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 .
Contents of this Office Action:
35 U.S.C. 101 rejections
35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejections
Prior art rejections (35 U.S.C. 102 and 35 U.S.C. 103)
Relevant prior art
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 1-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. Based upon consideration of all of the relevant factors with respect to the claims as a whole, claims 1-11 are held to claim an unpatentable abstract idea, and are therefore rejected as ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
The limitations of the independent claims of acquiring sojourner information including information concerning each of a plurality of sojourners in a specific region; classifying the specific region into a plurality of regions corresponding to characteristics of the sojourners based on the sojourner information; providing map information indicating information indicating the characteristics at a position of each of two or more regions among the plurality of regions in the specific region covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting the application of the steps by generic processors and units, nothing is being recited that could not be performed mentally. Claim 1 recites an apparatus in terms of units. It is unclear if module and tool are software or hardware and this forms the basis of the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejection below. Even were these claims considered to be using a processor like claim 11, this is just a generic computing device where the steps are applied on it.
If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the ‘Mental Processes’ grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claim only recites the element of a processing device to perform the listed steps. The processing device in all steps is recited at a high-level of generality such that it amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, this additional element does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element of using a processing device to perform the listed steps amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. The claim is not patent eligible.
Turning to the dependent claims, all dependent claims either recite further acquiring, classifying, or providing information, or defining pieces of data like a predetermined condition. As such, they are rejected for the same reasons as the steps in the independent claims above.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim limitation “an acquisition unit”, “a classification unit”, and a “provision unit” has been evaluated under the three-prong test set forth in MPEP § 2181, subsection I, but the result is inconclusive. Thus, it is unclear whether this limitation should be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because they are part of a system claim and written in means plus function format. It is unclear based on the Specification whether these are hardware, software, or both. The boundaries of this claim limitation are ambiguous; therefore, the claim is indefinite and is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, second paragraph.
In response to this rejection, applicant must clarify whether this limitation should be interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph. Mere assertion regarding applicant’s intent to invoke or not invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph is insufficient. Applicant may:
(a) Amend the claim to clearly invoke 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, by reciting “means” or a generic placeholder for means, or by reciting “step.” The “means,” generic placeholder, or “step” must be modified by functional language, and must not be modified by sufficient structure, material, or acts for performing the claimed function;
(b) Present a sufficient showing that 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, should apply because the claim limitation recites a function to be performed and does not recite sufficient structure, material, or acts to perform that function;
(c) Amend the claim to clearly avoid invoking 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, by deleting the function or by reciting sufficient structure, material or acts to perform the recited function; or
(d) Present a sufficient showing that 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, does not apply because the limitation does not recite a function or does recite a function along with sufficient structure, material or acts to perform that function.
This rejection applies to claim 1 and all its dependent claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-7 and 9-11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Kaufmann (See PTO-892 for citation), 2019.
Regarding claims 1 and 10, and 11, Kaufmann discloses an apparatus, method, and non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing an information processing program (Abstract discloses We contribute a system design and a generalized formal methodology to segment tourists based on their geolocated blogging behavior according to their interests in identified tourist hotspots. Thus, it is possible to identify and target groups that are possibly interested in alternative destinations to relieve overtourism) for causing a computer to execute:
an acquiring procedure of acquiring sojourner information including information concerning each of a plurality of sojourners in a specific region (Page 7, P1 discloses The method for data collection, storage, visualization and analysis can be explained by the following system design components, whose numbers correspond to those illustrated in Figure 2. (1) As discussed before, data about locations (places and POIs), user profiles and users’ reviews of locations were crawled from the Qyer microblog. (2) For this, a Python application was developed to interpret the semi-structured information in the HTML code of the website using the API Scrapy to transform the text of the web pages into structured key value pairs in Java Object Notation (JSON) format. Every data record represents information about a particular review, including POI, place, user ID, user attributes, the contents of the user reviews and the geographical coordinates of the POIs (geographical coordinates with latitudinal and longitudinal degrees) available publicly in the HTMLsource.);
a classification procedure of classifying the specific region into a plurality of regions corresponding to characteristics of the sojourners based on the sojourner information acquired by the acquiring procedure (Page 6, P1 discloses the geographically tagged, user-generated points of interest (POIs) with associated comments facilitate an in-depth view of the traveler’s experience. See also limitation above); and
a provision procedure of providing map information indicating information indicating the characteristics at a position of each of two or more regions among the plurality of regions in the specific region (Page 7, P1 also discloses a heat map. See further Fig. 5 for a map with distinct regions).
