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 .
Priority
Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed application 63/571878 is acknowledged. Accordingly, the claims herein have been granted the benefit of the earlier filing date of March 29th, 2024.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on July 9th, 2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 an abstract idea without significantly more. The claims recite a mental process that can be performed in the human mind or with the aid of pen and paper. This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because a computer is invoked merely as a tool to execute an abstract idea. The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because an abstract idea is merely applied on a generic computer without any element that would otherwise preclude performance of the abstrac.
Regarding claim 1, the claim recites “A method, performed by a computing system, of responding to a query from a user, the method comprising:searching a database of documents, yielding a set of returned documents responsive to the query;for each document of a subset of the set of returned documents, sending a reduced-length version of that document to a first large language model (LLM) with a first prompt requesting a summary of that document, the reduced-length version having been processed using natural language processing (NLP);in response to receiving the requested summaries of the subset of documents, sending the summaries of the subset of documents to a second LLM with a second prompt requesting a meta-summary that summarizes the summaries of the subset of documents; anddisplaying the meta-summary to the user.”
The limitations of “searching a database of documents,” “requesting a summary of that document,” and “requesting a meta-summary” as drafted cover mental activities which can be performed in the mind or with the aid of pen and paper. Taken individually, or as a whole, these limitations describe acts which are equivalent to human mental work of outlining documents or summarizing research.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the steps of the claimed invention can be performed mentally, and the generic computer serves merely as an automation tool for the mental process. Accordingly, the claim is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim is not patent eligible.
Regarding claim 2, the claim depends from claim 1, and thus recites the limitations of claim 1, “wherein the second LLM is the first LLM.”
Taken individually, or as a whole with claim 1, these limitations fail to add a meaningful limitation to the mental process and merely describe the generic computer used as a tool. Accordingly, the claim is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim is not patent eligible.
Regarding claim 3, the claim depends from claim 1, and thus recites the limitations of claim 1, “wherein the second LLM is different than the first LLM.”
Taken individually, or as a whole with claim 1, these limitations fail to add a meaningful limitation to the mental process and merely describe the generic computer used as a tool. Accordingly, the claim is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim is not patent eligible.
Regarding claim 4, the claim depends from claim 3, and thus recites the limitations of claims 1 and 3, “wherein:the second LLM has a higher token input limit than the first LLM; andsending the reduced-length version of each document to the first LLM includes, for each document, making a separate call to the first LLM including the reduced-length version of that document and the first prompt.”
Taken individually, or as a whole with the preceding claims, these limitations fail to add a meaningful limitation to the mental process and merely describe the generic computer used as a tool. The limitation of “making a separate call to the first LLM” describes a mental process based on a particular organization of activity. Accordingly, the claim is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim is not patent eligible.
Regarding claim 5, the claim depends from claim 1, and thus recites the limitations of claim 1, “wherein the meta-summary includes linked citations to each of the summaries.”
Taken individually, or as a whole with claim 1, these limitations describe the mental process of summarizing research with a bibliography. Accordingly, the claim is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim is not patent eligible.
Regarding claim 6, the claim depends from claim 1, and thus recites the limitations of claim 1, “wherein the database of documents is a curated set of documents of particular relevance to the query.”
Taken individually, or as a whole with claim 1, these limitations describe the mental process of summarizing research with the extra-solution activity of selecting a particular data source. Accordingly, the claim is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim is not patent eligible.
Regarding claim 7, the claim depends from claim 1, and thus recites the limitations of claim 1, “wherein:each document of the database has been pre-processed using NLP to produce a respective NLP-processed document of reduced size; andsending the reduced-length version of each document to the first LLM includes sending the respective NLP-processed document of that document to the first LLM.”
Taken individually, or as a whole with claim 1, these limitations describe the mental process of summarizing research with the extra-solution activity of pre-processing a document. Accordingly, the claim is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim is not patent eligible.
