DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to the Application filed on 06 February 2025. Claims 1-20 are pending and have been examined.
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 .
Claim Objections
Claims 1, 8, and 15 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1, lines 3-4, should be “on behalf of each of the plurality of public figure users,”
Claims 8 and 15 are objected to for similar reasons to claim 1.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. All of the claims are method claims (1-7), apparatus/machine claims (8-20) or manufacture claim under (Step 1), but under Step 2A all of these claims recite abstract ideas and specifically mental processes. These mental processes are more particularly recited in claims 1, 8, and 15 as:
creating general instructions providing guidelines in generating the personalized auto responses…
generating, based on the relevant information associated with the public figure user, personalized instructions in creating the personalized responses on behalf of the public figure user…
creating a prompt based on the general instructions, the personalized instructions, and information about the incoming communication…
generating, automatically via large language models (LLMs) based on the prompt, a personalized auto response…
Under Step 2A Prong One, claims 1, 8, and 15 are directed to an abstract idea and specifically a mental process. As detailed above, the steps of generating, creating, etc. may be practically performed in the human mind with the use of a physical aid such as a pen and paper. For example, a human ghostwriter could represent a plurality of public figures, receive a generic template from their manager related to how they should perform ghostwriting, fill out the template with fan and celebrity information to generate a personalized template, create a prompt based on the generic template, personalized template, and fan information, and write a ghostwritten message based on the prompt for response to fan communication.
Under Step 2A Prong Two, this judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because claims 1-20 do not recite additional elements that integrate the exception into a practical application. In particular, claims 1, 8, and 15 recite the additional elements of a large language model (¶ [0007]), a processor (¶ [0054]), and machine readable and non-transitory medium (¶ [0054]). These additional elements are recited at a high level of generality and merely equate to “apply it” or otherwise merely uses a generic computer as a tool to perform an abstract which are not indicative of integration into a practical application as per MPEP 2106.05(f). Further, claims 1, 8, and 15 recite the additional elements of “signing up…”, “obtaining…”, “receiving…” and “delivering…”, all of which amount to insignificant extra-solution activities which are not indicative of integration into a practical application as per MPEP 2106.05(g). Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Under Step 2B, the claims do not recite additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to the integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of using a computer is noted as a general computer {processor (¶ [0054]); machine readable and non-transitory medium (¶ [0054])}. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. Further, the additional limitations in the claims noted above are directed towards insignificant extra-solution activities. The claims are not patent eligible.
With respect to claims 2, 9, and 16, the claim relates to informing the plurality of public figures of service terms. This relates to a human ghostwriter informing each of the plurality of public figures of their ghostwriting services. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claims 3, 10, and 17, the claim relates to using one of known statements from public figures, public comments about the public figure, or characterizations of the public figure to generate prompt information. This relates to a human ghostwriter performing research on their assigned public figure before ghostwriting messages for them. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claims 4, 11, and 18, the claim relates to using a response template and further instructions to construct a personalized response. This relates to a human ghostwriter using their manager’s generic template and further instructions to ghostwrite a message. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claims 5-6, 12-13, and 19, the claim relates to instructions including a plurality of fields for guiding response generation. This relates to a human ghostwriter ensuring that their personalized template instructions include each of a persona goal, a speech style, an intended impression, historical exemplary statements by the public figure, limitations for the ghostwritten message, specific directives to maintain a certain level of friendship with the fan, information about the fan, and context supporting how the public figure is communicating with the fan. No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
With respect to claims 7, 14, and 20, the claim relates to providing the prompt information to an LLM, evaluating the response from the LLM, and outputting the response if the evaluation meets a certain criteria. This relates to a human ghostwriter providing their prompt to a second human ghostwriter, receiving a roughdrafted response from the second ghostwriter, evaluating the roughdrafted response’s quality, and handing the response to the fan after evaluation. The limitation of “LLMs” is recited at a high level of generality and merely equate to “apply it” or otherwise merely uses a generic computer as a tool to perform an abstract which are not indicative of integration into a practical application as per MPEP 2106.05(f). No additional limitations are present. The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
For all of the above reasons, taken alone or in combination, claims 1-20 recite a non-statutory mental process.
