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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. JP 2024-034158, filed on March 6, 2024.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted February 3, 2025 was filed before the mailing date of this non-final rejection. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Specification Objection
The specification is objected to because the title of the invention is not descriptive. A new title is required that is clearly indicative of the invention to which the claims are directed. Examiner suggests “Information Processing Apparatus, Information Processing method, and Storage Medium for Bipartite Graphs”. Appropriate correction is required.
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 1-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1
Claims 1-11 recite an apparatus (comprising a processor) (i.e., a machine), claim 12 recites a method (i.e., process), and claim 13 recites a non-transitory computer readable medium (i.e., a machine). Therefore, the claims all fall within one of the four statutory categories of invention.
Step 2A, Prong One
Claims 1, 12, and 13 recite acquiring graph data in which a plurality of subjects is represented by nodes for each of two or more categories, and a relationship between the subjects is represented by an edge connecting the nodes; generating additional graph data in which one or more personas having representative features of the subjects are added to the graph data as the nodes; extracting subject representations and persona representations from the additional graph data, using a model for extracting representations; calculating a first loss depending on a difference between a similarity between nodes connected by the edge and a similarity between nodes not connected by the edge, using the subject representations and the persona representations; calculating a second loss depending on a difference between a similarity between a node of the subject and a node connected to the node of the subject, and a similarity between a node of the persona and a node connected to the node of the persona, using the subject representations and the persona representations; and updating the model, using the first loss and the second loss.
The claim as a whole recites a certain method of organizing human activity. The limitations recited above, under broadest reasonable interpretation, recite the abstract idea of a certain method of organizing human activity, e.g., commercial interactions or fundamental economic practices, or managing personal behavior or interactions between people. Therefore, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Step 2A, Prong Two
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. Claim 12 does not recite any additional elements and is therefore directed to the abstract idea.
Claims 1 and 13 as a whole amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components. See MPEP 2106.05(f).
Claim 1 recites the additional element: (i) an information processing apparatus comprising a processor; and claim 13 recites the additional element: (ii) a non-transitory computer readable medium including computer executable instructions, wherein the instructions, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform a method.
The above additional elements of: (i) and (ii) are recited at a high-level of generality such that, when viewed as whole/ordered combination, they both amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components. See MPEP 2106.05(f).
Accordingly, these additional elements, when viewed as a whole/ordered combination (See Figs. 1 and 8) do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Thus, claims 1 and 13 are directed to an abstract idea, and claim 12 is directed to an abstract idea (for the reasoning discussed above).
Step 2B
As discussed above with respect to Step 2A Prong Two, claim 12 does not recite any additional elements. Therefore, nothing in claim 12 adds significantly more (i.e., an inventive concept) to the abstract idea and is therefore ineligible.
Additionally, as discussed above with respect to Step 2A Prong Two, the additional elements of claims 1 and 13 amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components. The same analysis applies here in 2B, i.e., mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components, does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application at Step 2A or provide an inventive concept at Step 2B.
Therefore, the additional elements discussed above do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application at Step 2A or provide an inventive concept at Step 2B. Thus, even when viewed as a whole/ordered combination, nothing in the claims add significantly more (i.e., an inventive concept) to the abstract idea. Thus, claims 1 and 13 are also ineligible.
Dependent claims 2-11 further recite details which merely narrow the previously recited abstract idea limitiaitions. For these reasons, as described above with respect to claim 1, these judicial exceptions are not meaningfully integrated into a practical application or significantly more than the abstract idea. Thus, claims 2-11 are also ineligible.
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 1-13 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 the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The term “a similarity” (between nodes connected by the edge; between nodes not connected by the edge; between a node of the subject and a node connected to the node of the subject; between a node of the persona and a node connected to the node of the persona) in claims 1, 12 and 13 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “a similarity” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. Paragraphs [0030]-[0035] of the PG Publication disclose Expression (1) determining the recommendation loss LCF with the following expression, and Expression (2) determining the comparison loss LPS
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While Paragraph [0031] explains that “y (u, i) represents the similarity in representations between the node related to the first subject and the node of the second subject to which the edge is connected” and “y (up, j) represents the similarity in representations between the persona node related to the persona of the first subject and the node of the second subject to which any edge is not connected”, nothing in the specification explains how to determine similarity y (u, i) or similarity y (up, j) (emphasis added). Therefore, “similarity” is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite Claims 2-11 are rejected by virtue of dependency.
Allowable over the Prior Art
Claims 1-13 are allowable over the prior art because the prior art fails to teach or suggest, “calculating a first loss depending on a difference between a similarity between nodes connected by the edge and a similarity between nodes not connected by the edge, using the subject representations and the persona representations; calculating a second loss depending on a difference between a similarity between a node of the subject and a node connected to the node of the subject, and a similarity between a node of the persona and a node connected to the node of the persona, using the subject representations and the persona representations; and updating the model, using the first loss and the second loss” as recited in the entirety of the independent claims.
The closest prior art for the independent claims includes:
WO2025/170581 to Carbune et al. (hereinafter “Carbune”). Carbune discloses generating a group persona by generating a plurality of persona candidates and inter-persona dynamics for the persona candidates based on a description of desired characteristics for the group persona.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0035002 to Epasto et al. (hereinafter “Epasto”). Epasto discloses receive data describing a first graph, and for each node, of one or more nodes, of the first graph, determine, based at least in part on data describing a second graph, and for each of multiple nodes of the second graph corresponding to the node of the first graph, a representation of a role of the node of the multiple nodes in a community to which the node of the multiple nodes belongs.
CN115470379 to Xu et al. (hereinafter “Xu”). Xu discloses acquiring user original data, and generating a user relation graph according to the user original data. The user relationship graph is constructed by a plurality of user nodes and a plurality of relationship edges, each relationship edge is connected with two user nodes, and corresponding relationship strength is set. At least one relationship path between a first user node and a second user node is determined according to the user relationship graph; and a corresponding candidate relation data is determined based on a comparison result between a plurality of relation strengths corresponding to a plurality of relation edges included in each relation path.
JP-2022082523 to Song (hereinafter “Song”). Song discloses providing information about machine learning based similar items by receiving information about a target item; generating a target vector based on a character string corresponding to the information about the target item using a machine learning model; checking at least one vector set respectively corresponding to a plurality of items derived through the machine learning model; and providing information about at least one item corresponding to at least one vector having a similarity value with the generated target vector greater than or equal to a preset critical value in the at least one vector set.
“Incorporating Similarity Measures to Optimize Graph Convolutional Neural Networks for Product Recommendation” by Shafqat et al., dated 2021 (hereinafter “Shafqat”). Shafqat discloses a model that incorporates measures of similarity between two different nodes, and these similarity measures help to sample the neighbors beforehand. The similarity is estimated based on their interaction probability distribution with other nodes. A KL divergence is used on different probability distributions to find the distance between them.
None of the prior references cited herein teach or suggest the above discussed limitations in combination with the other claim language in the independent claims.
Prior Art
The following prior art, made of record and not relied upon, is considered pertinent to Applicant’s disclosure:
“PersonaSAGE: A Multi-Persona Graph Neural Network” by Choudhary et al., dated 2023 (hereinafter “Chouduary”). Chouduary discloses develop a persona based graph neural network framework called PersonaSAGE that learns multiple persona-based embeddings for each node in the graph.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Rupangini Singh whose telephone number is 571-270-0192. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday – Friday, 9:30 AM – 6:30 PM.
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/RUPANGINI SINGH/
Examiner, Art Unit 3628
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