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 .
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 1-7 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 "the text string" in line 4. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 1 recites the limitation "the relevance" in line 10. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 1 recites the limitation "the cluster" in line 10. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 1 recites the limitation "the relevance class" in lines 11-12. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 2 recites the limitation "the predefined list" in line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 3 recites the limitation "the text-vector" in line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 3 recites the limitation "the other text-vectors" in line 4. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 4 recites the limitation "the tagged online content" in line 1. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 4 recites the limitation "the database" in line 1. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
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 1-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
At step 1, independent claim 1 recites a method and is therefore a statutory class of invention.
At step 2A, prong one, the claim(s) recite(s):
for each item of online content, comparing the text string to a set of search terms associated with a scenario;
for each item of online content whose text string matches at least one search term in the set of search terms, performing a semantic deduplication that assigns the text string to one or more clusters;
for each of the one or more clusters, performing a relevance classification that characterizes the relevance of the cluster to the scenario according to one of a plurality of relevance classes;
for each item of online content, tagging the item of online content so as to reflect the relevance class of its associated cluster.
These limitations, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, cover a process that could be performed mentally. That is, other than reciting a method to perform the comparing, performing, and tagging, nothing in the claim elements preclude the steps from being performed mentally or by a human using pen and paper. For example, a user can receive a plurality of items of online content and mentally/with pen and paper compare the text string to a set of search terms associated with a scenario for each item of online content; mentally/with pen and paper perform a semantic deduplication that assigns the text string to one or more clusters for each item of online content whose text string matches at least one search term in the set of search terms; mentally/with pen and paper perform a relevance classification that characterizes the relevance of the cluster to the scenario according to one of a plurality of relevance classes; and mentally/with pen and paper tag the item of online content so as to reflect the relevance class of its associated cluster for each item of online content. 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 claims recite a mental process.
At step 2A, prong two, this judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the claim does not recite any additional elements. The claims are directed to an abstract idea.
At step 2B, the claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application as there are no additional elements. However, the additional claim element “retrieving a plurality of items of online content, each item of online content comprising a body and a summative text string” is well‐understood, routine, and conventional activity.
As explained by the Supreme Court, the addition of insignificant extra-solution activity does not amount to an inventive concept, particularly when the activity is well-understood or conventional. The courts have recognized the following computer functions as well‐understood, routine, and conventional functions when they are claimed in a merely generic manner (e.g., at a high level of generality) or as insignificant extra-solution activity such as 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); TLI Communications LLC v. AV Auto. LLC, 823 F.3d 607, 610, 118 USPQ2d 1744, 1745 (Fed. Cir. 2016); (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); iv. Storing and retrieving information in memory, Versata Dev. Group, Inc. v. SAP Am., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306, 1334, 115 USPQ2d 1681, 1701 (Fed. Cir. 2015); OIP Techs., 788 F.3d at 1363, 115 USPQ2d at 1092-93. See MPEP 2106.05(d) and 2106.05(g). Examples that the courts have indicated may not be sufficient to show an improvement in computer-functionality: iii. Mere automation of manual processes, such as using a generic computer to process an application for financing a purchase, Credit Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Services, 859 F.3d 1044, 1055, 123 USPQ2d 1100, 1108-09 (Fed. Cir. 2017) . See MPEP 2106.05(a). Use of a computer or other machinery in its ordinary capacity for economic or other tasks (e.g., to receive, store, or transmit data) or simply adding a general purpose computer or computer components after the fact to an abstract idea does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or provide significantly more. See Affinity Labs v. DirecTV, 838 F.3d 1253, 1262, 120 USPQ2d 1201, 1207 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (cellular telephone); TLI Communications LLC v. AV Auto, LLC, 823 F.3d 607, 613, 118 USPQ2d 1744, 1748 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (computer server and telephone unit). Similarly, "claiming the improved speed or efficiency inherent with applying the abstract idea on a computer" does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or provide an inventive concept. Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Capital One Bank (USA), 792 F.3d 1363, 1367, 115 USPQ2d 1636, 1639 (Fed. Cir. 2015). Examples that the courts have indicated may not be sufficient to show an improvement to technology include: i. A commonplace business method being applied on a general purpose computer, Alice Corp., 573 U.S. at 223, 110 USPQ2d at 1976; Versata Dev. Group, Inc. v. SAP Am., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306, 1334, 115 USPQ2d 1681, 1701 (Fed. Cir. 2015); and iii. Gathering and analyzing information using conventional techniques and displaying the result, TLI Communications, 823 F.3d at 612-13, 118 USPQ2d at 1747-48. See MPEP 2106.05(a) and MPEP 2106.05(f). Thus, the claims are not patent eligible.
Claim 2 recites for each item of online content whose text string does not match at least one search term in the predefined list, tagging the item of online content as not relevant. As disclosed, this limitation is directed to a mental process. There are no additional elements recited, thus, the claim does not provide a practical application and is not considered to be significantly more.