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, 4-6, 8, 11-13, 15, and 18-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over US Patent Publication 20260170026 A1 (Tseng et al.) in view of US Patent Publication 20200365136 A1 (Candelore et al.).
Claim 1
Regarding claim 1, Tseng et al. disclose a method, comprising:
[signing up a plurality of public figure users for] an auto response service that automatically generates personalized auto responses on behalf of each of the plurality of [public figure users] characters in response to fan communications directed to the [public figure users] characters (Tseng et al. ¶ [0008], "Another aspect of the disclosure is to provide a generative question answering method. The generative question answering method applied to a generative question answering system including a character database and a text knowledge database, where the character database stores multiple character templates and multiple dialogue examples corresponding to the multiple character templates, and the text knowledge database stores multiple candidate texts.");
creating general instructions providing guidelines in generating the personalized auto responses (Tseng et al. ¶ [0045], "as shown in FIG. 6, ... the answer-generating block 330 feeds the user input content IC to the query field of the prompt template P1 and feeds the candidate texts ST... to the content field to perform the prompt integration based on some specific formats, and the prompt Pla is generated." See Figure 6, which illustrates a prompt template filled with personalized information. The prompt template P1 before being filled out is considered analogous to general instructions); and
with respect to each of the plurality of [public figure users] characters,
obtaining relevant information associated with the [public figure user] character (Tseng et al. ¶ [0028], "In some embodiments, the character description unit 232A processes the text input signals of the character background description of the character templates"),
generating, based on the relevant information associated with the [public figure users] characters, personalized instructions in creating the personalized responses on behalf of the [public figure user] character (Tseng et al. ¶ [0028], "the processed results of the character description unit 232A ... are stored, based on specific formats, in the character database 152. In the character database 152, each character template includes the corresponding text description information and the specific graphic description information." See Table 1, which illustrates personalized instructions per character template that directs an LLM how to create personalized responses on behalf of a character),
receiving an incoming communication from a fan of the [public figure user] character (Tseng et al. ¶ [0040], "In some embodiments, the user input content, the basic user information, and the domain information may be inputted through the user device by the user."),
creating a prompt based on the general instructions, the personalized instructions, and information about the incoming communication (Tseng et al. ¶ [0039], "The user input content is the text input or the audio input of the user planning to query or some material for chatting. The basic user information includes the age, gender, and occupation of the user. The domain information may be the domain related to the content of the user planning to query or some material for chatting." ¶ [0047], "the context awareness block 350 receives the user input content IC, the basic user information IB, and the domain information ID, [and] performs a character-scenario matching mechanism 710 to generate the prompt P2a based on the user input content IC, the basic user information IB, the domain information ID, the prompt template P2, and the character database 152" A prompt template is considered analogous to general instructions. The character database is considered analogous to the personalized instructions. User input content, basic user information, and a domain ID is considered analogous to information about the incoming communication),
generating, automatically via large language models (LLMs) based on the prompt, a personalized auto response on behalf of the [public figure user] character responsive to the incoming communication (Tseng et al. ¶ [0053], "the style transfer block 370 ... performs a prompt integration mechanism 810 for transferring the speaking style to generate the prompt P3a ... and inputs the prompt P3a to the large language model L to obtain the output text OT2 with some specific speaking style."), and
delivering the automatically generated personalized auto response to the fan as a response to the incoming communication (Tseng et al. ¶ [0065], "Based on the prompt P3a, the large language model L generates a stylized answer, i.e., the output text OT2 with the specific speaking style. The output text OT2 includes “Oh, the recent food poisoning incidents are really scary! From April 9 to 15, we can go to the ‘Food Safety Special Clinic’ of the Taipei City Hospital Renai Branch or the ‘Food Safety Special Clinic under the Department of Family Medicine’ of Taipei City Hospital Zhongxing Branch. Remember to take good care of your health, especially when it comes to food.”").
