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 .
Claim Status
Claims 1, 3-11, 14, 16-24 are pending.
Response to Arguments
101 Rejection: Applicant's arguments filed 01/16/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues “receiving explicit authorization from a user of a user device that indicates a plurality of contextual data elements associated with the user that a contextual generator has permission to access” is significantly more than the judicial exception. Examiner disagrees because this limitation is an insignificant-extra solution activity tangentially related to the invention.
Applicant argues the amended limitation “wherein the plurality of contextual data elements are obtained from a plurality of online service providers, each online service provider associated with a respective topic of contextual data elements” is significantly more than the judicial exception. Examiner disagrees because this limitation is mere necessary data gathering.
Applicant argues the amended limitation “wherein, after the user device stores the context locally, the user device is configured to process a query locally using the context stored at the user device and a neural network model that resides at the user device” is an improvement to technology. Examiner disagrees because this amended limitation merely recites the performance of an abstract idea (i.e., process a query) using generic computer components (i.e. neural network model that resides at the user device).
103 Rejection: Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 3-11, 14, 16-24 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Upon further consideration, and in view of applicant’s amendments, a new grounds of rejection is made in view of newly cited references Rangappa.
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, 3-11, 14, 16-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The following is Examiner's analysis of the claimed invention under the 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance (PEG)
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 1 recites a process (method), claim 14 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. Claims 1 and 14 recite "for each respective contextual data element, determining a corresponding weight indicating an amount of relevance of the respective contextual data element to the user" which falls within the mathematical concepts grouping of abstract ideas. The BRI of "determining a corresponding weight" covers the performance of a mathematical calculation, and therefore, the claim recites an abstract idea.
Claims 1 and 14 recite "determining a context based on the corresponding weight of each respective contextual data element, the context comprising a portion of the contextual data elements from the plurality of contextual data elements" which falls within the mathematical concepts grouping of abstract ideas. The specification discloses “the context module 170 determines the context 172 by selecting the top-N contextual data elements 102 from the plurality of contextual data elements 102 having the greatest corresponding weights 162”. In view of this description, the BRI of "determining a context" covers performance of a mathematical calculation, and therefore, the claim recites an abstract idea.
Claims 1 and 14 recites “process a query” which falls within the mental processes grouping of abstract ideas.
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. Claim 1 recites “a computer-implemented method executed on data processing hardware that causes the data processing hardware to perform operations comprising” which amounts to merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer.
Claim 14 recites “a system comprising: data processing hardware; and memory hardware in communication with the data processing hardware, the memory hardware storing instructions that when executed on the data processing hardware cause the data processing hardware to perform operations comprising” which amounts to merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer.
Claims 1 and 14 recite “receiving explicit authorization from a user of a user device that indicates a plurality of contextual data elements associated with the user that a contextual generator has permission to access, wherein the explicit authorization defines which types of contextual data elements the contextual generator has permission to access and which types of contextual data elements the contextual generator does not have permission to access; accessing, by the contextual generator, the plurality of contextual data elements associated with the user of the user device, wherein the plurality of contextual data elements are obtained from a plurality of online service providers, each online service provider associated with a respective topic of contextual data elements” which is mere necessary data gathering.
Claims 1 and 14 recite “wherein, after the user device stores the context locally, the user device is configured to process a query locally using the context stored at the user device and a neural network model that resides at the user device” which amounts to merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. The courts have determined merely including instructions to implement the abstract idea on a computer does not qualify as “significantly more” when recited in a claim with a judicial exception (See Alice Corp., 573 U.S. at 225-26, 110 USPQ2d at 1984).
The courts have determined mere data gathering to not be enough to qualify as “significantly more” when recited in a claim with a judicial exception (See CyberSource v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1375, 99 USPQ2d 1690, 1694 (Fed. Cir. 2011)).
There is no indication that the elements of the claim, individually nor in combination, integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
For the reasons above, claims 1 and 14 are rejected as being directed to nonpatentable
subject matter under §101. This rejection applies equally to the dependent claims. The additional limitations of the dependent claims are addressed briefly below:
Regarding claims 3 and 16
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 3 recites a process (method), claim 16 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. The claims inherits the abstract idea of the parent claim.
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. The claims recite “determine to execute the query locally at the user device, wherein the user device is configured to retrieve the context stored locally at the user device based on determining to execute the query locally at the user device” which is mere necessary data gathering.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. The courts have determined mere data gathering to not be enough to qualify as “significantly more” when recited in a claim with a judicial exception (See CyberSource v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1375, 99 USPQ2d 1690, 1694 (Fed. Cir. 2011)).
Regarding claims 4 and 17
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 4 recites a process (method), claim 17 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. The claims inherits the abstract idea of the parent claim.
