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 .
Detailed Action
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 6/3/26 has been entered.
In amendments dated 6/3/26, Applicant amended claims 1, 5-7, 19, 23-24, and 30, canceled no claims, and added no new claims. Claims 1-36 are presented for examination.
Examiner notes independent claim 1 recites “adjust, by a chain-of-thought process, a quality score of the particular piece of content for a non-linearity in the particular piece of content caused by a scenario to generate an adjusted quality score for the particular piece of content, wherein the scenario is a situation that reduces the influence of a particular score factor that negatively influences the quality score for the particular piece of content having an article type” and independent claim 19 recited similar subject matter. Examiner found support for this function in Applicant’s specification paragraph 0065 and in PCT/US2024/037653 paragraph 0052, which is a continuation of this application, but Examiner did not find support for this function in application 18/582,111, which is a continuation-in-part of PCT/US2024/037653. Therefore these claims have a priority date of the effective filing date for PCT/US2024/037653, which is 7/11/24.
Objections
Claims 1 and 19 are objected to because of the following informalities:
the third limitation recites “aggregate each score of the plurality of score factors for the particular piece of content and the adjusted particular score factor for the particular piece of content to generate a quality score for the particular piece of content” and “the particular piece of content” lacks antecedent basis;
the fourth limitation recites “adjust, by a chain-of-thought process, a quality score of the particular piece of content for a non-linearity in the particular piece of content caused by a scenario to generate an adjusted quality score for the particular piece of content, wherein the scenario is a situation that reduces the influence of a particular score factor that negatively influences the quality score for the particular piece of content having an article type” or similar subject matter, and the third limitation recites “a quality score for the particular piece of content” and the antecedent basis of “a quality score” in the fourth limitation is unclear;
the fourth limitation also recites “the particular piece of content having an article type” which lacks antecedent basis.
Rejections under 35 U.S.C. 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 1-36 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to mental processes without significantly more. Independent claims 1 and 19 each recites generate a plurality of score factors for each piece of content of the plurality of pieces of content, each score factor having a score representing a confidence score for each type of a different-principle; aggregate each score of the plurality of score factors for the particular piece of content and the adjusted particular score factor for the particular piece of content to generate a quality score for the particular piece of content; and adjust, by a chain-of-thought process, a quality score of the particular piece of content for a non-linearity in the particular piece of content caused by a scenario to generate an adjusted quality score for the particular piece of content, wherein the scenario is a situation that reduces the influence of a particular score factor that negatively influences the quality score for the particular piece of content having an article type. Generating a plurality of score factors, aggregating each score of the plurality of score factors to generate a quality score, and adjusting a quality score are each recited broadly and are mental processes accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Each claim recites additional elements of retrieving a plurality of pieces of content, which is data gathering and insignificant extra-solution activity; storing, for the particular piece of content, the quality score and the score for each of the score factors including the adjusted particular score factor, which is an output step and also insignificant extra-solution activity; and generating a search user interface having at least one piece of content that matches a query and the stored quality score for the at least one piece of content, which is an output step and also insignificant extra-solution activity. Claim 1 recites a computer system having a processor and instructions, which are generic components of a computer system. Examiner notes specification paragraph 0004 states search results are often not the most relevant to a user’s search due to sponsored listings and paragraph 0005 describes search engines as not performing quality checks on results and said results are often biased towards the authors’ view of the results or include contradictions or inconsistencies in a story or the user may not be aware of the poor quality of a story, and it would be desirable to assess the quality of a story and provide that assessment to a user along with the search results. Specification paragraph 0006 says most stories are written with a bias and it would also be desirable to be able to assess the political lean of a story and provide an assessment of the political lean of a story to the user along with the story. Paragraph 0029 describes the invention as addressing these issues by generating a quality assessment and a political lean assessment using machine learning techniques. Paragraph 0030 discuss further technical features of the invention as involving quality scoring and political lean detection for news articles and AI based scoring, and paragraph 0031 describes benefits of the technical solutions such as accuracy improvements for scoring detectors and data augmentation techniques. System latency is decreased and users have increased understanding of search results. Some of these features are not claimed and the claim steps do not recite a particular improvement in any technology or function of a computer per MPEP 2106.04(d) and do not recite any unconventional steps in the invention per MPEP 2106.05(a). Therefore, the recited mental processes are not integrated into a practical application. Taking the claims as a whole, the data gathering step and the output step are each recited broadly and amount to receiving and sending data across a network per figure 1 104 and the communication path in paragraphs 0032-0033, which are routine and conventional activities per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d) part II, and the storing step is routine and conventional activity also per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d) part II. The computer system having a processor and instructions are still generic components of a computer system. Thus the claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the recited mental processes.