Tseng et al. do not explicitly disclose all of signing up public figures for the service.
However, Candelore et al. disclose signing up a plurality of public figure users (Candelore et al. ¶ [0056]-[0057], "To identify the public figure at block 400 for which the DNN is to be trained, the device may receive input from a user specifying the public figure ... the device may access recorded speech of the public figure that is publicly available. For example, at block 402 the device may perform an Internet search (e.g., using an Internet search engine) using the name of the public figure for audio video (AV) content or audio content in which the public figure is speaking." Searching for and acquiring public figure data is considered analogous to signing up a plurality of public figure users) for an auto response service (Candelore et al. ¶ [0010], "a method includes analyzing, using a device, words spoken by a public figure. The method also includes, based on the analysis, configuring a speech synthesizer to duplicate the public figure's voice for producing audio corresponding to text accessible to the device.")
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the effective filing date of the claimed invention of the instant application to modify Tseng et al.’s auto reply system to incorporate Candelore et al.’s application to public figures because such a modification is the result of combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results. More specifically, Tseng et al.’s auto reply system as modified by Candelore et al.’s application to public figures can yield a predictable result of improving user experience since users could receive personalized responses from public figures they know of or particularly respect. Thus, a person of ordinary skill would have appreciated including in Tseng et al.’s auto reply system the ability to do Candelore et al.’s application to public figures since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable.
Claim 4
Regarding claim 4, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Tseng et al. further disclose wherein the personalized instructions include:
a response template dictating the construct of a personalized auto response to be generated (Tseng et al. ¶ [0045], "as shown in FIG. 6, ... the answer-generating block 330 feeds the user input content IC to the query field of the prompt template P1 and feeds the candidate texts ST... to the content field to perform the prompt integration based on some specific formats, and the prompt Pla is generated." See Figure 6, which illustrates a prompt template filled with personalized information. The prompt template P1 after being filled out is considered analogous to a personalized response template); and
instructions for generating an auto response responding to a fan communication at the respective encounters with the public figure user (Tseng et al. Figure 6 illustrates instructions for generating an auto response (e.g. "Answer the user's question based on the following text information...")).
Claim 5
Regarding claim 5, the rejection of claim 4 is incorporated.
Tseng et al. further disclose wherein each of the instructions for personalizing an auto response directed to a fan communication comprises specifications on:
a persona exhibited via the auto response (Tseng et al. ¶ [0027], " The character template includes text descriptions or graphs of scenario characters constructed by the specific domain." See Table 1 for exemplary character templates);
a speech style used in generating the auto response (Tseng et al. Table 1, "The speaking style should be warm, a little chatty, and full of empathy.");
an intended impression that the auto response is to project to the fan (Tseng et al. Table 1, "The speaking style should be warm, a little chatty, and full of empathy.");
a set of statements previously made by the public figure user and to be used in the auto response (Tseng et al. ¶ [0028], "the character storing unit 232C stores the history dialogue examples matching the character templates worked as the dialogue examples." See Figure 8, which illustrates historical dialogue as a component of a prompt template);
a set of limitations to be enforced in generating the auto response (Tseng et al. Figure 6 illustrates a prompt template with the following limitation: "If you don't know the answer, say you don't know; don't fabricate an answer"); and
an indication of a distance to the fan to be exhibited by the auto response (Tseng et al. Table 1, "The speaking style should be warm, a little chatty, and full of empathy." Directives to be empathetic and chatty with a user is considered analogous to an indication of distance to the fan).
Claim 6
Regarding claim 6, the rejection of claim 4 is incorporated.