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. The claims recite “wherein the user device is configured to determine to execute the query locally at the user device by determining that communication between the user device and the data processing hardware is currently unavailable” which is mere necessary data gathering.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. The courts have determined mere data gathering to not be enough to qualify as “significantly more” when recited in a claim with a judicial exception (See CyberSource v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1375, 99 USPQ2d 1690, 1694 (Fed. Cir. 2011)).
Regarding claims 5 and 18
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 5 recites a process (method), claim 18 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. The claims inherits the abstract idea of the parent claim.
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. The claims recite “wherein the neural network model comprises an automated speech recognition model or a large language model” which is mere necessary data gathering.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. The courts have determined mere data gathering to not be enough to qualify as “significantly more” when recited in a claim with a judicial exception (See CyberSource v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1375, 99 USPQ2d 1690, 1694 (Fed. Cir. 2011)).
Regarding claims 6 and 19
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 6 recites a process (method), claim 19 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. The claims recite “determining a corresponding recency of the respective contextual data element, the corresponding recency indicating how recently the respective contextual data element was created or updated, wherein determining the corresponding weight is based on the corresponding recency of the respective contextual data element” which falls within the mental processes grouping of abstract ideas.
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim
integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim, individually nor in
combination, integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
Regarding claims 7 and 20
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 7 recites a process (method), claim 20 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. The claims recite “determining a corresponding relationship between the respective contextual data element and preferences of the user, wherein determining the corresponding weight is based on the corresponding relationship between the respective contextual data element and the preferences of the user” which falls within the mental processes grouping of abstract ideas.
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim
integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim, individually nor in
combination, integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
Regarding claim 8 and 21
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 8 recites a process (method), claim 21 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. The claims inherits the abstract idea of the parent claim.
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. The claims recite “receiving, from the user device, contextual cues suggesting particular contextual data elements relevant to the user, wherein determining the corresponding weight is based on the contextual cues” which is mere necessary data gathering.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. The courts have determined mere data gathering to not be enough to qualify as “significantly more” when recited in a claim with a judicial exception (See CyberSource v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1375, 99 USPQ2d 1690, 1694 (Fed. Cir. 2011)).
Regarding claim 9 and 22
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 9 recites a process (method), claim 22 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. The claims recite “ranking the contextual data elements in the portion of the contextual data elements of the context based on the corresponding weight of each respective contextual data element in the portion of the contextual data elements; and generating an ordered context list based on the ranked contextual data elements, wherein sending the context to the user device comprises sending the context to the user device based on the ordered context list” which falls within the mathematical concepts grouping of abstract ideas
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim
integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim, individually nor in
combination, integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
Regarding claims 10 and 23
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 10 recites a process (method), claim 23 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. Claim 10 recites “for each respective contextual data element in the portion of the contextual data elements of the context, determining a corresponding temporal relevance of the respective contextual data element; and sending each corresponding temporal relevance to the user device” which falls within the mental processes grouping of abstract ideas.
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim
integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim, individually nor in
combination, integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
Regarding claims 11 and 24
STEP 1 ls the claim to a Process, Machine, Manufacture or Composition of matter? Yes. Claim 11 recites a process (method), claim 24 recites a machine (system).
STEP2A Prone one: Does The Claim Recite An Abstract Idea, Law Of Nature, or Natural Phenomenon? Yes. The claims recite “wherein each corresponding temporal relevance indicates at least one of: an occurrence time indicating when an event associated with the respective contextual data element will occur; or a deletion time indicating when the respective contextual data element will no longer be relevant to the user” which falls within the mental processes grouping of abstract ideas.
STEP2A Prone two: Does The Claim Recite Additional Elements That Integrate The Judicial Exception Into A Practical Application? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim
integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? No. There is no indication that the elements of the claim, individually nor in
combination, integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
Taken alone, the additional elements of the dependent claims do not amount to significantly
more than the above-identified judicial exception (the abstract idea). Looking at the limitations as an
ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present when looking at the elements taken
individually. There is no indication that the combination of elements improves the functioning of a
computer or improves any other technology. Their collective functions merely provide conventional
computer implementation.
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.
