DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response tot eh application filed 11/25/2024.
Claims 1-20 have been submitted for examination.
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 .
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
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Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent No. 11,741,298. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because:
As per instant claim 1, claim 1 of ‘298 teaches each limitation as follows:
Instant claim 1 Claim 1 of ‘298
A method, comprising:
A method comprising:
connecting to a communication session with a plurality of participants;
receiving, in real time during the communication session, updates to a transcript of a conversation between the participants produced during the communication session, the transcript comprising timestamps for a plurality of utterances associated with speaking participants;
receiving a request to generate a meeting note corresponding to a first timestamp;
receiving a request from one of the participants to generate a meeting note;
determining a context of a meeting at the first timestamp based on contexts of utterances prior to the first timestamp and contexts of utterances subsequent to the first timestamp;
determining a starting timestamp and an ending timestamp representing boundaries of the meeting note that correspond to the context of the meeting at the first timestamp;
determining, based on the request and the transcript of the conversation, a starting timestamp and an ending timestamp for utterances representing the boundaries of the meeting note, the determining being performed by an artificial intelligence (AI)model employing one or more supervised segmentation techniques and trained via self-supervised pre-training, the determining comprising:
calculating a sequence of scores based on the content-based similarity between a window of sentences in the transcript that precede and follow sentences in the transcript; and
generating predictions of the starting timestamp and the ending timestamp using the plurality of scores in sequential order;
generating the meeting note based on the starting timestamp and the ending timestamp; and
generating, in real time during the communication session, a meeting note where the utterances for the starting timestamp and ending timestamp are the starting utterance and ending utterance of the meeting note, respectively; and
transmitting the generated meeting note to one or more participant devices.
presenting to at least the participant, within a user interface (UI), the generated meeting note.
Regarding instant claims 2-20, instant claims 2-20 correspond to claims 2-20 of ’298.
The Examiner would like to note that while claims 1-20 were allowed in application 17,878,015, it appears that only claims 1-19 were published within the associated patent 11,741,298.
Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of U.S. Patent No. 12,182,500. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because:
As per instant claim 1, claim 1 of ‘500 teaches each limitation as follows:
Instant claim 1 Claim 1 of ‘500
A method, comprising:
A method, comprising:
receiving a request to generate a meeting note corresponding to a first timestamp;
receiving a request to generate a meeting note corresponding to a first timestamp for a meeting with one or more participants, wherein the request is initiated by a participant of the one or more participants at the first timestamp;
determining a context of a meeting at the first timestamp based on contexts of utterances prior to the first timestamp and contexts of utterances subsequent to the first timestamp;
determining, based on a transcript of the meeting, a context ofthe meeting at the first timestamp according to contexts of utterances prior to the first timestamp and contexts of utterances subsequent to the first timestamp, the determining being performed by an artificial intelligence (AI) model trained via self-supervised pre-training;
determining a starting timestamp and an ending timestamp representing boundaries of the meeting note that correspond to the context of the meeting at the first timestamp;
determining a starting timestamp and an ending timestamp representing boundaries of the meeting note that correspond to the context of the meeting at the first timestamp;
generating the meeting note based on the starting timestamp and the ending timestamp; and
generating the meeting note according to the starting timestamp and the ending timestamp; and
transmitting the generated meeting note to one or more participant devices.
presenting the generated meeting note to the one or more participants.
Regarding instant claims 2-20, instant claims 2-20 correspond to claims 2-20 of ’500.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 4-6, 12-14, 18, and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pandey et al. (US 11,095,468), hereinafter Pandey, in view of Peters et al. (US 2014/0278405), hereinafter Peters.
As per claim 1, Pandey teaches the following:
a method, comprising:
receiving a request to generate a meeting note As Pandey teaches in column 3, lines 31-46, a transcript of a meeting is parsed to identify specific “action words”. Further see column 9, lines 54-67, “take notes”;
determining a context of a meeting . As Pandey further teaches in column 3, lines 31-46, a meeting summary service may tag the identified action words and include one or more utterances surrounding such key words/phrases as action items;
determining a starting . As Pandey teaches in column 16, line 65 through column 17, line 7, action items are identified as the action word and surrounding content, i.e., content from a start to and end and including the action word;
generating the meeting note based on the starting timestamp and the ending timestamp. As Pandey shows in Fig. 3A, action items are mapped to a specific portion of a transcript which includes transcript associated with the action item; and
transmitting the generated meeting note to one or more participant devices. As Pandey teaches in column 21, lines 23-27, the meeting summary service 120 may provide a message to the users that meeting notes are available.
