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 .
This communication is responsive to the application filed on 1/16/2025.
Claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Remarks
Claim 1 recites the newly added term “processor”. According to Applicant’s specification, (par. [0015]), states that “the term 'processor' or the like refers to one or more devices, circuits, and/or processing cores suitable”. Therefore, the processor as recited in the claim is a hardware.
Applicants' arguments with respect to the amended claims have been considered in view of the new ground(s) of rejection necessitated by amendment. Please refer the rejection below.
Claim Objection
Claim 11 is objected to because of the following informality: Claim 11 recites the newly added terms “an LLM”. The first occurrence of all acronyms in the claims should be defined. Applicant is suggested to change the acronym “an LLM” to “an large language model (LLM)”. Correction is suggested.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract without significantly more.
Claims 1 and 11:
Step 1: Statutory Category
The claims 1 and 11 are directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention, i.e., process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.
Step 2A, Prong One: Judicial Exception Recited
The limitations “generating …; comparing …; generating …; classifying…; and analyze…” are processes that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers a mental process as a form of evaluation or judgement, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting “generating …; comparing …; generating …; classifying…; and analyze…”, nothing in the claim element precludes the steps from practically being performed in a human mind.
If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers mental processes but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the "Mental Processes" grouping of abstract ideas (concepts performed in the human mind including an observation, evaluation, judgement, and opinion). Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
Step 2A, Prong Two: Integrated into a Practical Application
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claims recite the following additional elements:
"a computing system” is a high-level recitation of a generic computer components and represents mere instructions to apply on a computer as in MPEP 2106.05(f), which does not provide integration into a practical application.
“detecting at least…; managing…a storage device” is recited at a high level of generality such that they amount to on more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic component. (see MPEP 2106.05(f)). These limitations can also be viewed as nothing more than an attempt to generally link the use of the judicial exception to the technological environment of a computer (see MPEP 2106.05(h)). Note, the mere instructions to apply an exception on a generic computer cannot integrate a judicial exception into a practical application.
“processor” is recited at a high level of generality such that they amount to on more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic component. (see MPEP 2106.05(f)).
The independent claim 11 does not include additional elements that is sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
Step 2B: Claim provides an Inventive Concept
The conclusion for the mere implementation using storage device is carried over and does not provide significantly more.
With respect to “detecting at least…; managing…a storage device” amount to elements that have been recognized as well-understood, routine, and conventional activity in particular fields, as demonstrate by: Relevant court decision: the followings are examples of court decisions demonstrating well-understood, routine and conventional activities, see e.g., MPEP 2106.05(d)(II) and MPEP 2106.05(f)(2): Computer readable storage media comprising instructions to implement a method, e.g., see Versata Dev. Group, Inc. v. SAP Am., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306, 1334, 115 USPQ2d 1681, 1701 (Fed. Cir. 2015).
“processor”, amount to elements that have been recognized as well-understood, routine, and conventional activity in particular fields, as demonstrate by: relevant court decision: the followings are example of the court decisions demonstrating well-understood, routine and conventional activities, See e.g., MPEP 2106.05(d)(II) and MPEP 2106.05(f)(2): computer readable storage media comprising instructions to implement a method, e.g., see versata Dev. Group, Inc. v SAP Am., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306, 1334, 115 USPQ2d 1681, 1701 (Fed. Cir. 2015).
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements when considered both individually and as an ordered combination do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Looking at the claims as a whole does not change this conclusion and the claim appears to be ineligible. Accordingly, claims 1 and 11 are directed to an abstract idea.
Claims 12-18 and 20, recite the elements are process that under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers a mental process as a form of evaluation or judgement, but for the recitation of generic computer components. There are no additional elements recited which tie the abstract idea into a practical application and does not amount to significant more than the identified judicial exception.
Claim 19, recites additional element at a high level of generality and would function in its ordinary capacity for storing the first vectors and the second vectors, this additional element does not integrate the integrate the judicial exception into a practical application and does not amount to significantly more.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which applicant regards as the invention.
Claims 1 and 11 recite the newly added limitation “analyze a remaining part of the second version of the technical document to detect at least one new required characteristic”. The underlined features render the claim indefinite. This is not supported by the Applicant’s specification. It's unclear that Applicant meant by a remaining part of the second version. Applicant is required for clarification is required.
