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 1-10 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.
With regard to claim 1, the instant claim recites “responding to a request initiated by a user…, providing selectable AI virtual characters.” First, the term “responding” would indicate that this is a step (such as generating a response message), but it appears that Applicant intended to have the be “in response to a request,” where the providing is the step. Further, claim 1 does not require the receipt of such a request, where in a case that no request is ever received, the condition of “in response to a request…” would never trigger, thus the instant step would never be performed. An explicit step of receiving a request as an initial step should be provided to ensure that the instant step is performed.
Claim 1 then proceeds to recite “after at least two AI virtual characters are selected.” First, in combination with the above issue of “in response to” never requiring the condition to be met, the instant step would only be performed after the first step, which may or may not be performed. Further, the instant claim never requires that more than two AI virtual characters are selected. The providing of selectable AI virtual characters does not require the selection of any characters, meaning the instant step would never be triggered. Further, if only one AI character is selected, it is unclear what would be required here, as the instant step would never be performed. Applicant should amend the instant claim to clearly require that two AI virtual characters are selected from the selectable AI virtual characters.
The next step recites “during the conversation between a first AI virtual character…and the user.” This apparently should refer to the “multi-party conversation session” or a conversation within the session. It should be clarified whether this is a conversation between the first AI virtual character and the user within the multi-party conversation session, if the multi-party conversation session is just between the first AI virtual character and the user, or otherwise provide the relationship between this conversation and the multi-party conversation session.
Claims 2-10 all depend from claim 1 and do not rectify the issues, and are thus rejected for the same.
Further, with regard to claim 2, additional recitations of conversation are provided, where it is unclear the relationship between these recitations and those of claim 1.
With regard to claim 5, the instant claim provides “during a customization,” where such customization is never required in claims 4 or 1. Further, even if the customization was linked specifically to the user customized AI virtual character of claim 4, the instant claim does not provide that the user-customized AI virtual character is required, thus making questionable whether the subject matter of claim 5 is required or not. Claims 6-7 both depend from claim 5 and are thus rejected for the same.
With regard to claim 8, the instant claim recites determining a content type…”so that” the response content is generated. It is unclear how the generating of the response content is specifically caused by the determining. It appears that the instant claim should instead recite a step of generating the response content by invoking an AI model with the determined content type.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-10 would be allowed if the above issues identified under 35 USC 112b were overcome.
With regard to claim 1, the instant claim would provide for a joint management of two AI virtual characters (such as by one entity), where response content of one AI character is summarized to extract a keyword, which is then used to determine if another character of the characters exists with character tagging data or personality tagging data that matches the keyword, where the character then echoes the response content (see paragraph [0075] of the instant specification, where “echoes” would provide some form of agreement or otherwise duplicate the sentiment without adding any substantial additional content.).
This treatment of multiple AI characters, with the summarizing response content from one character to extract a keyword, then using this keyword to identify whether another character matches the keyword, with a matching character echoing the response is not fairly taught or suggested by any prior art of record.
US 2018/0367475 determines responses, where such does not consider other AI characters specifically (Abstract).
US 2019/0042908 determines which character should provide a response, but this would be providing a response to a user and not to another AI, and lacks the summarizing, keyword, and echoing functionality (Paragraph [0093]).
US 2019/00486879 also determines which AI character should respond, but suffers the same issues with regard to the claimed invention (Paragraph [0103]).
US 2022/0351714 extracts a keyword from a script from a specific character, but then uses the keyword to determine which voice should be used from different AI characters (Paragraph [0248]).
Conclusion
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SCOTT B. CHRISTENSEN
Examiner
Art Unit 2444
/SCOTT B CHRISTENSEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2444
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