While Pandey teaches of identifying action words and words surrounding for context, Pandy does not explicitly teach of determining time stamps for each marker. In a similar field of endeavor, Peters is directed to automatically creating meeting notes (see abstract). Peters further teaches in paragraph [0031] that specific timestamps of meetings may have content linked to them and in paragraph [0044] that notes may be linked to surrounding meeting content 140 to provide context. Upon the modification of Pandey in view of Peters, the beginning of action word transcript, the action word, and ending of action word transcript of Pandey, would each be associated with timestamps as in Peters.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of applicant’s claimed invention to have modified the action word transcript marking of Pandey with the timestamps of Peters. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modification because as Peters teaches in paragraph [0031], the use of timestamps benefits users in allowing multiple informational sources to be linked to a single time of record, such audio, video, messaging, etc.
Regarding claim 4, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 1 as described above. Pandey further teaches the following:
the generated meeting note is presented after the communication session has terminated within an after-meeting UI. As Pandey teaches in column 19, lines 33-50, action items (notes) may be identified from previously recorded meetings, thus would be presented after the meeting has terminated.
Regarding claim 5, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 4 as described above. Pandey further teaches the following:
the generated meeting note is presented within the after- meeting UI concurrently with one or more additional meeting notes generated during the communication session. As may be seen in 310 of Fig. 3A, Pandey shows that multiple action items (notes) may be presented concurrently.
Regarding claim 6, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 1 as described above. Pandey further teaches the following:
transmitting the generated meeting note comprises transmitting at least a subset of a transcript of the meeting such that the utterances within the boundaries of the meeting note are highlighted within the transcript. As Pandey teaches in column 16, line 65 through column 17, line 7, upon a user selecting an action item (note), a portion of the transcript 212 is displayed including content before and after the item. As Pandey shows in Fig. 3A, the text of the action item is presented as bold compared to non-item text, which at least suggests “highlighting” the item.
Regarding claim 12, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 1. Pandey further teaches the following:
wherein an artificial intelligence (AI) model is trained to: extract one or more multimodal features, the method further comprising: generating a prediction of the starting timestamp and the ending timestamp based at least in part on the one or more multimodal features. As Pandey teaches in column 15, line 62 – column 16, line 2, a vision service may be provided to identify users. Therefore, the system may utilize vision to identify a user who is talking in assisting with start and end time identification.
As per claim 13, Pandey teaches the following:
a communication system comprising: one or more processors. See column 23, lines 37-45.
The remaining limitations of claim 13 are substantially similar to those of claim 1 and are rejected using the same reasoning.
Regarding claim 14, modified Pandey teaches the system of claim 13 as described above. Pandey further teaches following:
wherein the one or more processors are further configured to: extract one or more conversational features via a rule-based model; and determine the starting timestamp and the ending timestamp based at least in part on the conversational features. As Pandey teaches in column 3, lines 31-46, an organizer may specify one or more key words and/or phrases and action words (conversational features via rules). Pandey teaches in column 17, lines 1-7, that content before and after an action word is determined.
Regarding claim 18, modified Pandey teaches the system of claim 13 as described above. Pandey further teaches following:
the one or more processors are further configured to: detect one or more automated note taking conditions, wherein the request to generate a meeting note is automatically initiated based on the detecting of the one or more automated note taking conditions. As Pandey teaches in column 20, lines 47-59, key words and/or key phrases are utilized to automatically identify note sections in a transcript.
As per claim 19, Pandey teaches the following:
a non-transitory computer-readable medium containing instructions that when executed by a processor. See column 23, lines 58-67.
The remaining limitations of claim 19 are substantially similar to those of claim 1 and are rejected using the same reasoning.
Claim(s) 2, 3, 7-11, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pandey in view of Peters as applied to claims 1 and 19 above, and further in view of Stoker et al. (US 2020/0321007), hereinafter Stoker.