Claims 2, 6, 20, and 24 each recites aggregating the plurality of score factors for each piece of content other than the particular piece of content to generate the quality score for each piece of content other than the particular piece of content, and aggregating data is recited broadly and is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper, and storing, for each piece of content other than the particular piece of content, the quality score and the score of each of the plurality of score factors, and storing data is routine and convention per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d). Claims 3, 7, 21, and 25 each recites generating an explanation for the scenario that caused the adjusted particular score factor, and generating data is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Claims 4, 8, 22, and 26 each recites a display that displays the quality score for the particular piece of content and the explanation of the scenario that caused the adjusted particular score factor, and a display is a generically recited component of a computer system and displaying data is recited broadly and amounts to receiving data across a network per figure 1 104 and the communication path in paragraphs 0032-0033, which is routine and convention per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d).
Claims 5 and 23 each recites a search computer system having a processor and a plurality of lines of instructions, which are generic components of a computer system, that are executed by the processor that is configured to: receiving a second search query having one or more query terms, which is recited broadly and amounts to receiving data across a network per figure 1 104 and the communication path in paragraphs 0032-0033, which is routine and convention per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d); retrieving one or more pieces of content including the particular piece of content that match the one or more second query terms, which is recited broadly and amounts to receiving data across a network per figure 1 104 and the communication path in paragraphs 0032-0033, which is routine and convention per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d); retrieving the quality score, the score of each of the plurality of score factors including the adjusted particular score factor from the computer system, which is recited broadly and amounts to receiving data across a network per figure 1 104 and the communication path in paragraphs 0032-0033, which is routine and convention per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d); and generating a search user interface having a summary of the particular piece of content, the quality score and the score of each of the plurality of score factors and the adjusted particular score factor for the particular piece of content, and generating data is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper.
Claims 9 and 27 each recites wherein each score factor is displayed as one of low, medium and high, which is recited broadly and amounts to receiving data across a network per figure 1 104 and the communication path in paragraphs 0032-0033, which is routine and convention per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d). Claims 10 and 28 each recites wherein the plurality of score factors are a source factor, an industry standard factor and a document type factor, and the score factors are data and mental processes accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Claims 11 and 29 each recites wherein the plurality of score factors are a byline factor, a title exaggeration factor, a subjectivity factor, a clickbait factor, a personal attack factor and a lack of site disclosure factor, and the score factors are data and mental processes accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Claims 12 and 30 each recites crawling the plurality of pieces of content, ingesting the crawled plurality of pieces of content and performing machine learning to generate the quality score for each piece of content, and crawling data is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper, ingesting data is recited broadly and amounts to receiving data across a network per figure 1 104 and the communication path in paragraphs 0032-0033, which is routine and convention per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d), and performing machine learning is recited broadly and is not significantly more than the recited mental processes per Recentive Analytics v. Fox Broadcasting Corp. (134 F.4th 1205, 2025 U.S.P.Q.2d 628).
Claims 13 and 31 each recites wherein each score factor is a journalistic principle, and a score factor is data and a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Claims 14 and 32 each recites wherein the plurality of score factors include a source factor, an industry standard factor, a document type factor, a byline factor, a title exaggeration factor, a subjectivity factor, a clickbait factor, a personal attack factor and a site disclosure factor, and the score factors are data and mental processes accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Claims 15 and 33 each recites generating a filter user interface to adjust the quality scoring for each matching piece of content, and generating a filter user interface is generating data and a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Claims 16 and 34 each recites wherein each piece of content is a news piece of content, and content is data and a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper. Claims 17 and 35 each recites Claims 17 and 35 each recites generating, for the particular piece of content, a political lean score indicating a political bias of the particular piece of content, an generating data is a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper, and storing the political lean score for the particular piece of content, and storing data is routine and convention per the list of routine and conventional activities in MPEP 2106.05(d). Claims 18 and 36 each recites generate the quality score for each piece of content using a transformer-based neural network, and generating a score is generating data and a mental process accomplishable in the human mind or on paper, and using a neural network is applying it and not significantly more than the recited mental processes per Recentive Analytics v. Fox Broadcasting Corp. (134 F.4th 1205, 2025 U.S.P.Q.2d 628).
