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 amendment filed on 04/28/2026.
Status of claims
Claims 1-2 and 5 are amended.
Claims 1-5 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) filed on 04/28/2026 complies with the provisions of M.P.E.P 609. The information referred to therein has been considered as to the merits.
Response to Arguments
Applicant made the following arguments:
Regarding the 112(b) rejections:
Regarding the insufficient antecedent basis rejection of the phrase "the large
set of textual-data data" is withdrawn in view of the amendment to the claim.
Applicant argued, pages 5-6, that the phrase is not indefinite if, in the context
of the specification, a person skilled in the art can reasonably understand the metes and bounds of the claim. The specification explains how this difference correlates to importance/urgency (see experimental data in Tables 2-12, for example and discussion of DD90- 50, for example paragraph [0101]). In response, Examiner respectful disagree. The claim does not provide what are considered as “important and urgent news” and no guidance as to how these steps are identified and performed as such. Applicant is reminded that although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims (See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993). For the above reason, the rejection is maintained.
Regarding the 103 rejections: Applicant’s arguments with respect to the last
rejection have been considered in view of the new ground(s) of rejection necessitated by amendment.
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 1-5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Claim 1 and 5
Step 1: Statutory Category
The claims 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 claim recites the following limitations directed to an abstract idea:
The limitations “identify .. clustering…calculating”, 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 nothing in the claim element precludes the steps from practically being performed in a human mind. For example, the limitations “identify .. clustering…calculating”, in the context of the claim encompasses one can manually or mentally with the aid of pen and paper clustering data to identify important and urgent news.
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.
Step 2A, Prong Two: Integrated into a Practical Application
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claims recite the additional elements “
“obtaining …; and then obtaining …”, amount to data gathering steps which is considered to be insignificant extra-solution activity. (See MPEP 2106.05(g).
“memory; processor” are 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)).
Step 2B: Claim provides an Inventive Concept
“obtaining …; and then obtaining …”. These are identified as insignificant extra-solution activity above when re-evaluated this element is well-understood, routine, and conventional as evidenced by the court cases in MPEP 2106.05(d)(II), "i. Receiving or transmitting data over a network, e.g., using the Internet to gather data, Symantec, 838 F.3d at 1321, 120 USPQ2d at 1362 (utilizing an intermediary computer to forward information); … OIP Techs., Inc., v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1363, 115 USPQ2d 1090, 1093 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (sending messages over a network); buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1355, 112 USPQ2d 1093, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (computer receives and sends information over a network);" and thus remains insignificant extra-solution activity that does not provide significantly more.
“memory; 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 claims as a whole, does not amount to significantly more than the abstract
idea itself. This is because the claims do not affect an improvement to the functioning
of a computer itself; and the claims do not move beyond a general link of the use of an
abstract idea to a particular technological environment.
Accordingly, claims are directed to an abstract idea.
Claims 2-4, recites the limitations. The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the additional limitation of "the radius calculated" has been discussed above with respect to the abstract idea (i.e., "Mental Processes") and do not amount to significantly more than the above-identified judicial exception.
Claim 5, is a system claim to utilizing the method of claim 1. Therefore, claim 5 is rejected under the same rational as claim 1 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 1-5 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.
Claim 1: recites the limitation “using the difference to identify important and urgent
news in the large set of data”. The claim does not provide what are considered as “important and urgent news” and no guidance as to how these steps are identified and performed as such. Applicant is reminded that although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims (See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993). Applicant is required for clarification/correction. For the above reason, the rejection is maintained.
- All dependent claims are rejected under the same rational as their based claim as above.
Claim 5: is a system claim to utilizing the method of claim 1. Therefore, claim 5 is rejected under the same rational as claim 1 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 1-2 and 4-5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over
Wang et al. (US 2021/0109954), hereinafter “Wang”, in view of Chang et al. (US 2024/0344118), hereinafter “Chang”.
Claim 1, Wang discloses a method for automatically identifying important and urgent news (IUN) in a large set of data (abstract and par. [0013], a methodology that uses a combination of entity-based news tracking, clustering, relevancy, and ranking models to detect news events, filter out noise, cluster the same event into each of the respective clusters, assign relevance of news event to main entity, and rank each news event cluster based on the importance of the event to the overall company):
- obtaining the large set of data in a textual-format, wherein the large set of textual-format data contain a plurality of individual texts (abstract and par. [0005], extracting using a natural language processing (NLP) technique a set of events from a set of text strings of speaker turns and identifies a set of clusters of events based on the set of events and labels each cluster of events in the set of clusters of events to generate a set of labeled clusters of events);
- clustering the textual-format data into a plurality of clusters (par. [0005] a set of events from a set of text strings and identifies a set of clusters of events based on the set of events and labels each cluster of events in the set of clusters of events to generate a set of labeled clusters of events ; and par. [0047], the events output by the event extraction system can serve as input for both the cluster generation and the cluster assignment system);
- using a difference to identify important and urgent news in the large set of data (par.[0071], clustering and ranking 221 rank both clusters and news in each cluster. Important clusters rank higher (i.e., cluster-level ranking), with each cluster showing the most representative news for each cluster (i.e., news-level ranking); and par. [0124] In one illustrative example, cluster ranking 328 ranks clusters by three factors sequentially: 1) update date; 2) clustering ranking score; and 3) cluster size. The updated date is a good indicator of the event recentness. Ranking by the update date ensures analysts do not miss new news events. A clustering ranking score is one indicator of event importance. In one illustrative example, the clustering ranking score is computed by taking the maximum news ranking score of all the news within the cluster and summing the weighted cluster size. Cluster size is another indicator of event importance. Important clusters tend to have large sizes because more news sources may cover the news events).