Regarding claim 8, the claim depends from claim 1, and thus recites the limitations of claim 1, “wherein the method further comprises:searching another database of documents, yielding another set of returned documents responsive to the query;for each other document of another subset of the other set of returned documents, sending a reduced-length version of that other document to the first LLM with a third prompt requesting a summary of that other document, the reduced-length version having been processed using NLP;in response to receiving the requested summaries of the other subset of documents, sending the summaries of the other subset of documents to the second LLM with a fourth prompt requesting another meta-summary that summarizes the summaries of the other subset of documents;sending the meta-summary of the subset of documents and the meta-summary of the other subset of documents to the second LLM with a fifth prompt requesting a meta-meta- summary that summarizes those meta-summaries; anddisplaying the meta-meta-summary to the user.”
Taken individually, or as a whole with claim 1, these limitations describe the same mental process of summarizing research found in claim 1 with and additional iteration of summarization, which may still be performed in the human mind or with the aid of pen and paper. Accordingly, the claim is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim is not patent eligible.
Regarding claims 9-16, system claims 9-16 and method claims 1-8 are related as a method and system of using the same, with each system element’s function corresponding to the method step. Accordingly, claims 9-16 are similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied to claims 1-8.
Regarding claims 17-20, computer-readable medium claims 17-20 and method claims 1, 5, 7 and 8 are related as method and computer-readable medium for performing the same, with each computer-readable medium element’s function corresponding to the method step. Accordingly, claims 17-20 are similarly rejected under the same rationale as applied to claims 1, 5, 7 and 8.
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 1-7, 9-15 and 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication 2025/0298816 to Hunter et al. (hereinafter, "Hunter") and U.S. Patent 7,185,001 to Burdick et al. (hereinafter, "Burdick").
Regarding claims 1, 9 and 17, Hunter teaches a method, system and Computer-readable medium comprising: searching a database of documents, yielding a set of returned documents responsive to the query (paragraph [0028], "As an example when the document question answering system 101 provides a client-server solution, the user device 110 can submit a user query 126 to the document question answering system 101 regarding a document (e.g., an electronic document). In some cases the user query 126 can be included in a request that includes the document (e.g., a copy of the document 108). In other cases, the user query 126 can be included in a request that refers to the document (e.g., using a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) of the document). In some cases, the user query 126 relates to a set of multiple documents.");
for each document of a subset of the set of returned documents, sending a reduced-length version of that document to a first large language model (LLM) with a first prompt requesting a summary of that document, the reduced-length version having been processed using natural language processing (NLP) (paragraph [0030], "The document QA application can interact with various LLMs by providing LLM prompts that may be stored as prompts 129. For example, the document QA application 112 can submit the document 128 to the first LLM 114 along with a first prompt prompting the first LLM 114 to generate an outline of the document.");
in response to receiving the requested summaries of the subset of documents, sending the summaries of the subset of documents to a second LLM with a second prompt requesting a meta-summary that summarizes the summaries of the subset of documents (paragraph [0032], "The document QA application 112 can submit the user query 126, the document metadata 132, and the document outlines 130 to the third LLM 117 along with a third prompt prompting the third LLM 117 to generate a natural language response to the user query 126 based at least in part on the document metadata 132 and the document outlines 130."); and
displaying the meta-summary to the user (paragraph [0034], "The document QA application 112 can provide the natural language response 134 and the citation information 136 in a query response 138 to the user device 110 in response to the user query 126.").
While Hunter contemplates a user query relating to a plurality of documents, the explicit searching of a database is not disclosed. Burdick is introduced to teach a method for document search and summarization, disclosing at column 8, line 49, "Once document organizer processor 150 (FIG. 1) receives the user query at step 202, processor 150 may search for documents related to the query at step 204. Processor 150 may use available web search engines (e.g., Google.TM., Alta Vista.RTM., Excite.sup.SM, Lycos.RTM., etc.) to perform a search for URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) on the World Wide Web with the search query provided by the user. In one embodiment, a user may select at least one web search engine or a combination of search engines to perform a web search with the search query. In some other embodiments, document organizer processor 150 may use search module 154 to search the Internet, intranets, databases, storage devices, directories, folders, network drive paths, any suitable combination thereof, or any suitable document storage location."
