DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is responsive to the following communication: Amendment filed on 27 February 2025.
Claim(s) 1-20 is/are pending and present for examination. Claim(s) 1, 8, and 15 is/are in independent form.
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 Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 7, 8, 14, 15, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Vee et al, USPGPUB No. 2014/0188935, filed on 31 December 2012, and published on 3 July 2014.
As per independent claims 1, 8, and 15, Vee teaches:
A method comprising:
receiving, by a component of a database analysis system, a natural language string entered via a user interface {See Vee, [0005], wherein this reads over “In particular embodiments, in response to a text query received from a user, a social-networking system may generate structured queries comprising query tokens that correspond to identified social-graph elements.”}, wherein the natural language string expresses a request for analytical results data generated by the database analysis system based on data stored in a data source of the database analysis system, wherein the data source is an in-memory database component of the database analysis system or an external database accessible by the database analysis system {See Vee, [0054], wherein this reads over “FIGS. 4A-4B illustrate example queries of the social network. In particular embodiments, in response to a text query received from a first user (i.e., the querying user), the social-networking system 160 may generate one or more structured queries rendered in a natural-language syntax, where each structured query includes query tokens that correspond to one or more identified social-graph elements. FIGS. 4A-4B illustrate various example text queries in query field 350 and various structured queries generated in response in drop-down menus 300. By providing suggested structured queries in response to a user's text query, the social-networking system 160 may provide a powerful way for users of the online social network to search for elements represented in the social graph 200 based on their social-graph attributes and their relation to various social-graph elements”; and [0109], wherein this reads over “As an example and not by way of limitation, to execute instructions, processor 1002 may retrieve (or fetch) the instructions from an internal register, an internal cache, memory 1004, or storage 1006; decode and execute them; and then write one or more results to an internal register, an internal cache, memory 1004, or storage 1006”};
generating, by the component of the database analysis system, based on the natural language string, using a natural language machine learning model, a sequence of tokens from a set of tokens indexed in the database analysis system {See Vee, [0006], wherein this reads over “In particular embodiments, the social-networking system may receive an unstructured text query from a user. In response, the social-networking system may access a social graph and then parse the text query to identify social-graph elements that corresponded to n-grams from the text query. The social-networking system may then access a grammar model, such as a context-free grammar model. The identified social-graph elements may be used as terminal tokens ("query tokens") in the grammars of the grammar model.”};
generating, by the component of the database analysis system, a database query in accordance with a query syntax implemented by the data source of the database analysis system, using a query graph generated by the component of the database analysis system as a representation of the sequence of tokens {See Vee, [0054], wherein this reads over “FIGS. 4A-4B illustrate example queries of the social network. In particular embodiments, in response to a text query received from a first user (i.e., the querying user), the social-networking system 160 may generate one or more structured queries rendered in a natural-language syntax, where each structured query includes query tokens that correspond to one or more identified social-graph elements.”};
obtaining, by the component of the database analysis system, from the data source of the database analysis system, the analytical results data responsive to sending the database query to the data source {See Vee, [0054], wherein this reads over “Some of the advantages of using the structured queries described herein include finding users of the online social network based upon limited information, bringing together virtual indexes of content from the online social network based on the relation of that content to various social-graph elements, or finding content related to you and/or your friends.”}; and
outputting at least a portion of the analytical results data for presentation via the user interface {See Vee, [0050], wherein this reads over “In response, the search engine may identify one or more resources that are likely to be related to the search query, each of which may individually be referred to as a "search result," or collectively be referred to as the "search results" corresponding to the search query. The identified content may include, for example, social-graph elements (i.e., user nodes 202, concept nodes 204, edges 206), profile pages, external webpages, or any combination thereof. The social-networking system 160 may then generate a search-results webpage with search results corresponding to the identified content and transmit the search-results webpage to the user. The search results may be presented to the user, often in the form of a list of links on the search-results webpage, each link being associated with a different webpage that contains some of the identified resources or content.”}.