Claims 2-10 and 12-20 are dependent on claims 1 and 11. Therefore, they are rejected under the same rejection as claims 1 and 11 above.
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 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Harada (US 20210174013), hereinafter “Harada”, in view of Otani (WO2024203786A1), hereinafter “Otani”, in further view of Goyal et al. (US 2018/0285326 A1), hereinafter “Goyal”.
As per claim 1, Harada discloses a system for managing a technical document for a storage device, the system comprising:
- receive parts selected from a first version of the technical document, which have a target characteristic, and parts from a second version of the technical document newer than the first version of the technical document, and generate first vectors for the selected parts from the first version of the technical document and second vectors for the received parts from the second version of the technical document based on semantics (par. [0141], a difference between two versions (old version and new version) of a document element is regarded as one of characteristics of the document element, and the relation between document elements is determined based on a similarity between the differences, wherein a similarity between a difference between two versions (old version and new version) of a certain document element A and a difference between two versions (old version and new version) of another document element B is referred to as a difference similarity below);
- a comparator, implemented by at least one processor, configured to compare each of the second vectors with the first vectors to find a closest first vector (par. [0074] and [0112], (par. [0074] and [0112], comparing the element content or the content characteristic of the document element obtained in S12 with the element content or the content characteristic of the document element in the database having the identical element ID); and
- a classifier, implemented by at least one processor, configured to classify each of the parts from the second version of the technical document based on the similarity metric and text values of the parts from the second version (par. [0079] and [0117], the types of relation between document elements are classified into several types in accordance with the magnitude of the similarity of the content between the document elements and adding a document element and nodes of document elements A, B, C, D, X, and Y to the graph and changing the relation between the document elements from “reference” to “similar”, wherein the similarity has a higher similarity of the content between the document elements than similarity of “reference).
Even though Harada teaches a learning system for causing the AI to perform learning to perform a processing procedure (par. [0147]-[0149]). However, Harada fails to disclose the limitation “a large language model (LLM)”
Meanwhile, Otani discloses a large language model (LLM), implemented by at least one processor (page 4, par. [4], "generative AI model" refers to a large-scale language model (LLM) trained).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the system of Harada to use a large-scale language model (LLM), in order to allow users to handle complex, time-consuming tasks quickly, thereby enabling users to handle complex, domain-specific queries.
However, the combination of Harada and Otani does not disclose “analyze a remaining part of the second version of the technical document to detect at least one new required characteristic”.
Meanwhile, Goyal discloses analyze a remaining part of the second version of the technical document to detect at least one new required characteristic (par. [0062], the document-comparison system applies a deterministic classification algorithm to mapped-sentence combinations to identify one or more changes between sentences of a first version and sentences of a second version as factual changes or paraphrasing changes; par. [0110], the document-comparison system generates a composite-importance score for each revised sentence within a chapter, section, paragraph, or other portion of a second version of a document; and par. [0064]-[0065], the document-comparison system identifies named entities as a basis for detecting factual changes or paraphrasing changes…detecting changes between sentences of mapped-sentence combinations... deterministic classification algorithm to identify a POS sequence representing each sentence within a first version and each sentence within a second version).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the systems of cited references to include the features as disclosed by Goyal in order to identify types of changes and specify types of changes made between versions to provide a more accurate, flexible, and efficient way to review document changes.
As per claim 2, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses technical document includes at least one or more of a specification, a manual, a user guide and a standard, which are each associated with the storage device (par. [0039], standard documents).
As per claim 3, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses the target characteristic includes at least one or more of design requirements, algorithms, test sequences, and particular parameters (par. [0172] and [0193], the document element of the document “test plan.docx” is text data, but the document element of the document “test result.xlsx” is tabular data. Although there are differences in the format, the information contents represented by the two document elements are very similar, and the design document creation workflow requirement (first draft creation, primary approval, and final approval)).
As per claim 4, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses each part from the first and second versions of the technical document includes at least one or more of sentences, paragraphs, sections, and chapters of the technical document (par. [0056], a structure analysis is performed using a known technology of recognizing the structure of a heading, a chapter, a section, a paragraph, or the like from the document content).