Regarding claim 2, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 1. However, Pandey in view of Peters does not explicitly teach of displaying the notes in real time during the session. In a similar field of endeavor, Stoker teaches of transcribing a live meeting (see abstract). Stoker further teaches the following:
presenting the generated meeting note to at least the participant within the UI occurs in real time during the communication session. As Stoker teaches in the abstract, transcriptions may be made in real-time. Therefore, upon the further modification of Zeng in view of Pandey in view of Stoker, the notes of Zeng in view of Pandey may be presented in real-time.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application was filed to have further modified the presentation of notes of Pandey with the real-time presentation of Stoker. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modifications because as Stoker teaches in paragraph [0005], such real-time transcriptions benefit a user in allowing hearing-impaired persons to better participate in meetings.
Regarding claim 3, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 2 as described above. However, as described above, Pandey does not explicitly teach of presenting notes in real time. Stoker further teaches the following:
the presented meeting note is editable by the participant in real time during the communication session. As Stoker teaches in paragraph [0071], and corresponding Fig. 7, an interface is presented for editing transcription in real-time.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application was filed to have further modified the presentation of notes of Pandey with the real-time presentation of Stoker. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modifications because as Stoker teaches in paragraph [0005], such real-time transcriptions benefit a user in allowing hearing-impaired persons to better participate in meetings.
Regarding claim 7, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 6. However, Pandey does not explicitly teach of editing a beginning or ending of the note. In a similar field of endeavor, Stoker teaches of transcribing a live meeting (see abstract). Stoker further teaches the following:
the highlighted boundaries of the meeting notes are modifiable by the participant to adjust one or more of the starting timestamp and ending timestamp to a different timestamp. As Stoker teaches in paragraph [0073], a user may edit formatting or effects, such as highlighting. Therefore, the user may edit the beginning or ending of highlighted text. Upon the modification of Zeng in view of Pandey, notes/action items are presented as highlighted text. Upon the further modification of Zeng in view of Pandey in view of Stoker, this highlighted text may be edited to include more or less or the transcribed text.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application was filed to have further modified the presentation of notes of Pandey with the text editing of Stoker. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modifications because as Stoker teaches in [0007], transcription services are highly error-prone, thus benefiting users in more accurate transcriptions.
Regarding claim 8, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 1. However, Pandey does not explicitly teach of editing a beginning or ending of the note. In a similar field of endeavor, Stoker teaches of transcribing a live meeting (see abstract). Stoker further teaches the following:
receiving a request from the participant to edit the boundaries of the meeting note, such that one or more of the starting and ending timestamp may be adjusted to a different timestamp; and determining, based on the request, one or more of a new starting timestamp and a new ending timestamp. As Stoker teaches in paragraph [0073], a user may edit formatting or effects, such as highlighting. Therefore, the user may edit the beginning or ending of highlighted text. Upon the further modification of Pandey in view of Stoker, this highlighted text may be edited to include more or less or the transcribed text.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application was filed to have further modified the presentation of notes of Pandey with the text editing of Stoker. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modifications because as Stoker teaches in [0007], transcription services are highly error-prone, thus benefiting users in more accurate transcriptions.
Regarding claim 9, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 8 as described above. However, as described above, Pandey does not explicitly teach of editing a beginning or ending of the note. In a similar field of endeavor, Stoker teaches of transcribing a live meeting (see abstract). Stoker further teaches the following:
the new starting timestamp and new ending timestamp are ingested as training data for training a model to determine starting timestamps and ending timestamps for one or more future meeting notes. As Stoker teaches in paragraph [0061], machine learning algorithms can be implemented to improve transcription accuracy based upon editing by users.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application was filed to have further modified the presentation of notes of Pandey with the text editing of Stoker. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modifications because as Stoker teaches in [0007], transcription services are highly error-prone, thus benefiting users in more accurate transcriptions.