As per dependent claims 7, 14, and 20, Vee teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein generating the database query includes:
determining that the sequence of tokens is valid in accordance with a grammar defined by the database analysis system {See Vee, [0054], wherein this reads over “The social-networking system 160 may then access a grammar model, such as a context-free grammar model, which includes a plurality of grammars. These grammars may be visualized as a grammar forest that is organized as an ordered tree with a plurality of non-terminal and terminal tokens”}.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 2, 9, and 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vee, in view of Prakash et al, USPGPUB No. 2019/0272296, filed on 30 January 2019, and published on 5 September 2019.
As per dependent claims 2, 9, and 16, Vee, in combination with Prakash, discloses:
The method of claim 1, wherein generating the database query includes:
determining, by the component of the database analysis system, a tour of the query graph from a vertex of the query graph corresponding to a valid start token to a vertex of the query graph corresponding to a valid end token {See Prakash, [0471], wherein this reads over “FIG. 12 is a graph illustrating an example of a probabilistic graphical model 1200 used for generating a database query based on a string. The probabilistic graphical model 1200 includes a start node 1210; nodes (1212, 1214, 1216, 1218, 1220, and 1222) representing respective tokens that have been matched to fragments (e.g., a sequence of one or more words) of a string; and an end node 1224. The edges connecting the nodes (1212, 1214, 1216, 1218, 1220, and 1222) represent a relationship between the corresponding matched sentence fragments of the two nodes, where the fragment for the node at the start of directed edge occurs immediately before the fragment associated with the node at the end of the direct edge.”}.
Vee is directed to the invention of natural-language rendering of structured search queries. Vee fails to disclose each and every limitation of the instant claim(s). Prakash is directed to the invention of a system for natural language question answering. Specifically, Prakash discloses a model which includes a start node (i.e., a vertex corresponding to a valid start token) and an end node (i.e., a vertex corresponding to a valid end token). See Prakash, [0471]. These nodes are representative of tokens which would read upon the aforementioned claimed features. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the instant application to improve the prior art of Vee with that of Prakash such that the nodes and edges of Vee may be traversed according to the invention of Prakash to determined a start and end point within the graph. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the aforementioned combination such that deterministic information about the query graph may be extracted for evaluation and subsequent use.
Claim(s) 3 and 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vee, in view of Prakash et al, and in further view of Floratos, U.S. Patent No. 6,571,199, filed on 21 June 2000, and issued on 27 May 2003.
As per dependent claims 3 and 10, Vee, in combination with Prakash and Floratos, discloses:
The method of claim 2, wherein determining the tour includes:
determining a plurality of candidate tours of the query graph, wherein a respective candidate tour from the plurality of candidate tours is associated with a corresponding sum of weights of directed edges of the respective candidate tour {See Floratos, column 14, lines 13-16, wherein this reads over “The score of a path within this graph is the sum of the weights of all the vertices and edges of the path. The path with the maximal score is then computed and that score is assigned to Sj”}; and
identifying, as the tour, a candidate tour from the plurality of candidate tours having a maximal sum of weights among the plurality of candidate tours {See Floratos, column 14, lines 13-16, wherein this reads over “The score of a path within this graph is the sum of the weights of all the vertices and edges of the path. The path with the maximal score is then computed and that score is assigned to Sj”}.
The combination of Vee and Prakash fails to disclose the claimed features of the instant claim. Floratos is directed to the invention of performing pattern dictionary formation for use in sequence homology detection. Specifically, Floratos discloses that “[t]he score of a path within this graph is the sum of the weights of all the vertices and edges of the path” and “[t]he path with the maximal score is then computed and that score is assigned to Sj.” See Floratos, column 14, lines 13-16. That is, Floratos discloses that a score may be determined by summing all of the weights of the vertices and edges in a path. This disclosure would read upon the claimed feature of “determining a plurality of candidate tours of the query graph, wherein a respective candidate tour from the plurality of candidate tours is associated with a corresponding sum of weights of directed edges of the respective candidate tour.” Furthermore, wherein Floratos discloses the determination of the path with a maximal score, said determination would read upon the claimed feature of identifying a tour that has the maximal sum of weights. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the instant application to improve the prior art combination of Vee and Prakash such that their paths may be evaluated to determine the one path with the most significance in terms of score. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the aforementioned combination such that the most significant path may be identified.
Claim(s) 5, 6, 12, 13, 18, and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vee, in view of Official Notice.
