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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This action is in response to the application filed on 03/31/2025, in which claims 1-20 are presented for the examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) submitted on 03/31/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the IDS statement is being considered by the examiner.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. 10-2024-0071111, filed on 30 May 2024.
Drawings
The drawings filed on 03/31/2025 are accepted by the examiner.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 5-9, 12, 14-18, 20 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 101, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. § 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.
As to claim 1:
Step 1 Analysis: Is the claim to a process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter? See MPEP § 2106.03.
Yes, the claim is to a process.
Step 2A Prong One Analysis: Does the claim recite an abstract idea, law of nature, or natural phenomenon? See MPEP § 2106.04(II)(A)(1).
The claim recites an abstract idea in the form of mental process. The limitations of monitoring an event in a system, analyzing a log to determine whether the event is a system incident, searching an internal knowledge base for causes of the system incident event and remedial actions, prompting a first inquiry including the log and a search result from the searching to a first LLM, generating a response comprising remedial actions for the system incident event by the LLM. Such activities can be practically performed in human mind or with pen or paper and therefore constitute a mental process.
Step 2A Prong Two Analysis: Does the claim recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application? See MPEP § 2106.04(d).
The additional elements including a processor, an internal knowledge base, retrial-augmented generation, and a first LLM merely use a generic computer components as tools to perform the abstract idea. The claim does not recite any improvement to computer functionality, any particular machine integral to the claim, any transformation of an article or any other meaningful limitation beyond generally linking the abstract idea to a technological environment.
Step 2B Analysis: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? See MPEP § 2106.05.
The processor, knowledge base, retrieval-augmented generation technique, and LLM are recited at a high level of generality and perform their ordinary and expected functions of storing information, retrieving information, processing information and generating output. Viewed individually or as a combination, these elements amount to no more than implementing the abstract idea on generic computer technology and therefore do not provide an invention concept.
Accordingly, claim 1 is directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. Dependent claims 2-9 are rejected for the same reasons set forth with respect to claim 1.
As to claim 10:
Step 1 Analysis: Is the claim to a process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter? See MPEP § 2106.03.
Yes, the claim is to a machine.
Step 2A Prong One Analysis: Does the claim recite an abstract idea, law of nature, or natural phenomenon? See MPEP § 2106.04(II)(A)(1).
The claim recites an abstract idea in the form of mental process. The limitations of monitoring an event in a system, analyzing a log to determine whether the event is a system incident, searching an internal knowledge base for causes of the system incident event and remedial actions, prompting a first inquiry including the log and a search result from the searching to a first LLM, generating a response comprising remedial actions for the system incident event by the LLM. Such activities can be practically performed in human mind or with pen or paper and therefore constitute a mental process.
Step 2A Prong Two Analysis: Does the claim recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application? See MPEP § 2106.04(d).
The additional elements including a processor, an internal knowledge base, retrial-augmented generation, and a first LLM merely use a generic computer components as tools to perform the abstract idea. The claim does not recite any improvement to computer functionality, any particular machine integral to the claim, any transformation of an article or any other meaningful limitation beyond generally linking the abstract idea to a technological environment.
Step 2B Analysis: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? See MPEP § 2106.05.
The processor, knowledge base, retrieval-augmented generation technique, and LLM are recited at a high level of generality and perform their ordinary and expected functions of storing information, retrieving information, processing information and generating output. Viewed individually or as a combination, these elements amount to no more than implementing the abstract idea on generic computer technology and therefore do not provide an invention concept.
Accordingly, claim 10 is directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. Dependent claims 11-18 are rejected for the same reasons set forth with respect to claim 10.
As to claim 19:
Step 1 Analysis: Is the claim to a process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter? See MPEP § 2106.03.
Yes, the claim is to a manufacture or composition of matter.
Step 2A Prong One Analysis: Does the claim recite an abstract idea, law of nature, or natural phenomenon? See MPEP § 2106.04(II)(A)(1).
The claim recites an abstract idea in the form of mental process. The limitations of monitoring an event in a system, analyzing a log to determine whether the event is a system incident, searching an internal knowledge base for causes of the system incident event and remedial actions, prompting a first inquiry including the log and a search result from the searching to a first LLM, generating a response comprising remedial actions for the system incident event by the LLM. Such activities can be practically performed in human mind or with pen or paper and therefore constitute a mental process.