Claim 3 recites wherein performing the semantic deduplication includes: vectorizing the text string to generate a corresponding text-vector; and clustering the text-vector with a plurality of other text-vectors so as to form a semantic cluster based on a semantic similarity between the text-vector and the other text-vectors. As disclosed, these limitations are directed to a mental process. There are no additional elements recited, thus, the claim does not provide a practical application and is not considered to be significantly more.
Claim 4 does not recite any additional abstract ideas, but does recite the additional element of wherein the tagged online content is stored in the database. This additional element is recited at a high level of generality, does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application, does not amount to significantly more, and is well-understood, routine, and conventional activity.
Claim 5 does not recite any additional abstract ideas, but does recite the additional element of wherein the relevance classification is a binary classification. This additional element is recited at a high level of generality, does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application, does not amount to significantly more, and is well-understood, routine, and conventional activity.
Claim 6 does not recite any additional abstract ideas, but does recite the additional element of wherein the relevance classification is a multinomial classification. This additional element is recited at a high level of generality, does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application, does not amount to significantly more, and is well-understood, routine, and conventional activity.
Claim 7 does not recite any additional abstract ideas, but does recite the additional element of wherein the multinomial classification reflects the relevance of the cluster to different audience types. This additional element is recited at a high level of generality, does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application, does not amount to significantly more, and is well-understood, routine, and conventional activity.
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) 1, 2 and 4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moitra et al. (US 2013/0046771; hereinafter Moitra) in view of Tsai et al. (US 20170169096; hereinafter Tsai) and further in view of Coyle et al. (US 10,776,376; hereinafter Coyle).
Regarding claim 1, Moitra discloses a method for automated online content curation, the method comprising:
retrieving a plurality of items of online content, each item of online content comprising a body and a summative text string ([0020], [0070], [0164]-[0166] online content items can be extracted for analysis; content items can have a body, title, summary, phrases, etc. (e.g., such as a body and a summative text string));
for each item of online content, comparing the text string to a set of search terms associated with a scenario ([0078]-[0081], [0118] text/keywords/phrases of content items are matched to scenarios/classes of query terms);
for each item of online content whose text string matches at least one search term in the set of search terms, performing a semantic deduplication that assigns the text string to one or more clusters ([0135]-[0138] terms/phrases are clustered based on similarities into a cluster).
Moitra explicitly fails to disclose:
for each of the one or more clusters, performing a relevance classification that characterizes the relevance of the cluster to the scenario according to one of a plurality of relevance classes;
for each item of online content, tagging the item of online content so as to reflect the relevance class of its associated cluster.
However, Tsai discloses for each of the one or more clusters, performing a relevance classification that characterizes the relevance of the cluster to the scenario according to one of a plurality of relevance classes ([0020], [0021], [0032] document/content items are classified based on clusters and topic classes of interest based on different topic classes).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains, having the teachings of Moitra and Tsai before him/her, to modify the teachings of Moitra with the teachings of Tsai. The motivation for doing so would combine the clustering and classes of Moitra with the clustering and classes of Tsai to identify the topics by clustering keywords of the documents and then classifying the topics to analyze different topic classes of degrees of interest for different users at different times, so as to determine each user's reading trends in different topic classes as disclosed by Tsai [0020].
The combination of Moitra and Tsai fails to explicitly disclose, however, Coyle discloses for each item of online content, tagging the item of online content so as to reflect the relevance class of its associated cluster (Col. 5, Lines 19-21; Col. 8, Lines 9-34; Col. 13, Line 51 – Col. 14, Line 10: determining an assigning a degree of relevance to content grouping).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains, having the teachings of Moitra, Tsai and Coyle before him/her, to modify the teachings of Tsai with the teachings of Coyle. The motivation for doing so would combine the clustering and classes of Tsai with the clustering and groups of Coyle to determine relevancy for content such that the degree of relevance of one document may indicate the relevancy of the document compared to other documents in the database such that by determining that each member of a document family satisfies a degree of relevance to content to quickly and efficiently provide users with an intuitive, hierarchical display that clearly and accurately describes the relationships between documents within results of a search query as disclosed by Coyle, Col. 4, Lines 12-27.
Regarding claim 2, the combination of Moitra, Tsai and Coyle discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising: for each item of online content whose text string does not match at least one search term in the predefined list, tagging the item of online content as not relevant (Moitra: [0099]-[0102]; Coyle: Col. 5, Lines 19-21; Col. 8, Lines 9-34; Col. 13, Line 51 – Col. 14, Line 10).
Regarding claim 4, the combination of Moitra, Tsai and Coyle discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the tagged online content is stored in the database (Coyle: Col. 5, Lines 19-21; Col. 5, Line 62 – Col. 6, Line 5; Col. 8, Lines 9-34; Col. 13, Line 51 – Col. 14, Line 10).