As per dependent claims 5, 12, and 18, the Examiner takes Official Notice that the claimed feature of “removing one or more directed edges from the query graph to form an acyclic query graph” would have been widely-known and obvious. Wherein adding and removing directed edges from a query graph is well-known and obvious, so would the resulting acyclic query graph from said removal of a directed edge. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the instant application to improve the prior art of Vee such that the query graph may be formed into an acyclic query graph. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the aforementioned combination in order to generate a query graph that has a closed loop.
As per dependent claims 6, 13, and 19, the Examiner takes Official Notice that the claimed feature of “wherein the natural language machine learning model includes an artificial neural network” would have been widely-known and obvious. Wherein many natural language machine learning models continue to progress in terms of development, it would have been widely-known and obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize an artificial neural network. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the aforementioned combination such that the natural language ML models may be improved upon by artificial neural networks which continuously progress and expand upon said ML models.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4, 11, and 17 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 11 February 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Claim Rejections under 35 U.S.C. 102
Applicant asserts the argument that “nothing in Vee teaches, suggests, or implies that the “social graph 200” described therein implements a query syntax.” See Response, page 18. The Examiner respectfully disagrees. It is noted that the instant claim recites “generating, by the component of the database analysis system, a database query in accordance with a query syntax implemented by the data source of the database analysis system, using a query graph generated by the component of the database analysis system as a representation of the sequence of tokens.” While Applicant interprets the claimed “query graph” as having to implement “a query syntax,” under the broadest reasonable interpretation, the claim only requires that “a database query [that is] in accordance with a query syntax” be generated “using a query graph… [which is] a representation of the sequence of tokens.” In this case, Vee teaches that “each structure query includes query tokens that correspond to one or more identified social-graph elements.” See Vee, [0054]. Wherein the query tokens correspond to elements of a social-graph, Vee would have indeed taught the claimed feature of “a database query… using a query graph generated by the components… as a representation of the sequence of tokens.”
For the aforementioned reasons above, the claim rejections under 35 U.S.C. 102 are maintained.
Claim Rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103
As per claims 2, 9, and 16, Applicant asserts the argument that the combination of Vee and Prakash would fail to teach the feature of dependent claim 2. See Response, page 13. The Examiner respectfully disagrees. Specifically, Applicant asserts that “[t]he present specification distinguishes the graph shown in FIG. 12 of Prakash, cited by the Office, from a query graph (See e.g., FIGS. 12 and 22 of the present application).” See Response, page 13. In response to applicant's argument that the references fail to show certain features of the invention, it is noted that the features upon which applicant relies (i.e., features found in FIGS. 12 and 22) are not recited in the rejected claim(s). 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). Additionally, Applicant asserts the argument that the cited prior art combination fails to disclose the claimed feature of “a tour.” It is noted that under the broadest reasonable interpretation of “a tour,” Prakash’s traversal of a graph using start and end points would read upon said feature of “a tour.” That is, wherein the claim merely recites “determining… a tour of the query graph from a vertex of the query graph corresponding to a valid start token to a vertex of the query graph corresponding to a valid end token,” the nodes of Prakash would read upon the claimed vertices of the instant claim. In response to applicant’s argument that there is no teaching, suggestion, or motivation to combine the references, the examiner recognizes that obviousness may be established by combining or modifying the teachings of the prior art to produce the claimed invention where there is some teaching, suggestion, or motivation to do so found either in the references themselves or in the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 5 USPQ2d 1596 (Fed. Cir. 1988), In re Jones, 958 F.2d 347, 21 USPQ2d 1941 (Fed. Cir. 1992), and KSR International Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007). In this case, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to traverse the nodes and edges of Vee according to the methods described in Prakash wherein a start and end point are utilized.
As per claims 3 and 10, Applicant asserts the argument that Floratos “fails to remedy the deficiencies of Vee and Prakash.” See Response, page 14. The Examiner respectfully disagrees for the aforementioned reasons above.
As per claims 5-6, 12-13, and 18-19, Applicant asserts the argument that the feature of “the removal of directed edges from a query graph to form an acyclic query graph” would not have been widely-known and obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art. See Response, page 16. Furthermore, Applicant requests factual support to substantiate the assertion under MPEP 2144.03(C). The Examiner notes that the features claimed are well-known within the art.