Regarding claim 2, Kaufmann discloses:
the acquisition unit acquires, as the sojourner information, information including sojourn position information indicating a sojourn position of each of the plurality of sojourners and action information indicating an action of each of the plurality of sojourners (As above, Page 7, P1 discloses coordinate information and actions such as blogging or moving); and
the classification unit classifies the specific region in a plurality of regions corresponding to characteristics of actions of the sojourners based on the sojourner information acquired by the acquisition unit (See Fig. 5).
Regarding claim 3, Kaufmann discloses:
the acquisition unit acquires, as the sojourner information, information including sojourn position information indicating a sojourn position of each of the plurality of sojourners (See above) and a plurality of pieces of worry information indicating a worry of each of the plurality of sojourners (The term “worry” is very broad and can mean simply the worry about producing a blog post, which is addressed above);
the classification unit classifies the specific region in a plurality of regions corresponding to characteristics of the worries of the sojourner based on the sojourner information acquired by the acquisition unit (As discussed in the rejection to claim 1, the segmentation is based on geographic locations and blog posts. Page 5, P2 also discloses categorizing areas based on activities).
Regarding claim 4, Kaufmann discloses:
the provision unit provides map information indicating information indicating the characteristics at a position of each of two or more regions satisfying a predetermined condition among a plurality of regions (See Fig. 5 as well as Page 7, P1).
Regarding claims 5-7, Kaufmann discloses:
the predetermined condition is a condition that a size is equal to or larger than a predetermined size (As shown in Fig. 5, the size is the area of Lucerne. That is, the predetermined size is the size of Lucerne);
the predetermined condition is a condition that the characteristic is a predetermined characteristic (As above, the characteristic is blog activity);
the predetermined condition is a condition that a number of the sojourners is equal to or larger than a predetermined number (As discussed above, in Page 7, P1, as well as Page 5, P2, the heatmap represents blog activities and tourist hotspot detection. As such, the predetermined number is 0 and to be represented the number of people has to be greater than 0).
Regarding claim 9, as discussed at length above, the Kaufmann reference is directed to tourists who are visiting specific places.
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) 8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kaufmann
Regarding claim 8, Kaufmann does not specifically disclose that the sojourners are residents and have a place of residence. However, as discussed above, and in the rejection to claim 9, the people are tourists and are visiting specific places. Whether the person is a resident of a place or a visitor, and the place is a residence as opposed to a visiting spot, does not change any of the functional steps of the claim limitations. Every acquisition, classification, and provision step is performed in the exact same way whether the person is a resident, visitor, or other. Every acquisition, classification, and provision step is performed in the exact same way whether the specific place is a visiting place or a place of residence, or any other place not claimed.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to substitute a resident and residence for a visitor and visiting place to achieve the same results.
Relevant Prior Art
US10909606B2 which is directed to user behaviors are monitored, by machine logic, during a visit to a venue by a user, the user behaviors associated with user interactions with items in the venue, a location of the items being tracked. In real-time, based, at least in part, on the user behaviors and the items, a subsequent behavior of the user is predicted, by machine logic, the predicting resulting in predicted behavior(s). Cognitive recommendations are provided, by machine logic, to the user in real-time during the visit, the cognitive recommendations corresponding to additional item(s) based, at least in part, on the predicted behaviors and the items. Machine learning is used to train a system for facilitating the noted aspects, as well as to update training.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ARYAN E WEISENFELD whose telephone number is (571)272-6602. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Angela Ortiz can be reached at 5712721206. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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ARYAN E. WEISENFELD
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 3689
/ARYAN E WEISENFELD/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3663
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