As per claim 5, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses when the similarity metric indicates that each second vector is the same as the closest first vector, the classifier classifies a corresponding part from the second version of the technical document as a first class (par. [0079] and [0117], the types of relation between document elements are classified into several types in accordance with the magnitude of the similarity of the content between the document elements and adding a document element and nodes of document elements A, B, C, D, X, and Y to the graph and changing the relation between the document elements from “reference” to “similar”, wherein “similar” has a higher similarity of the content between the document elements than similarity of “reference, wherein in a case where the similarity of the content between the document elements is equal to or greater than 0.95 (that is, 95%), the type of relation between the document elements is named “citation”, the type of relation in a case where the similarity of the content between the document elements is equal to or greater than 0.80 and smaller than 0.95 is named “similar”, in a case where the similarity is equal to or greater than 0.60 and smaller than 0.80, the type of relation is named “reference” and in a case where the similarity is smaller than 0.60, the two document elements are determined to be unrelated), and when the similarity metric is greater than a threshold value, the classifier classifies a corresponding part from the second version of the technical document as a second class (par. [0079] and [0117], the types of relation between document elements are classified into several types in accordance with the magnitude of the similarity of the content between the document elements and adding a document element and nodes of document elements A, B, C, D, X, and Y to the graph and changing the relation between the document elements from “reference” to “similar”, wherein “similar” has a higher similarity of the content between the document elements than similarity of “reference, wherein in a case where the similarity of the content between the document elements is equal to or greater than 0.95 (that is, 95%), the type of relation between the document elements is named “citation”, the type of relation in a case where the similarity of the content between the document elements is equal to or greater than 0.80 and smaller than 0.95 is named “similar”, in a case where the similarity is equal to or greater than 0.60 and smaller than 0.80, the type of relation is named “reference” and in a case where the similarity is smaller than 0.60, the two document elements are determined to be unrelated).
As per claim 6, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses when the similarity metric is less than or equal to the threshold value, the classifier is further configured to determine whether a corresponding part from the second version of the technical document has the target characteristic (par. [0112], [0141] and [0150]-[0162], the content characteristic, the last updater, the update date and time, and the like of the element property of the target element in the database and the document characteristic, the last updater, the update date and time, and the like of the document property of the document including the target element are also updated).
As per claim 7, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses when the similarity metric is less than or equal to the threshold value and the corresponding part from the second version of the technical document has the target characteristic, the classifier classifies the corresponding part from the second version of the technical document as a third class (par. [0043] and [0154], even though the design document A is created based on a certain part of the law, various methods of depending on the part are provided, there is a case where a section of the law is cited in the design document A by copying the section itself, and there is a case where coincidence of terms between the relevant part of the law and a part of the design document A can be found just by describing the part of the design document A while checking the relevant part of the law. In the former case, necessity to revise the cited part in the design document A by the section of the law being revised is high and the degree of necessity for a response of the design document A to the revision of the relevant part of the law is lower than the degree of necessity in the former case), and
when the similarity metric is less than or equal to the threshold value and the corresponding part from the second version of the technical document does not have the target characteristic, the classifier classifies the corresponding part from the second version of the technical document as a fourth class (par. [0043] and [0154], even though the design document A is created based on a certain part of the law, various methods of depending on the part are provided, there is a case where a section of the law is cited in the design document A by copying the section itself, and there is a case where coincidence of terms between the relevant part of the law and a part of the design document A can be found just by describing the part of the design document A while checking the relevant part of the law. In the former case, necessity to revise the cited part in the design document A by the section of the law being revised is high and the degree of necessity for a response of the design document A to the revision of the relevant part of the law is lower than the degree of necessity in the former case).
As per claim 8, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses each of the first and the second vectors includes an embedding vector (par. [0060]-[0062], similarity between the obtained vectors of the document element).
As per claim 9, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses a storage configured to store the first vectors and the second vectors (par. [0062], similarity between the vectors of the text strings indicating the characteristics of the documents obtained in this manner is obtained as the similarity between the documents).
As per claim 10, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses an additional classifier configured to determine whether each of the received parts from the first version of the technical document has the target characteristic (par. [0062] and [0112], examines whether or not a document element (referred to as a target element) having a relation of “citation” to the changed document element (referred to as a changed element) is provided among document elements extracted, where the target element is provided, the processor updates the element content of the target element in the database in the document service system and the document in the document management system that manages the document including the target element, so as to match with the changed content of the changed element and with this update, the content characteristic, the last updater, the update date and time, and the like of the element property of the target element in the database and the document characteristic, the last updater, the update date and time, and the like of the document property of the document including the target element are also updated).
