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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed 6/1/2026 have been fully considered and are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection presented herein.
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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim 1-2, 7-8, 13-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20260072958 to Chyzy in view of US 20260064632 to Sharon.
Regarding claim 1, Chyzy teaches a method, comprising:
in response to top-k data chunks being obtained, generating, by the one or more computing devices, a prompt based on the email, the top-k data chunks, and one or more instructions directing a large language model (LLM) to generate related content for responding to the email (¶ 148-158, generation of prompt based on top data chunks and instructions for LLM instruction to generate response);
querying, by the one or more computing devices, the LLM with the prompt; and generating, by the one or more computing devices, a response to the email based on incorporating the related content into a response template (¶ 148-158, 210, 173, querying LLM and generation of response procedure).
Chyzy fails to teach but Sharon teaches:
applying, by one or more computing devices, a pre-filtering of data chunks within a database based on metadata associated with the data chunks to limit a search space of the database, the database storing the data chunks representing knowledge information that corresponds to a user (¶ 37, pre-filtering data chunks based on meta data; ¶ 24, 45-47, 53, information corresponding to user);
executing, by one or more computing devices, a similarity search within the limited search space of the database to retrieve candidate data chunks from the pre-filtered data chunks (¶ 68, 29, similarity search);
applying, by the one or more computing devices, a post-filtering of the candidate chunks based on the metadata to obtain top-k data chunks selected from the candidate data chunks associated with the email from the user (¶ 37, 48, 74-78, 72, 32-33, post-filtering to obtain top results);
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 teachings of Sharon. The motivation to do so is that the teachings of Sharon would have been advantageous in terms of facilitating more efficient search, storage, and retrieval of files (Sharon, ¶ 29).
Regarding claim 2, 8, 14,
Chyzy teaches:
wherein generating the database comprises:
tokenizing text to obtain the data chunks (¶ 145-150, tokenization);
generating a first data embedding associated with a data chunk, wherein the first data embedding is a multi-dimensional numerical representation of a semantic meaning of the data chunk (¶ 146-151, mathematical representation and vectorization);
generating one or more vector indexes to store the data chunks and a set of the first data embedding associated with the data chunks; and storing the one or more vector indexes into the database (¶ 146-151, vectorization functions, indexing; storage).
Claims 7 and 13 are rejected by similar rationale as claim 1.
Claim 3-4, 9-10, 15-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chyzy and Sharon in view of US 20220245361 to Narendula.
Regarding claim 3, 9, 15,
Chyzy fails to teach but Narendula teaches:
wherein the performing the similarity search comprises:
generating a second data embedding associated with the email from the user, wherein the second data embedding is a multi-dimensional numerical representation of a semantic meaning of the email (¶ 54-55, generation of second data embedding with numerical representation; email);
calculating a set of distance metrics between the second data embedding associated with the email and a set of a first data embedding associated with the data chunks (¶ 79, determining Euclidian distance between embeddings);
identifying a plurality of candidate data chunks stored in the vector indexes in the database based on a relationship between the set of calculated distance metrics and a threshold (¶ 113-114; 79, identification of data chunks in vectors based on distance and threshold); and
ranking the set of calculated distance metrics associated with the plurality of candidate data chunks to generate the top-k data chunks (¶ 111-117, scoring/ranking; see also fig. 13, 19; 136-137, 144-146).
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 teachings of Narendula. The motivation to do so is that the teachings of Narendula would have been advantageous in terms of facilitating natural language processing (Narendula, ¶ 1-10).
Regarding claim 4, 10, 16,
Chyzy fails to teach but Narendula teaches:
wherein the calculating the set of distance metrics is performed by determining at least one of a cosine similarity, a Euclidean distance, or a dot product between the second data embedding and the set of the first data embedding (¶ 79, 130, Euclidian). Motivation to include Narendula is the same as presented above.
Claim 5, 11, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chyzy and Sharon in view of US 20250358255 to Kinsella.
Regarding claim 5, 11, 17,
Chyzy fails to teach but Kinsella teaches:
wherein the response template is configurable by a user configuration comprising a subject, a body, and a related record associated with the response template (fig. 6a, 6b, fig. 7, reply template; conversation subject, body, related record).
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 teachings of Kinsella. The motivation to do so is that the teachings of Kinsella would have been advantageous in terms of facilitating the management of artificial intelligence agent interaction and workflow (Kinsella, abstract, fig. 2, fig. 4).
Claim 6, 12, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chyzy and Sharon in view of US 20160285816 to Schmid.
Regarding claim 6, 12, 18,
Chyzy fails to teach but Schmid teaches:
determining whether the generated response has achieved a quality threshold for an auto-response; and routing the generated response to an agent for review based on the generated response not having achieved the quality threshold, or sending the generated response back to the user based on the generated response having achieved the quality threshold (¶ 139).
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 teachings of . The motivation to do so is that the teachings of would have been advantageous in terms of facilitating the automatic determination of form responses (Schmid, ¶ 10).
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 extension fee 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RYAN J JAKOVAC whose telephone number is (571)270-5003. The examiner can normally be reached on 8-4 PM EST. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Oscar A. Louie can be reached on 572-270-1684. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/RYAN J JAKOVAC/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2445