Tseng et al. further disclose wherein the information about the incoming communication from the fan includes:
an identity of the fan (Tseng et al. ¶ [0039], "In some embodiments, the input information includes user input content, basic user information, and the domain information. ... basic user information includes the age, gender, and occupation of the user."); and
a specific encounter between the fan and the public figure user, which is to be used to select a corresponding one of the instructions provided to guide how to respond to a fan communication at the specific encounter (Tseng et al. ¶ [0039], "In some embodiments, the input information includes user input content, basic user information, and the domain information. ... The domain information may be the domain related to the content of the user planning to query or some material for chatting." ¶ [0060], "In one embodiment, the user input content IC includes “I had a gathering with my high school classmates last week. I think I might have food poisoning related to Wang Pin. Where can I go for a check-up or make an appointment?” ... The domain information includes “Public health.”" Domain information is considered analogous to a specific encounter).
Claim 8
Regarding claim 8, Tseng et al. disclose a machine readable and non-transitory medium having information recorded thereon (Tseng et al. ¶ [0067], "the generative question answering system 400 may be implemented as computer programs or commands and stored in the memory 150 of FIG. 1 for the processor 130 of the generative question answering system 100 reading the computer program or commands and performing the operation method.").
The remaining limitations of claim 8 are similar in scope to that of claim 1 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 11
Regarding claim 11, the rejection of claim 8 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 11 are similar in scope to that of claim 4 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 12
Regarding claim 12, the rejection of claim 11 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 12 are similar in scope to that of claim 5 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 13
Regarding claim 13, the rejection of claim 11 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 13 are similar in scope to that of claim 6 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 15
Regarding claim 8, Tseng et al. disclose a service setup engine implemented by a processor (Tseng et al. ¶ [0067], "the generative question answering system 400 may be implemented as computer programs or commands and stored in the memory 150 of FIG. 1 for the processor 130 of the generative question answering system 100 reading the computer program or commands and performing the operation method.").
The remaining limitations of claim 15 are similar in scope to that of claim 1 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 18
Regarding claim 18, the rejection of claim 15 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 18 are similar in scope to that of claim 4 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 19
Regarding claim 19, the rejection of claim 18 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 19 are similar in scope to that of claims 5 and 6 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claims 2-3, 9-10, and 16-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over Tseng et al. in view of Candelore et al. as applied to claims 1, 8, and 15 above, and further in view of US Patent Publication 20160232496 A1 (Ingram).
Claim 2
Regarding claim 2, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Tseng et al. in view of Candelore et al. do not explicitly disclose all of providing service terms to public figure users.
However, Ingram discloses wherein [the auto response service to] each of the plurality of public figure users is provided with service terms defining at least a scope of the auto response service thereto (Ingram ¶ [0045], "The agent interface engine 250 operates to interface with the agent A representing the celebrity C, such as to register the celebrity to participate in the celebrity interaction system 102 and to define a schedule of dates and times at which the celebrity is available for a personal communication with a fan.").
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the effective filing date of the claimed invention of the instant application to modify Tseng et al. in view of Candelore et al. to incorporate Ingram’s public figure registration because such a modification is the result of combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results. More specifically, Tseng et al.’s auto response service as modified by Ingram’s public figure registration can yield a predictable result of improving public figure experience since public figures would be more informed and thus more receptive towards enabling the auto response service for their brand. Thus, a person of ordinary skill would have appreciated including in Tseng et al.’s auto response service the ability to do Ingram’s public figure registration since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable.
Claim 3
Regarding claim 3, the rejection of claim 2 is incorporated.
Candelore et al. further disclose wherein relevant information associated with a public figure user includes at least one of:
known statements made by the public figure user (Candelore et al. ¶ [0057], "the device may access recorded speech of the public figure that is publicly available. For example, at block 402 the device may perform an Internet search (e.g., using an Internet search engine) using the name of the public figure for audio video (AV) content or audio content in which the public figure is speaking.");
public comments about the public figure user; and
characterization of the public figure user from different sources.
Claim 9
Regarding claim 9, the rejection of claim 8 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 9 are similar in scope to that of claim 2 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 10
Regarding claim 10, the rejection of claim 9 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 10 are similar in scope to that of claim 3 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 16
Regarding claim 16, the rejection of claim 15 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 16 are similar in scope to that of claim 2 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 17
Regarding claim 17, the rejection of claim 16 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 17 are similar in scope to that of claim 3 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claims 7, 14, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over Tseng et al. in view of Candelore et al. as applied to claims 1, 8, and 15 above, and further in view of US Patent Publication 20250200293 A1 (Liu et al.).