As per claim 11, Harada discloses a method for managing a technical document for a storage device, the method comprising:
- generating first vectors for parts selected from a first version of the technical document, which have a target characteristic, and second vectors for parts received from a second version of the technical document based on semantics, the second version of the technical document newer than the first version of the technical document (par. [0141], a difference between two versions (old version and new version) of a document element is regarded as one of characteristics of the document element, and the relation between document elements is determined based on a similarity between the differences, wherein a similarity between a difference between two versions (old version and new version) of a certain document element A and a difference between two versions (old version and new version) of another document element B is referred to as a difference similarity below);
- comparing each of the second vectors with the first vectors to find a closest first vector (par. [0074] and [0112], comparing the element content or the content characteristic of the document element obtained in S12 with the element content or the content characteristic of the document element in the database having the identical element ID);
- generating a similarity metric between each of the second vectors and the closest first vector (par. [0074] and [0112], examines whether or not a document element (referred to as a target element) having a relation of “citation” to the changed document element (referred to as a changed element, updates the element content of the target element in the database in the document service system 100 and the document in the document management system that manages the document including the target element, so as to match with the changed content of the changed element), and generate a similarity metric between each of the second vectors and the closest first vector (par. [0062], [0112] and [0154], calculate both the content similarity between the two document elements in the old version and the content similarity between the two document elements in the new version, and determine the content similarity based on the two content similarities, obtains an average value of the content similarity between the document elements in the old version and the content similarity in the new version, or a weighted average value focusing on the new version, as the content similarity between the two document elements); and
- classifying each of the parts from the second version of the technical document based on the similarity metric and text values of the parts from the second version (par. [0079] and [0117], the types of relation between document elements are classified into several types in accordance with the magnitude of the similarity of the content between the document elements and adding a document element and nodes of document elements A, B, C, D, X, and Y to the graph and changing the relation between the document elements from “reference” to “similar”, wherein the similarity has a higher similarity of the content between the document elements than similarity of “reference).
However, Harada does not disclose “an LLM”
Meanwhile, Otani discloses a large language model (LLM), implemented by at least one processor (page 4, par. [4], "generative AI model" refers to a large-scale language model (LLM) trained).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the system of Harada to use a large-scale language model (LLM), in order to allow users to handle complex, time-consuming tasks quickly, thereby enabling users to handle complex, domain-specific queries.
However, the combination of Harada and Otani does not disclose “analyze a remaining part of the second version of the technical document to detect at least one new required characteristic”.
Meanwhile, Goyal discloses analyze a remaining part of the second version of the technical document to detect at least one new required characteristic (par. [0062], the document-comparison system applies a deterministic classification algorithm to mapped-sentence combinations to identify one or more changes between sentences of a first version and sentences of a second version as factual changes or paraphrasing changes; par. [0110], the document-comparison system generates a composite-importance score for each revised sentence within a chapter, section, paragraph, or other portion of a second version of a document; and par. [0064]-[0065], the document-comparison system identifies named entities as a basis for detecting factual changes or paraphrasing changes…detecting changes between sentences of mapped-sentence combinations... deterministic classification algorithm to identify a POS sequence representing each sentence within a first version and each sentence within a second version).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the systems of cited references to include the features as disclosed by Goyal in order to identify types of changes and specify types of changes made between versions to provide a more accurate, flexible, and efficient way to review document changes.
As per claim 12, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses the technical document includes at least one or more of a specification, a manual, a user guide and a standard, which are each associated with the storage device (par. [0039], standard documents).
As per claim 13, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses the target characteristic includes at least one or more of design requirements, algorithms, test sequences, and particular parameters (par. [0172] and [0193], the document element of the document “test plan.docx” is text data, but the document element of the document “test result.xlsx” is tabular data. Although there are differences in the format, the information contents represented by the two document elements are very similar, and the design document creation workflow requirement (first draft creation, primary approval, and final approval).
As per claim 14, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses each part from the first and second versions of the technical document includes at least one or more of sentences, paragraphs, sections, and chapters of the technical document (par. [0056], a structure analysis is performed using a known technology of recognizing the structure of a heading, a chapter, a section, a paragraph, or the like from the document content).