However, Wang does not disclose “for each cluster, calculating the distances to all other clusters in the plurality of clusters and from the calculated distances determining a radius and a median of the calculated distances to a first cluster, and then obtaining the difference between the radius and the median”.
Meanwhile, Chang discloses for each cluster, calculating the distances to all other clusters in the plurality of clusters and from the calculated distances determining a radius and a median of the calculated distances to a first cluster, and then obtaining the difference between the radius and the median (par. [0189], the substrate coverage can be greater than 90% (or more) of the expected density of coverage in order to pass the substrate coverage criterion; par. [0324], DBSCAN requires two parameters: minPts and eps (effectively, radius). To determine the optimal parameter set for each run, 15 different minPts parameters are iterated through, and the parameter set with the highest proportion of targets that are assigned a spatial position is chosen (i.e., one DBSCAN signal cluster)…the position of its highest UMI spatial barcode, taking a weighted 2-dimensional median of spatial barcode coordinates; par. [1270], a 2D linear model may perform well when the data inputs are from the subregion of a feature space where the model was trained. In some examples, such subregions may be identified within a feature space using a feature extraction and/or clustering technique. For example, a cluster of data points within a feature space may define a subregion, where the size of the subregion is estimated as the covariance of the data points and the distance from the center of the subregion is determined by the Mahalanobis distance of a point from the cluster of data points; par. [1283], the systems may analyze the distances between data points using any of a variety of techniques, including: (i) a hyperplane of control; (ii) a one-class support vector machine with a Gaussian kernel that can distinguish between being in and out of the target region(s) in the feature space, …within the data sets and/or to distinguish between the data sets; and (v) performing a regression to model the data sets).
Therefore, one having ordinary skill in the art would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the system of Wang to include features as disclosed by Chang in order to provide more efficiently and accurately identify relevant subsets among compatible sample populations.
Claim 2, The combination of Wang and Chang discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Chang discloses the radius calculated using 90% rather than 100% of the set of distances from the center of the first cluster to the centers of all the other clusters (par. [0189], , the substrate coverage can be greater than 90% (or more) of the expected density of coverage in order to pass the substrate coverage criterion; par. [0324], DBSCAN requires two parameters: minPts and eps (effectively, radius). To determine the optimal parameter set for each run, 15 different minPts parameters are iterated through, and the parameter set with the highest proportion of targets that are assigned a spatial position is chosen (i.e., one DBSCAN signal cluster)…the position of its highest UMI spatial barcode, taking a weighted 2-dimensional median of spatial barcode coordinates).
Claim 4, The combination of Wang and Chang discloses the invention as claimed. In addition, Chang further discloses the clustering is performed using one or more techniques selected from the group comprising: HDBSCAN, Agglomerative, and KMeans (par. [0324], K-means clustering, Agglomerative Clustering, HDBSCAN).
Claim 5, is a system claim to utilizing the method of claim 1. Therefore, claim 5 is rejected under the same rational as claim 1 above.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang, in view of Chang, and further in view of Meehan et al. (US 2021/0406272), hereinafter "Meehan".
Claim 3, The combination of Wang and Chang discloses the invention as claimed, except “applying a dimension reduction technique to the textual-format data before clustering”.
On the other hand, Meehan discloses applying a dimension reduction technique to the textual-format data before clustering (par. [0119]-[0120], When doing any type of parameter reduction, UMAP performs much of the work of identifying subsets and classification by structuring the input data into data islands that make it easy for almost any clustering method to identify subsets or subpopulations as being points in the low D space that "clump" together, wherein supervised UMAP computes closeness in terms of both the topological characteristics of the unreduced parameters (e.g., measurements) of the input data as well as the common external classification labels for the input data. When supervisory labels are involved in UMAP's reduction (e.g., for supervised UMAP), subsets are identified through a recognition method, which identifies previously known subsets corresponding to subsets in supervising or training data set (According to Applicant’s Specification (par. [0035]), a dimension reduction technique is a UMAP (Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection)).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure (see PTO-892).
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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