Claim 7
Regarding claim 7, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated.
Tseng et al. further disclose wherein the step of generating, via LLMs based on the prompt, a personalized auto response comprises:
providing the prompt to the LLMs (Tseng et al. ¶ [0053], "the style transfer block 370 ... inputs the prompt P3a to the large language model L to obtain the output text OT2 with some specific speaking style."); and
creating the personalized auto response in accordance with the prompt (Tseng et al. ¶ [0053], "the style transfer block 370 ... inputs the prompt P3a to the large language model L to obtain the output text OT2 with some specific speaking style.")….
Tseng et al. in view of Candelore et al. do not explicitly disclose all of evaluating LLM responses.
However, Liu et al. disclose providing a prompt to the LLMs (Liu et al. ¶ [0039], "As illustrated in FIG. 1, user input data 105 is received at the LLM orchestrator component 130. The LLM orchestrator component 130 (e.g., the personality LLM 120) is configured to generate a response to a user input");
creating the personalized auto response in accordance with the prompt (Liu et al. ¶ [0042], "the personality prompt data 115 may further instruct the personality LLM 120 to generate the response such that it corresponds to a particular personality (e.g., a particular personality type and personality characteristic(s) determined to be relevant to the user input data 105 (e.g., as represented by the contextualized personality data 145)).");
evaluating quality of the created personalized auto response (Liu et al. ¶ [0094], "The fluency determination component 350 is configured to evaluate the fluency (e.g., the lexical fluency/complexity) of the response generated by the LLM orchestrator component 130 (e.g., the personality response data 135). For example, for the personality response data 135: “Today is shaping up to be a great day for fun in the sun with an expected high of 85 and a low of 80,” the fluency determination component 350 may determine the lexical fluency/complexity of the response (e.g., whether the response is lexically fluent, the number of words included in the response, the lexical diversity of the words included in the response, etc.)." Evaluating a response's fluency is considered analogous to evaluating the quality of a personalized auto response); and
outputting the personalized auto response if the quality of the personalized auto response satisfied some predetermined criteria (Liu et al. ¶ [0095], "The fluency determination component 350 may generate fluency data 355 representing the fluency of the personality response data 135.... the fluency data 355 may include a value of 1 or 0 representing whether the personality response data 135 is properly fluent/complex (or whether the fluency/complexity of the personality response data 135 meets or exceeds a threshold or not), respectively." A threshold is considered analogous to a predetermined criteria).
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the time of the effective filing date of the claimed invention of the instant application to modify Tseng et al. in view of Candelore et al. to incorporate Liu et al.’s LLM evaluation because such a modification is the result of combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results. More specifically, Tseng et al.’s auto response service as modified by Liu et al.’s LLM evaluation can yield a predictable result of improving system response quality since LLM responses would be double-checked for quality, thus ensuring a higher-quality output. Thus, a person of ordinary skill would have appreciated including in Tseng et al.’s auto response service the ability to do Liu et al.’s LLM evaluation since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable.
Claim 14
Regarding claim 14, the rejection of claim 8 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 14 are similar in scope to that of claim 7 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Claim 20
Regarding claim 20, the rejection of claim 15 is incorporated. The limitations of claim 20 are similar in scope to that of claim 7 and therefore are rejected for similar reasons as described above.
Reference Cited
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
US Patent Publication 20130239448 A1 to David discloses generating personalized greeting cards using recorded voice clips from celebrities.
US Patent Publication 20250363309 A1 to Nakayama et al. discloses a dialogue system for supporting continued conversation between users and virtual avatars.
Conclusion
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/JACOB B VOGT/ Examiner, Art Unit 2653
/Paras D Shah/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2653
07/30/2026
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