Furthermore, it is noted that Applicant has inadequately traversed the Official Notice and Applicant’s assertions are therefore deficient. The Applicant is directed to MPEP 2144.03, which address the topic of Official Notice and clearly state the criteria for traversing an Official Notice. MPEP 2144.03, Part C states the following in part:
To adequately traverse such a finding, an applicant must specifically point out the supposed errors in the examiner's action, which would include stating why the noticed fact is not considered to be common knowledge or well-known in the art. See 37 CFR 1.111(b). See also Chevenard, 139 F.2d at 713, 60 USPQ at 241 (“[I]n the absence of any demand by appellant for the examiner to produce authority for his statement, we will not consider this contention.”). A general allegation that the claims define a patentable invention without any reference to the examiner's assertion of official notice would be inadequate. (emphasis added)
If applicant does not traverse the examiner's assertion of official notice or applicant's traverse is not adequate, the examiner should clearly indicate in the next Office action that the common knowledge or well-known in the art statement is taken to be admitted prior art because applicant either failed to traverse the examiner's assertion of official notice or that the traverse was inadequate. (emphasis added).
Furthermore, the court In re Zurko required that the Applicant assert why the fact is not well-known in the art. In this case, Applicant, while relying upon case law, fails to acknowledge said requirement by not specifically providing why the claimed features of the instant claims would not be well-known in the art. Nonetheless, while Applicant's traversal is deemed inadequate, the Examiner provides the following reference which is directed to the claimed feature.
Kotidis et al (U.S. Patent No. 7,440,957) discloses that “[t]he join graph generated by the delete module is a connected DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph) obtained from join graph Ge(Ve,Ee) by processing the nodes in Ve to be those in V, processing the edges in E directionally and removing one or more of the edges to make the graph acylic in the event of cyclic joins in the view query, to obtain Ee.” See Kotidis, column 7, lines 20-26.
Folkert et al (USPGPUB No. 2005/0234945) discloses that “[a]ny of the internal edges may be chosen to be removed, one at a time, until the graph is acyclic.” See Folkert, [0099].
As disclosed by the aforementioned prior art references, Applicant’s claimed feature has been well-known in the art as early as 30 November 2005, when Kotidis et al disclosed the feature of removing edges from a DAG to make the graph acyclic. Similarly, Folkert et al dates back to 14 April 2004 in its disclose of removing (i.e., deleting) edges until a graph is acyclic. Accordingly, for the aforementioned reasons above, the features of the instant claims are deemed to be well-known in the art.
Lastly, Applicant asserts the argument that the claimed feature of “the natural language machine learning model includes an artificial neural network” would not have been well-known and obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art. While the Examiner finds that this feature is “capable of such instant and unquestionable demonstration as to defy dispute,” the Examiner provides documentary evidence in view of Applicant’s respectful request.
Freitag et al (USPGPUB No. 2022/0215184) discloses that “[n]atural language generation models can use machine learning model(s) (such as artificial neural network(s)) to predict the likelihood of a sequence of words given a set of structured data.” See Frietag, [0001].
Kuang et al (USPGPUB No. 2020/0410393) discloses that “[e]xamples of the adaptive, natural-language processing algorithms include, but are not limited to, natural-language processing models that leverage machine learning processes or artificial neural network processes, such as a named entity recognition model implemented using a SpaCy® library.” See Kuang, [0054].
Yun et al (USPGPUB No. 2020/0034666) discloses that “The natural language processing model 480 may be the object recognition model 105, which is capable of being trained by the artificial neural network engine 100, which is described with reference to FIGS. 1 through 5.” See Yun, [0129].
Accordingly, in view of the provided evidentiary support, the rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 in view of Official Notice are maintained. That is, the aforementioned evidentiary support provides sufficient, if not abundant, evidence that the claimed features would have been one of “basic knowledge” and “common sense” to one of ordinary skill in the art.
For the aforementioned reasons above, the claim rejections under 35 U.S.C. 103 are maintained.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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 mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PAUL KIM whose telephone number is (571)272-2737. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 9AM-5PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sanjiv Shah can be reached at (571) 272-4098. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Paul Kim/
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2166
/PK/
Prosecution Insights