Step 2A Prong Two Analysis: Does the claim recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application? See MPEP § 2106.04(d).
The additional elements including a processor, an internal knowledge base, retrial-augmented generation, and a first LLM merely use a generic computer components as tools to perform the abstract idea. The claim does not recite any improvement to computer functionality, any particular machine integral to the claim, any transformation of an article or any other meaningful limitation beyond generally linking the abstract idea to a technological environment.
Step 2B Analysis: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception? See MPEP § 2106.05.
The processor, knowledge base, retrieval-augmented generation technique, and LLM are recited at a high level of generality and perform their ordinary and expected functions of storing information, retrieving information, processing information and generating output. Viewed individually or as a combination, these elements amount to no more than implementing the abstract idea on generic computer technology and therefore do not provide an invention concept.
Accordingly, claim 19 is directed to patent-ineligible subject matter. Dependent claim 20 is rejected for the same reasons set forth with respect to claim 19.
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 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 of this title, 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-2, 4, 10-11, 13, 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Han et al. (US 2024/0346306, referred herein after Han) in view of Bramble (US 2022/0382620, referred herein after Bramble).
As per claim 1, 10, 19, Han discloses a processor-implemented method, the method comprising:
monitoring an event in a system ([0005], monitoring an information technology (IT) environment and detecting incident);
analyzing a log of the event to determine whether the event is a system incident (Fig. 4, step 404, [0029], [0076], a system/service incident, scheduled maintenance, or a support operation);
searching, responsive to the event being determined to be a system incident event, an internal knowledge base for causes of the system incident event and remedial actions for the system incident event, based on retrieval-augmented generation (Fig. 7, step 704, [0100], [0080], The resolution detection module 406 can detect a resolution from data indicative of a list of available runbooks or automations viewed by the SRE, and what keywords the SRE uses to search for a resolution that are also included in the incident description. The correlation module 408 can correlate the incident viewed by the user with the resolution that the SRE ultimately navigated to after viewing the incident information);
Han does not specifically discloses prompting a first inquiry, the first inquiry including the log and a search result from the searching to a first LLM; and generating a first response comprising remedial actions for the system incident event by the first LLM, based on the first inquiry and the search result;
However, Bramble discloses prompting a first inquiry, the first inquiry including the log and a search result from the searching to a first LLM; and (Fig. 6, steps 604, [0057]-[0060]);
generating a first response comprising remedial actions for the system incident event by the first LLM, based on the first inquiry and the search result (Fig. 6, step 606, [0058], remedial action performed);
Therefore it would have been obvious to the one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate teaching of Bramble’s method to provide self-healing data pipelines in cloud computing environment into Han’s automated generation of training data for an artificial-intelligence based incident resolution system because one of the ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to produce a first response that is both contextually accurate and ready for immediate remediation.
As per claim 2, 11, Bramble discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising:
prompting, in a first case that the generated first response does not satisfy a predetermined reference, a second inquiry, the second inquiry including the log to a second LLM; and ([0067]-[0070]);
generating a second response comprising remedial actions for the system incident event by the second LLM, based on the second inquiry ([0070], The trained machine-learning model can analyze the new data and provide a result that includes a classification of the new data ).
As per claim 4, 13, Han discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising: collecting metrics of the system related to the system incident event between the analyzing the log and the prompting the first inquiry, wherein the first LLM is configured to further generate status of the system related to the system incident event, based on the metrics ([0028], [0032], [0066], collecting and analyzing system metrics).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See form 892.
Wolff teaches a method for receiving a machine-generated alert indicating a data outlier for a physical asset and obtaining a dataset including observed data for the physical asset within a predefined temporal window of the machine-generated alert.
Poomari teaches a method for providing informative output from extracted features of a raw dataset.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KAMINI B PATEL whose telephone number is (571)270-3902. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8-4:30.
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, Ashish Thomas can be reached on 571-272-0631. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/KAMINI B PATEL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2114
Prosecution Insights