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 Objections
Claim 7 is objected to because of the following informalities: “to a detect deviation” (line 2) should presumably read “to detect a deviation”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 7 is objected to because of the following informalities: “adjust to the schedule” (line 7) should presumably read “to adjust the schedule”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 11 is objected to because of the following informalities: “The agent of claim of claim 10” (line 1) should presumably read “The agent of claim 10”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 14 is objected to because of the following informalities: “The agent of claim of claim 11” (line 1) should presumably read “The agent of claim 11”. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 16 is objected to because of the following informalities: “tacking actions” (line 2) should presumably read “taking actions”. Appropriate correction is required.
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 1-20 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.
The term “rapid” in “rapid automated selection” in claim 1 is a relative term which renders the claim indefinite. The term “rapid” is not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. Dependent claims 2-20 inherit this discrepancy by nature of their dependencies. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 1 recites “streams of actions that may be executed in parallel when possible” (line 22). It is unclear whether the scheduler must account for the parallel execution of streams of action. Dependent claims 2-20 inherit this discrepancy by nature of their dependencies. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 6 recites “the current state” (line 12). There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. Dependent claims 7-11 and 14-20 inherit this discrepancy by nature of their dependencies. 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 non-statutory subject matter. The claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter because the claims as a whole, considering all claim elements both individually and in combination, do not amount to significantly more than an abstract idea. Each of claims 1-20 have been analyzed to determine whether it is directed to any judicial exceptions.
The determination of subject matter eligibility under 35 USC 101, relies on the Mayo/Alice two-step analysis.
In step 1 of the analysis, the claims are evaluated to determine whether they fall within one of the four statutory categories (i.e., process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter). In the present case, claims 1-14 are directed to a computer-implemented planning agent and claims 15-20 are directed to a computer game. The claims are therefore directed to software per-se and are not patent eligible.
However, even if the claims were directed to one of the four statutory categories, the claims would still fail the subject matter eligibility analysis.
Under prong 1 of step 2A, the examiner is directed to determine whether the claim recites a judicial exception. The claims are compared to groupings of subject matter that have been found by courts as abstract ideas. These groupings include
(a) Mathematical concepts—mathematical relationships, mathematical formulas or equations, mathematical calculations;
(b) Certain methods of organizing human activity—fundamental economic principles or practices (including hedging, insurance, mitigating risk); commercial or legal interactions (including agreements in the form of contracts; legal obligations; advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations); managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions); and
(c) Mental processes—concepts performed in the human mind (including an observation, evaluation, judgment, opinion).
Claim 1 recites (the abstract idea is underlined) a computer-implemented planning agent comprising, the agent comprising:
a dictionary of refiners, the refiners comprising goals, actions, and methods, wherein goals indicate desired values of variables, actions mutate values of variables, and methods decompose higher-level goals into lists of lower-level goals (sub-goals), and wherein the variables pertain to a set of objects describing a simulated world comprising a model of a natural, manmade, or imaginary environment, wherein the dictionary is predefined to express relevance relationships between goals and other refiners that advance those goals, and wherein refiners are expressed in variable types to facilitate rapid automated selection of and type checking of refiners;
a strategy interface providing a strategy comprising a list of priorities expressed as goals in accordance with the dictionary of refiners, the priorities being for a phase of activity that comprises multiple turns, the strategy reflecting interests of a first actor having agency in the simulated world;
an initial state of the environment, wherein a state comprises values of variables of objects of the environment, and wherein the initial state is at a point in time at a beginning of the phase of activity;
a planner which, starting from the strategy and the initial state of the environment, uses one or more of the refiners to create a plan by building a tree of actions, methods, and/or lower- level goals (sub-goals) descending from one or more goals of the strategy, via automated refiner selection and type checking;
a scheduler which creates a schedule for the implementation of actions of the plan, accounting for streams of actions that may be executed in parallel when possible; and
a controller which, in step with real-time passage of turns in the world through the phase of activity, executes the schedule by implementing actions to an extent permitted by a state of the environment at each turn, wherein:
the planner does not account for specific turns in which actions may be executed;
the scheduler does not operate until the plan is completed by the planner.