Claims 1, 3-11, 14, 16-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mascaro et al (US 10176534 B1) hereafter Mascaro in view of Rangappa et al (US 12147559 B1) hereafter Rangappa further in view of Salarian et al (US20220406305 A1) hereafter Salarian
Regarding claim 1, Mascaro teaches a computer-implemented method executed on data processing hardware that causes the data processing hardware to perform operations comprising:
for each respective contextual data element, determining a corresponding weight indicating an amount of relevance of the respective contextual data element to the user (columns 17 lines 32-33, a score graph 200 that represents a range of scores that the analytics models 120, 121, and/or 122 can assign to each of the questions for one or more of the tiers of questions to prioritize or weight the relevance of the questions to a user); determining a context based on the corresponding weight of each respective contextual data element, the context comprising a portion of the contextual data elements from the plurality of contextual data elements (column 15 lines 62-63, analytics models 120, 121, and 122 are generated to determine relevant/effective questions for a user based on information gathered from the user and based on an analysis of previous years' tax data)( “relevant/effective questions” is a species of “context based on the corresponding weight”); and sending the context to the user device, wherein, based on receiving the context, the user device is configured to store the context locally at the user device (column 10 lines 8-10, The output devices 142 display/present the selected questions 117 and the selected user interface elements 118 to the user, as provided by the tax return preparation system 111).
Mascaro does not appear to explicitly teach receiving explicit authorization from a user of a user device that indicates a plurality of contextual data elements associated with the user that a contextual generator has permission to access, wherein the explicit authorization defines which types of contextual data elements the contextual generator has permission to access and which types of contextual data elements the contextual generator does not have permission to access; accessing, by the contextual generator, the plurality of contextual data elements associated with the user of the user device, wherein the plurality of contextual data elements are obtained from a plurality of online service providers, each online service provider associated with a respective topic of contextual data elements.
In analogous art, Rangappa teaches receiving explicit authorization from a user of a user device that indicates a plurality of contextual data elements associated with the user that a contextual generator has permission to access, wherein the explicit authorization defines which types of contextual data elements the contextual generator has permission to access and which types of contextual data elements the contextual generator does not have permission to access (Column 10 lines 7-10, Access permission module 111b connects to access policy database 114 and uses the requestor identity information to determine a data access permission level associated with the requestor); accessing, by the contextual generator, the plurality of contextual data elements associated with the user of the user device, wherein the plurality of contextual data elements are obtained from a plurality of online service providers, each online service provider associated with a respective topic of contextual data elements (Column 10 lines 10-17, access permission module 111b retrieves an access profile associated with the requestor from database 114, where the access profile includes one or more rules, filters, and/or permissions that define (i) whether the requestor is authorized to receive the requested data, (ii) what type(s) of data the requestor can access, and (iii) for certain types of data, whether the requestor has permission to receive a full view or a masked view). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mascaro to include the teaching of Rangappa. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to provide secure data access (abs, Methods and systems for secure geolocation-based data access control).
Mascaro in view of Rangappa does not appear to explicitly teach wherein, after the user device stores the context locally, the user device is configured to process a query locally using the context stored at the user device and a neural network model that resides at the user device.
In analogous art, Salarian teaches wherein, after the user device stores the context locally, the user device is configured to process a query locally using the context stored at the user device (Para 0077, queries can be handled locally) and a neural network model that resides at the user device (Para 0033, machine learning (Deep Neural Networks - DNNs) models). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mascaro in view of Rangappa to include the teaching of Salarian. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to improve system efficiency as taught by Salarian (Para 0077, By processing them in the device rather than sending everything to the cloud backend, significant cost savings could be achieved. Another benefit is a reduction in the delay).
Regarding claim 3, Mascaro in view of Rangappa further in view of Salarian teaches the method of claim 1 wherein the user device is further configured to: determine to execute the query locally at the user device, wherein the user device is configured to retrieve the context stored locally at the user device based on determining to execute the query locally at the user device (Salarian, Para 0010, . Based on the in-domain and out-domain confidence scores, an audio command is obtained by either (i) processing the audio features with the local processor using a local speech recognition module, or (ii) sending the audio features to a remote server for processing). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mascaro in view of Rangappa to include the teaching of Salarian. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to improve system efficiency as taught by Salarian (Para 0077, By processing them in the device rather than sending everything to the cloud backend, significant cost savings could be achieved. Another benefit is a reduction in the delay).
Regarding claim 4, Mascaro in view of Rangappa further in view of Salarian teaches the method of claim 3, wherein the user device is configured to determine to execute the query locally at the user device by determining that communication between the user device and the data processing hardware is currently unavailable (Salarian, Para 0010, . Based on the in-domain and out-domain confidence scores, an audio command is obtained by either (i) processing the audio features with the local processor using a local speech recognition module, or (ii) sending the audio features to a remote server for processing). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mascaro in view of Rangappa to include the teaching of Salarian. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to improve system efficiency as taught by Salarian (Para 0077, By processing them in the device rather than sending everything to the cloud backend, significant cost savings could be achieved. Another benefit is a reduction in the delay).