Regarding claim 10, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 1. However, Pandey does not explicitly teach of an AI utilizing a supervised segmentation technique. In a similar field of endeavor, Stoker teaches of transcribing a live meeting (see abstract). Stoker further teaches the following:
wherein determining the starting timestamp and the ending timestamp for the meeting note is performed by an artificial intelligence (AI) model employing one or more supervised segmentation techniques. As Stoker teaches in paragraph [0040], AI may be used to transcribe audio. Stoker teaches in paragraph [0052] that the transcription application transcribes words as individual segments.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application was filed to have modified the AI transcription of Pandey with the segmentation technique of Stoker. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modification because as Stoker teaches in paragraph [0053], such segmentation may benefit a user in improving a systems translation with context and language specific phrasing.
Regarding claim 11, modified Pandey teaches the method of claim 10. Pandey further teaches the following:
wherein the AI model extracts the content-based features using one or more of: a TextTiling training model, and a language model via self-supervised pre-training. As Pandy teaches in column 3, line 63 – column 4, line 9, machine learning utilized to extracting features may be “supervised learning, unsupervised learning, semi-supervised learning”.
Regarding claim 20, modified Pandey teaches the medium of claim 19 as described above. The remaining limitations of claim 20 are substantially similar to those of claim 8 and are rejected using the same reasoning.
Claim(s) 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pandey in view of Peters as applied to claim 13 above, and further in view of Zeng et al. (US 2021/0375291), hereinafter Zeng.
Regarding claim 15, modified Pandey teaches the system of claim 13 as described above. However, Pandey does not explicitly teach of pairwise note boundaries. Zeng teaches the following:
the one or more processors are configured to employ a pairwise meeting note boundary to generate a list of candidates via a rule-based model, each candidate comprising a boundary pair of a starting utterance and an ending utterance representing a boundary for the meeting note. As Zeng teaches in paragraph [0073], a starting keyword and ending keyword (pairwise) may be utilized for tagging associated transcription.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of applicant’s claimed invention to have modified the action words of Zeng with the starting and ending words of Zeng. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modification because as Zeng teaches in paragraph [0075], such definitive tagging benefits users in clearly describing a note type to be made.
Claim(s) 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pandey in view of Peters in view of Zeng as applied to claims 13 and 15 above, and further in view of “3 Reasons to Use Random Forest Over a Neural Network–Comparing Machine Learning versus Deep Learning, https://towardsdatascience.com/3-reasons-to-use-random-forest-over-a-neural-network-comparing-machine-learning-versus-deep-f9d65a154d89, by James Montantes, published 02/04/2020, downloaded from the Internet on 11/21/2022, hereinafter Montantes.
Regarding claim 16, modified Pandey teaches the system of claim 16 as described above. While Zeng teaches of utilizing a neural network for note prediction in paragraph [0087], Pandey in view of Zeng does not explicitly teach of a random forest regressor. Montantes teaches (entire reference) that a random forest regressor may be utilized in place of a neural network, such as used by Zeng. Upon the modification of the neural network of Pandey in view of Zeng being replaced by the random forest regressor of Montantes, one of ordinary skill in the art at the time would have arrived at:
the one or more processors are configured to employ the pairwise meeting note boundary to generate rankings for each boundary pairs via a random forest regressor.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application was filed to have modified the neural network of Pandey in view of Zeng with the random forest regressor of Monatante. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to have made such modifications because as Montantes teaches in the title, “3 reasons” are given to where such modification would benefit a user of the modified system.
Claim(s) 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pandey in view of Peters as applied to claim 13 above, and further in view of Rehm (US 2006/0075347).
Regarding claim 17, modified Pandeyteaches the system of claim 13 as described above. However, Pandey does not explicitly teach of a UI element for saving a note. Rehm further teaches the following:
wherein the request to generate a meeting note is initiated by a participant device of the one or more participant devices by interactively selecting a UI element for saving a note. As Rehm teaches in paragraph [0006], a “timestamping button” may be utilized to mark a certain portion of audio.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application was filed to have further modified the action words of Pandey with the button Rehm. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to have made such modification because as Rehm teaches in paragraph [0006], such a button would benefit a user in not requiring the user to draw their attention away from a conversation.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Rose et al. (US 2018/0061399), See Fig. 4 where a device is shown which detect utterances after a command and determines an end of command based upon a context change of the speech.
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/GREGORY A. DISTEFANO/
Examiner
Art Unit 2174
/WILLIAM L BASHORE/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2174
Prosecution Insights