Relevant Prior Art
During his search for prior art, Examiner found the following references to be relevant to Applicant's claimed invention. Each reference is listed on the Notice of References form included in this office action:
Eunice et al (US 20240193137) teaches evaluating data quality by detecting anomalies or other issues in the data using a series of evaluators, aggregating metrics for each type of issue to generate a score, does not teach adjusting the score via a chain of thought process for particular scenarios or a search user interface having at least one piece of content that matches a query and the adjusted quality score (paragraphs 0014, 0029-0032, 0084-0086 figure 1); and
Stanley et al (US 20250378704) teaches unstructured data analysis for extracting insights about content, evaluating documents for quality using grades for various attributes and adjusting a document score based on an attribute, does not teach adjusting the grade/score via a chain of thought process for particular scenarios or a search user interface having at least one piece of content that matches a query and the adjusted quality score (paragraphs 0029, 0035, 0070, 0112, 0231-0239 figure 22).
Responses to Applicant’s Remarks
Regarding objection to claim 5 for antecedent basis of “a search query,” in view of amendments reciting “a second search query,” this objection is withdrawn. Regarding objection to claim 7 for antecedent basis of “the processor,” in view of amendments reciting “the search computer system processor,” this objection is withdrawn. Regarding objection to claim 30 for antecedent basis of “the compute system” in view of amendments reciting “the computer system,” this objection is withdrawn. Regarding rejections of claims 1-36 under 35 U.S.C. 101 for reciting mental processes without significantly more, Applicant’s amendments have been considered but are not persuasive. On pages 9-10 of his Remarks Applicant asserts the claims recite an improvement to the technology of assessment of quality of a piece of content, in particular by reciting “adjust, by a chain-of-thought process, a quality score of the particular piece of content for a non-linearity in the particular piece of content caused by a scenario to generate an adjusted quality score for the particular piece of content, wherein the scenario is a situation that reduces the influence of a particular score factor that negatively influences the quality score for the particular piece of content having an article type” and discusses support for said amendment in specification paragraphs 0038, 0052, and 0073-0082. Examiner disagrees as this limitation is recited broadly and a BRI includes making a adjustment on a piece of paper. The limitation is recited without details showing how the invention adjusts the quality score or generates an adjusted quality score and it does not recite how the invention improves the technology of assessment of quality of a piece of content. The recited adjusting is generically performed by a chain-of-thought process and uses that software and a computer as a tool, and does not limit the claim beyond generally linking the adjusting action to the computer environment per MPEP 2106.04(d)(I).
On page 10 of his Remarks Applicant discusses Step 2B of the Eligibility Analysis and asserts “the combination of software elements (including the score adjustment) result in the inventive concept of generating a quality score for a piece of content in which a scenario may be used to adjust the quality score that is not well known or conventional as disclosed in paragraphs 0052 and 0073 and thus significantly more than any abstract idea …“ Examiner disagrees and showed above how the score adjustment is a mental process. Furthermore the “generate” and “aggregate” limitations are also broad and a BRI for each includes using a physical aid like a piece of paper and thus also recite mental processes. The additional elements recited include retrieving pieces of content, storing the adjusted quality score, and generating a search user interface for output, which are each routine and conventional activities as shown in the rejection above. These additional elements simply recite retrieving data, storing data, and generating an interface with data, and do not make the claim significantly more than the recited mental processes. The combination of these limitations conventionally performs the determination and adjustment of a score that consists of sub-scores.
Inquiry
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to BRUCE M MOSER whose telephone number is (571)270-1718. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9a-5p.
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/BRUCE M MOSER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2154 9/4/26
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