the system of Liu to allow the user to trigger the model to produce an answer, as described in paragraph 77 of Chen.
With regard to Claim 2, Liu describes “the guiding the first model to start the question answering process and requesting the first model to answer the original prompt includes generating an optimized prompt according to the original prompt and a preset prompt template, and inputting the optimized prompt into the first model, the prompt template being used to guide the first model to start the question answering process according to the original prompt, and to request the first model to answer the original prompt according to the original prompt and the context information obtained in the question answering process.” Paragraph 56 of Liu describes that a prompt can be optimized by using a template and using the optimized prompt to generate the answer.
With respect to Claim 9, describes “the generating the optimized prompt and inputting the optimized prompt into the first model includes generating an eighth optimized prompt according to the original prompt and a sixth prompt template, and inputting the eighth optimized prompt into the first model, the sixth prompt template being used to prompt the original prompt, and to request the first model to ask a question and answer the question according to the original prompt, and answer the original prompt.” Paragraph 56 of Liu describes that a prompt can be optimized by using a template and using the optimized prompt to generate the answer. Any number of templates and prompts can be used.
With respect to Claims 13 and 14, method Claim 1 and apparatus Claim 13
are related as an apparatus programmed to perform the same method, with each claimed apparatus function corresponding to each claimed method step. Accordingly, Claims 13 and 14 are similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to Claims 1 and 2.
With respect to Claim 20, medium Claim 20 and method Claim 1 are related as a device programmed to perform the same method, with each claimed device function corresponding to each claimed medium step. Accordingly, Claim 20 is similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied above with respect to Claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
5. Claims 3-8, 10-12, and 15-19 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.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance: The cited art does not teach or suggest the use of a first model and a second model, and multiple prompts, intermediate prompts, and templates as recited in Claims 3-8, 10-12, and 15-19, in combination with the features of the claims from which they depend.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
6. The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
“Enhancing Answer Selection in Community Question Answering with Pre-trained and Large Language Models” (Hu) also describes using multiple models to generate questions and answers.
7. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EDWARD TRACY whose telephone number is (571)272-8332. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9 AM- 5PM.
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/EDWARD TRACY JR./Examiner, Art Unit 2656
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