Hunter and Burdick are considered analogous because they are each concerned with document summarization. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to have modified Hunter’s summarization with the search function of Burdick for the purpose of improving summary quality. Given that all the claimed elements were known in the prior art, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements by known methods with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results.
Regarding claims 2 and 10, Hunter further teaches a method and system wherein the second LLM is the first LLM (paragraph [0005], "Two or more of the first large language model, the second large language model, the third large language model, the fourth large language model, the fifth large language model, the sixth large language model, and the seventh large language models can be a same large language model.").
Regarding claims 3 and 11, Hunter further teaches a method and system wherein the second LLM is different than the first LLM (paragraph [0005], "Two or more of the first large language model, the second large language model, the third large language model, the fourth large language model, the fifth large language model, the sixth large language model, and the seventh large language models can be different large language models.").
Regarding claims 4 and 12, Hunter further teaches a method and system wherein the second LLM has a higher token input limit than the first LLM (paragraph [0043], "The outline generator LLM 214 may be selected, in part, based on having a relatively larger context window than other available LLMs. However, the document 204 may, for some requests, be larger than a maximum context window of the outline generator LLM 214."); and
sending the reduced-length version of each document to the first LLM includes, for each document, making a separate call to the first LLM including the reduced-length version of that document and the first prompt (paragraph [0043], "For such requests, the application 201 can split the document 204 into portions and prompt the outline generator LLM 214 to generate a respective primary outline 218 and a respective numerical outline 222 for each document portion. The application 201 can provide document-portion-related primary outlines and numerical outlines to an outline combiner LLM 230 along with an outline combine prompt 232 that prompts the outline combiner LLM 230 to combine the document-portion-relevant primary outlines and numerical outlines into a combined outline 234.").
Regarding claims 5, 13 and 18, Hunter further teaches a method, system and computer-readable medium wherein the meta-summary includes linked citations to each of the summaries (paragraph 0033], "The document QA application 112 can also generate citation information 136. For example, the document QA application 112 can correlate selected sentence(s) from the natural language response 134 to respective sentence(s) from the document 128.").
Regarding claims 6 and 14, Hunter does not explicitly disclose a database of related documents, however Burdick’s search and summarization includes the database of documents is a curated set of documents of particular relevance to the query (column 8, line 63, "Documents that may be related to the user's search query may be retrieved at step 206.").
Hunter and Burdick are considered analogous because they are each concerned with document summarization. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to have modified Hunter’s summarization with the document selection of Burdick for the purpose of improving summary quality. Given that all the claimed elements were known in the prior art, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements by known methods with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results.
Regarding claims 7, 15 and 19, Hunter further teaches a method, system and computer-readable medium wherein each document of the database has been pre-processed using NLP to produce a respective NLP-processed document of reduced size (paragraph [00043], "For such requests, the application 201 can split the document 204 into portions and prompt the outline generator LLM 214 to generate a respective primary outline 218 and a respective numerical outline 222 for each document portion."); and
sending the reduced-length version of each document to the first LLM includes sending the respective NLP-processed document of that document to the first LLM (paragraph [00043], "For such requests, the application 201 can split the document 204 into portions and prompt the outline generator LLM 214 to generate a respective primary outline 218 and a respective numerical outline 222 for each document portion.").
Claims 8, 16 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Hunter and Burdick as applied to claims 1, 9 and 17 above, and further in view of U.S. Patent Application 2019/0129942 to Seuss (hereinafter, "Seuss").
The applied reference has a common inventor and applicant with the instant application. Based upon the earlier effectively filed date of the reference, it constitutes prior art under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2).
This rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 might be overcome by: (1) a showing under 37 CFR 1.130(a) that the subject matter disclosed in the reference was obtained directly or indirectly from the inventor or a joint inventor of this application and is thus not prior art in accordance with 35 U.S.C.102(b)(2)(A); (2) a showing under 37 CFR 1.130(b) of a prior public disclosure under 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(B); or (3) a statement pursuant to 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) establishing that, not later than the effective filing date of the claimed invention, the subject matter disclosed and the claimed invention were either owned by the same person or subject to an obligation of assignment to the same person or subject to a joint research agreement. See generally MPEP § 717.02.
Regarding claims 8, 16 and 20, Hunter and Burdick have been shown to teach the core method of summarization: searching another database of documents, yielding another set of returned documents responsive to the query ( Burdick, column 8, line 49, "Once document organizer processor 150 (FIG. 1) receives the user query at step 202, processor 150 may search for documents related to the query at step 204. Processor 150 may use available web search engines (e.g., Google.TM., Alta Vista.RTM., Excite.sup.SM, Lycos.RTM., etc.) to perform a search for URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) on the World Wide Web with the search query provided by the user. In one embodiment, a user may select at least one web search engine or a combination of search engines to perform a web search with the search query. In some other embodiments, document organizer processor 150 may use search module 154 to search the Internet, intranets, databases, storage devices, directories, folders, network drive paths, any suitable combination thereof, or any suitable document storage location.");
for each other document of another subset of the other set of returned documents, sending a reduced-length version of that other document to the first LLM with a third prompt requesting a summary of that other document, the reduced-length version having been processed using NLP (Hunter, paragraph [0030], "The document QA application can interact with various LLMs by providing LLM prompts that may be stored as prompts 129. For example, the document QA application 112 can submit the document 128 to the first LLM 114 along with a first prompt prompting the first LLM 114 to generate an outline of the document."); and
in response to receiving the requested summaries of the other subset of documents, sending the summaries of the other subset of documents to the second LLM with a fourth prompt requesting another meta-summary that summarizes the summaries of the other subset of documents (Hunter, paragraph [0032], "The document QA application 112 can submit the user query 126, the document metadata 132, and the document outlines 130 to the third LLM 117 along with a third prompt prompting the third LLM 117 to generate a natural language response to the user query 126 based at least in part on the document metadata 132 and the document outlines 130.").
The combination of Hunter and Burdick does not explicitly teach providing summaries of summaries beyond the core method, and thus, Seuss is referenced to teach sending the meta-summary of the subset of documents and the meta-summary of the other subset of documents to the second LLM with a fifth prompt requesting a meta-meta-summary that summarizes those meta-summaries (paragraph [0046], "At step 220, a meta-document is generated from a plurality of document summaries of the plurality of documents. The meta-document may include all of the sentences of all of the document summaries of the documents on the topical document list," paragraph [0050], "At step 250, the plurality of meta-document sentences is ordered based on at least one relationship involving a respective meta-document sentence," and paragraph [0051], "At step 260, a meta-document summary (i.e., a search summary report) is generated from the ordered plurality of meta-document sentences. The meta-document summary includes the meta-document sentences most related to other meta-document sentences in the plurality of meta-document sentences."); and
displaying the meta-meta-summary to the user (paragraph [0054], "The search summary report may be transmitted to another component of the computer system, or to another system altogether via a computer network, for further processing, storage, or display to a user.").
Hunter, Burdick and Seuss are considered analogous because they are each concerned with document summarization. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to have modified the combined search and summarization method of Hunter and Burdick with the repeated summarization of Seuss’ search summary for the purpose of improving summary efficiency. Given that all the claimed elements were known in the prior art, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements by known methods with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
U.S. Patent 11,886,477 to Seuss et al. was filed in 2017 and teaches a method for creating search summaries including citations from searched documents.
U.S. Patent 11,860,914 to Qadrud-Din et al. teaches a method for providing a natural language summaries to a user query based on segmented documents.
U.S. Patent Application Publication 2024/0346249 to Ben-David et al. teaches a method for creating text suammries by pre-processing input text and prompting a language model for a summary.
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/SEAN THOMAS SMITH/Examiner, Art Unit 2659
/PIERRE LOUIS DESIR/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2659
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