As per claim 15, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses the classifying each of the parts from the second version of the technical document includes:
classifying a corresponding part from the second version of the technical document as a first class when the similarity metric indicates that each second vector is the same as the closest first vector (par. [0079] and [0117], the types of relation between document elements are classified into several types in accordance with the magnitude of the similarity of the content between the document elements and adding a document element and nodes of document elements A, B, C, D, X, and Y to the graph and changing the relation between the document elements from “reference” to “similar”, wherein the similarity has a higher similarity of the content between the document elements than similarity of “reference), and
classifying a corresponding part from the second version of the technical document as a second class when the similarity metric is greater than a threshold value (par. [0079] and [0117], the types of relation between document elements are classified into several types in accordance with the magnitude of the similarity of the content between the document elements and adding a document element and nodes of document elements A, B, C, D, X, and Y to the graph and changing the relation between the document elements from “reference” to “similar”, wherein “similar” has a higher similarity of the content between the document elements than similarity of “reference, wherein in a case where the similarity of the content between the document elements is equal to or greater than 0.95 (that is, 95%), the type of relation between the document elements is named “citation”, the type of relation in a case where the similarity of the content between the document elements is equal to or greater than 0.80 and smaller than 0.95 is named “similar”, in a case where the similarity is equal to or greater than 0.60 and smaller than 0.80, the type of relation is named “reference” and in a case where the similarity is smaller than 0.60, the two document elements are determined to be unrelated).
As per claim 16, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses the classifying each of the parts from the second version of the technical document further includes: determining whether a corresponding part from the second version of the technical document has the target characteristic when the similarity metric is less than or equal to the threshold value (par. [0112], [0141] and [0150]-[0162], the content characteristic, the last updater, the update date and time, and the like of the element property of the target element in the database and the document characteristic, the last updater, the update date and time, and the like of the document property of the document including the target element are also updated).
As per claim 17, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses the classifying each of the parts from the second version of the technical document further includes:
classifying the corresponding part from the second version of the technical document as a third class when the similarity metric is less than or equal to the threshold value and the corresponding part from the second version of the technical document has the target characteristic (par. [0079], the types of relation between document elements are classified into several types in accordance with the magnitude of the similarity of the content between the document elements), and
classifying the corresponding part from the second version of the technical document as a fourth class when the similarity metric is less than or equal to the threshold value and the corresponding part from the second version of the technical document does not have the target characteristic (par. [0043] and [0154], even though the design document A is created based on a certain part of the law, various methods of depending on the part are provided, there is a case where a section of the law is cited in the design document A by copying the section itself, and there is a case where coincidence of terms between the relevant part of the law and a part of the design document A can be found just by describing the part of the design document A while checking the relevant part of the law. In the former case, necessity to revise the cited part in the design document A by the section of the law being revised is high and the degree of necessity for a response of the design document A to the revision of the relevant part of the law is lower than the degree of necessity in the former case).
As per claim 18, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses each of the first and the second vectors includes an embedding vector (par. [0060]-[0062], similarity between the obtained vectors of the document element).
As per claim 19, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses storing, in a storage, the first vectors and the second vectors (par. [0062] and [0152], the contents of Version 1 and Version 2 of a document element in a document having a file name of “test plan.docx”, wherein a lower limit value “0.01” of a criterion value of methyl mercaptan is changed to “0.004”, and an upper limit value “0.10” is changed to “0.01”, between both the two versions, thereby, the difference data between both the two versions refers to two pairs being a pair of “0.01” in the old version and “0.004” in the new version and a pair of “0.10” in the old version and “0.01” in the new version and stores the two pairs, as difference data).
As per claim 20, the combination of Harada, Otani and Goyal discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Harada discloses determining whether each of the received parts from the first version of the technical document has the target characteristic (par. [0062] and [0112], examines whether or not a document element (referred to as a target element) having a relation of “citation” to the changed document element (referred to as a changed element) is provided among document elements extracted, where the target element is provided, the processor updates the element content of the target element in the database in the document service system and the document in the document management system that manages the document including the target element, so as to match with the changed content of the changed element and with this update, the content characteristic, the last updater, the update date and time, and the like of the element property of the target element in the database and the document characteristic, the last updater, the update date and time, and the like of the document property of the document including the target element are also updated).
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 date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LOAN T NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)-270-3103. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday from 10:00 am - 6:00 pm, Thursday-Friday from 10:00 am - 2:00 pm. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Aleksandr Kerzhner can be reached on (571) 270-1760. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-270-4103. Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/LOAN T NGUYEN/Examiner, Art Unit 2165 /ALEKSANDR KERZHNER/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2165
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