The claims are directed to a computer-implemented planning agent uses a dictionary of goal, action, and method refiners to build a refiner tree rooted in a top-level goal (Specification [0007]). These steps can be performed by a person using pen and paper.
Claim 15 further recites “A computer game for multiple human players, the game being a competitive strategy game with each player operating one or more characters, the game comprising, for one or more of the characters” and claim 19 recites “a computer game for multiple human players, the game being a competitive strategy game with each player operating one or more characters, the game comprising a non-player character”.
Claims 15-20 further recite limitations falling into the category of certain methods of organizing human activity (i.e., rules of a game).
Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
Under prong 2 of Step 2A, the examiner considers whether additional elements integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. To do so, the examiner looks to the following exemplary considerations, looking at the elements individually and in combination:
• an additional element reflects an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field;
• an additional element that applies or uses a judicial exception to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition (not considered relevant to the present claims);
• an additional element implements a judicial exception with, or uses a judicial exception in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim;
• an additional element effects a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing; and
• an additional element applies or uses the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception.
The additional elements in the present claims are a dictionary of refiners, a strategy interface, a planner, a scheduler, and a controller. The additional elements do no integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. In particular, the additional elements do not reflect an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field. The additional elements do not implement a judicial exception with, or uses a judicial exception in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim. The additional elements do not effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing. The additional elements do not apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment. Accordingly, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea.
Under step 2B, the examiner evaluates whether the additional elements amount to significantly more than the judicial exception itself. The examiner considers if the additional elements:
• add a specific limitation or combination of limitations that are not well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field, which is indicative that an inventive concept may be present; or
• simply appends well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception, which is indicative that an inventive concept may not be present.
The additional elements in the present claims are a dictionary of refiners, a strategy interface, a planner, a scheduler, and a controller. The additional elements are “computer-implemented” and “automated” plus the functional software components each recited at a high level of generality. Together they amount to instructions to implement the abstract idea on an unspecified computer.
Viewed as a whole, these additional claim elements do not provide meaningful limitations to transform the abstract idea into a patent eligible application of the abstract idea such that the claims amount to significantly more than the abstract idea itself. Therefore, claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Prior Art Rejections
There are currently no prior art rejections against claims 1-20.
The closest prior art of reference includes Baum, US 2010/0306149 A1 (hereinafter Baum) and Fox et al., US 12,147,920 B2 (hereinafter Fox).
Baum discloses a system for achieving a desired goal in a domain (Baum [Abstract]). The system may comprise a device operable to receive information and simulate the domain therefrom; a device operable to simulate one or more effects due to one or more operators; a device operable to specify a number of items and/or classes of items and whether each item and/or each class of items is an affectable obstacle or a non-affectable obstacle; a device operable to automatically generate a candidate plan to achieve the desired goal by utilizing the simulated domain and the simulated effect(s), wherein the candidate plan could involve one or more affectable obstacles but does not involve any non-affectable obstacles; and a device operable to automatically refine the candidate plan to change at least one of the affectable obstacles involved in the candidate plan (Baum [Abstract]).
Fox discloses multi-domain planning and execution systems and methods are disclosed whereby each planning component in a decomposed architecture is associated with its own domain, each planning component may supervise levels underneath it, and dependencies between domains are managed by the coordination of goals and constraints (Fox [Abstract]). For example, a computing device may be communicatively coupled to equipment; include a first-level component having a first-level planner component that generates a first-level plan associated with an operation using the equipment; and include second-level components, each associated with respective equipment and each including a second-level planner component that generates a second-level plan based on the first-level plan, wherein the second-level plan has instructions to perform a portion of the operation, and each second-level component instructs each respective equipment to execute a respective second-level plan (Fox [Abstract]).
The prior art, alone or in combination does not fairly teach or suggest the claimed invention.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WERNER G GARNER whose telephone number is (571)270-7147. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30-15:30 EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, DAVID LEWIS can be reached at (571) 272-7673. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/WERNER G GARNER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3715
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