Claim(s) 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moitra et al. (US 2013/0046771; hereinafter Moitra) in view of Tsai et al. (US 20170169096; hereinafter Tsai) in view of Coyle et al. (US 10,776,376; hereinafter Coyle) and further in view of Newman et al. (US 7,280,957; hereinafter Newman).
Regarding claim 3, the combination of Moitra, Tsai and Coyle discloses the method of claim 1, wherein performing the semantic deduplication includes: but fails to disclose, however, Newman discloses vectorizing the text string to generate a corresponding text-vector; and clustering the text-vector with a plurality of other text-vectors so as to form a semantic cluster based on a semantic similarity between the text-vector and the other text-vectors (Col. 6, Line 63 – Col. 7, Line 32; Col. 16, Lines 32-63; Col. 26, Lines 19-45).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains, having the teachings of Moitra, Tsai, Coyle and Newman before him/her, to modify the teachings of Tsai with the teachings of Newman. The motivation for doing so would combine the vectors of Tsai with the vectors of Newman to determine word vectors for clustering based on similarity and semantic classes as disclosed by Newman, Col. 6, Line 63 – Col. 7, Line 32; Col. 16: Line 64 – Col. 17, Line 22; Col. 26, Lines 19-45 to yield the predictable results of capturing deeper contextual relationships/semantic grouping across content.
Claim(s) 5-7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Moitra et al. (US 2013/0046771; hereinafter Moitra) in view of Tsai et al. (US 20170169096; hereinafter Tsai) in view of Coyle et al. (US 10,776,376; hereinafter Coyle) and further in view of Verhoef et al. (US 2025/0132058 7,280,957; hereinafter Verhoef).
Regarding claim 5, the combination of Moitra, Tsai and Coyle discloses the method of claim 1, but fails to disclose, however, Verhoef discloses wherein the relevance classification is a binary classification ([0062] relevance indication may be a binary classification of relevant or not relevant).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains, having the teachings of Moitra, Tsai, Coyle and Verhoef before him/her, to modify the teachings of Tsai with the teachings of Verhoef. The motivation for doing so would combine the classification of Tsai with the classification of Verhoef to determine a relevance indication for identification, improvement and prioritization of data as disclosed by Verhoef [0040].
Regarding claim 6, the combination of Moitra, Tsai and Coyle discloses the method of claim 1, but fails to disclose, however, Verhoef discloses wherein the relevance classification is a multinomial classification ([0062] relevance indication may be a multiclass classification (e.g., such as multinomial classification) such as low relevance, medium relevance, high relevance or other set of degrees of relevance).
Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains, having the teachings of Moitra, Tsai, Coyle and Verhoef before him/her, to modify the teachings of Tsai with the teachings of Verhoef. The motivation for doing so would combine the classification of Tsai with the classification of Verhoef to determine a relevance indication for identification, improvement and prioritization of data as disclosed by Verhoef [0040].
Regarding claim 7, the combination of Moitra, Tsai, Coyle and Verhoef discloses the method of claim 6, wherein the multinomial classification reflects the relevance of the cluster to different audience types (Verhoef: [0062]; Tsai: [0020], [0021], [0032] analyze different topic classes of degrees of interest for different users at different times, so as to determine each user's reading trends in different topic classes for multiple classes).
Support for Amendments and Newly Added Claims
Applicants are respectfully requested, in the event of an amendment to claims or submission of new claims, that such claims and their limitations be directly mapped to the specification, which provides support for the subject matter. This will assist in expediting compact prosecution and reducing potential 35 USC § 112(a) or 35 USC § 112, 1st paragraph issues that can arise when claims are amended. MPEP 714.02 recites: “Applicant should also specifically point out the support for any amendments made to the disclosure. See MPEP § 2163.06. An amendment which does not comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.121(b), (c), (d), and (h) may be held not fully responsive. See MPEP § 714.” Amendments not pointing to specific support in the disclosure may be deemed as not complying with provisions of 37 C.F.R. 1.121(b), (c), (d), and (h) and therefore held not fully responsive. Generic statements such as “Applicants believe no new matter has been introduced” may be deemed insufficient. The examiner thanks the Applicant in advance for providing support for any amendments or newly added claims.
Examiner cites particular columns and line numbers or paragraphs in the references as applied to claims above for the convenience of the applicant. Although the specified citations are representative of the teachings in the art and are applied to the specific limitations within the individual claim, other passages and figures may be applied as well. It is respectfully requested that, in preparing responses, the applicant fully consider the references in entirety as potentially teaching all or part of the claimed invention, as well as the context of the passage as taught by the prior art or disclosed by the examiner.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DIEDRA M MCQUITERY whose telephone number is (571)272-9607. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Thursday, 8 am - 6 pm (C.S.T.).
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
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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/Diedra McQuitery/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2166
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