Regarding claim 5, Mascaro in view of Rangappa further in view of Salarian teaches the method of claim 1 wherein the neural network model comprises an automated speech recognition model or a large language model (Salarian, Para 0009, Techniques disclosed herein relate generally to apparatus and methods for on-device automatic speech recognition (ASR) using a limited command set (small vocabulary)—a command spotter). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mascaro in view of Rangappa to include the teaching of Salarian. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to improve system efficiency as taught by Salarian (Para 0077, By processing them in the device rather than sending everything to the cloud backend, significant cost savings could be achieved. Another benefit is a reduction in the delay).
Regarding claim 6, Mascaro in view of Rangappa further in view of Salarian teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise, for each respective contextual data element: determining a corresponding recency of the respective contextual data element, the corresponding recency indicating how recently the respective contextual data element was created or updated, wherein determining the corresponding weight is based on the corresponding recency of the respective contextual data element (Salarian, Para 0066, the cloud backend may have larger processing power and benefits from a large vocabulary, is able to process complex natural language commands and has access to the databases that hold contextual information). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mascaro in view of Rangappa to include the teaching of Salarian. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to improve system efficiency as taught by Salarian (Para 0077, By processing them in the device rather than sending everything to the cloud backend, significant cost savings could be achieved. Another benefit is a reduction in the delay).
Regarding claim 7, Mascaro in view of Rangappa further in view of Salarian teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise, for each respective contextual data element: determining a corresponding relationship between the respective contextual data element and preferences of the user (Mascaro, columns 17 lines 32-33, a score graph 200 that represents a range of scores that the analytics models 120, 121, and/or 122 can assign to each of the questions for one or more of the tiers of questions to prioritize or weight the relevance of the questions to a user), wherein determining the corresponding weight is based on the corresponding relationship between the respective contextual data element and the preferences of the user (Mascaro, column 15 lines 35-36, the tax return preparation system or the analytics module 113 creates, generates, and/or trains one or more of the analytics models 120, 121, and 122 based on at least part of the existing user behavior data 133)(“user behavior data” teaches “preferences of the user”).
Regarding claim 8, Mascaro in view of Rangappa further in view of Salarian teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise: receiving, from the user device, contextual cues suggesting particular contextual data elements relevant to the user, wherein determining the corresponding weight is based on the contextual cues (Mascaro, column 9 lines 60-61, the input devices 141 gather user data 116 such as clickstream data 143, browsing behavior data 144, and personal information 145, according to one embodiment)(“user data” is a species of “contextual cues”).
Regarding claim 9, Mascaro in view of Rangappa further in view of Salarian teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise: ranking the contextual data elements in the portion of the contextual data elements of the context based on the corresponding weight of each respective contextual data element in the portion of the contextual data elements; and generating an ordered context list based on the ranked contextual data elements, wherein sending the context to the user device comprises sending the context to the user device based on the ordered context list (Mascaro, column 13 lines 42-43, The output of each of the analytics models is a relevance score, ranking score, questions score, or other prioritization of relevance for the questions of the question pool 114, as they relate to a current user).
Regarding claim 10, Mascaro in view of Rangappa further in view of Salarian teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the operations further comprise: for each respective contextual data element in the portion of the contextual data elements of the context, determining a corresponding temporal relevance of the respective contextual data element; and sending each corresponding temporal relevance to the user device (Salarian, Para 0011, Based on the likelihood ratio, a locally decoded audio command is performed, or the audio features are sent to a remote server for processing to determine the audio command). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mascaro in view of Rangappa to include the teaching of Salarian. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to improve system efficiency as taught by Salarian (Para 0077, By processing them in the device rather than sending everything to the cloud backend, significant cost savings could be achieved. Another benefit is a reduction in the delay).
Regarding claim 11, Mascaro in view of Rangappa further in view of Salarian teaches the method of claim 1, wherein each corresponding temporal relevance indicates at least one of: an occurrence time indicating when an event associated with the respective contextual data element will occur; or a deletion time indicating when the respective contextual data element will no longer be relevant to the user (Salarian, Para 0075, Each time frame, e.g., 10 ms for example, an acoustic model estimates those probabilities for all phones or senones, with those probabilities summing up to 1). It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Mascaro in view of Rangappa to include the teaching of Salarian. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to implement this modification in order to improve system efficiency as taught by Salarian (Para 0077, By processing them in the device rather than sending everything to the cloud backend, significant cost savings could be achieved. Another benefit is a reduction in the delay).
Claim 14 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 1, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 16 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 3, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 17 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 4, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 18 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 5, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 19 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 6, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 20 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 7, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 21 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 8, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 22 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 9, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 23 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 10, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Claim 24 is the system claim corresponding to the method claim 11, and is analyzed and rejected accordingly.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/B.T.H./Examiner, Art Unit 2166 /KHANH B PHAM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2166
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