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
The is a 35 USC 371 (National Stage Entry) application of PCT EP2023/071468, claiming priority to French application 2208230 filed 10 August 2022. The certified copy of the foreign priority application was received 07 February 2025.
Response to Amendment
The preliminary amendment of 07 February 2025 has been received and entered. Claims 1-10 are pending.
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 and 9 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 respect to Claim 1, “in response to a system event on said electronic terminal being detected” is unclear. This is a method claim with a series of steps, and while some amount of claiming the environment is reasonable, this limitation is not merely the environment. It is unclear if this is intended to a be a step where the system event occurs and then is detected, or merely a step of “detecting a system event on said electronic terminal”. Claims 2-7 inherit this indefiniteness from their parent claim; Claim 10 shares this indefiniteness.
Claim 9 is indefinite; it gives three alternatives, two of which appear to be parent elements that would include the device and one of which is recited separately from the device of the parent claim but is now apparently the same element. The claim should be rewritten either as a proper dependent further limiting Claim 8 or as independent Claim(s).
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 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a mental process without significantly more. The claim(s) recite(s) capturing the behavior of a computer program on a screen and learning from it. The three “obtaining” limitations amount to observing the screen of a computer and understanding the inputs to the computer such as the non-exclusive list of context data at p. 7 of the specification and the examples of system data (including the name of the program being used) at p. 6 of the specification. So one example would be observing what is displayed on a computer screen, observing the name of the computer program, observing what function a user calls/keyboard shortcut used, and learning the behavior of the computer system in response. This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the machine elements (the program, the screen, the pointing device, the knowledge base) amount to computer elements recited at a high level of generality. The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because they amount to an instruction to observe the operation of a computer and learn from it.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-4 and 6-10 as best understood is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Hinton et al., U.S. patent publication 2021/0055943.
With respect to claim 1, 8 and 10, Hinton et al. shows a method for constructing a knowledge base, said method being implemented by a construction device during use of an electronic terminal comprising:
in response to a system event on said electronic terminal is detected (Fig. 3, 304, “receive a sequence…”),
obtaining at least one position datum concerning a cursor, said cursor being associated with at least one pointing device of said electronic terminal ([0030], list of input devices, [0034, “The automation application 110 also records positions at which the sequence of inputs is received by the target application 108. More specifically, the automation application 110 may record the positions with respect to the display 122 (i.e., an input was received at a pixel (or a collection of pixels) on the display 122). “), and at least one digital image of a capture of at least a portion of a rendering of at least one screen of said electronic terminal (306, “record the…. Screen states”);
obtaining at least one system datum from said electronic terminal (306, “operating system processes”, also [0036] “ The automation application 110 also records operating system processes that are performed by the operating system 106 as the target application 108 receives each input…”, operating system hook functions, command line emulation protocol responses);
obtaining at least one context datum based on an analysis of all or part of said digital image ([0033], various information including screen size, window size, font size, font);
and updating said knowledge base with said at least one position datum, system datum and context datum (310, “store the macro in a data store”, also [0038-0039]).
With respect to Claim 2 see [0032] (mouse click).
With respect to Claim 3 see [0033] “If the target application 108 is not running in a full-screen mode, the screen state may also comprise the same display characteristics for the reduced-size display (window).” and “A screen state in the screen states 116 comprises a screen shot of the target application 108…”
With respect to Claim 4 see [0033] font and font size; also see [0082] “Rather, a natural user interface can rely on speech recognition, touch and stylus recognition, gesture recognition both on screen and adjacent to the screen, air gestures, head and eye tracking, voice and speech, vision, touch, gestures, machine intelligence, and so forth.”.
With respect to Claim 9 see [0022]; a smartphone is identified as a terminal (Instant specification at “Prior art” giving examples of terminals).
With respect to Claim 10 see [0075].
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.
Claim(s) 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hinton et al., above, in view of Kopuklu et al. “Real-time Hand Gesture Detection and Classification Using Convolutional Neural Networks”. Hinton et al. describes the elements of Claim 1 as outlined above. However, Hinton et al. does not describe a confidence score. Hinton does describe that gesture recognition may be a desirable input to capture. Kopuklu et al. teach that a typical image based gesture recognition system uses a confidence score to accurately identify gestures at p. 4 “3) Post processing” and p. 5 . “4) Single time activation.” When the device of Hinto et al. includes gesture recognition, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to (a) assign a confidence score to the recognition as taught by Kopuklu et al., and (b) not store data that corresponds to a low confidence score in gesture recognition in order to avoid adding bad or uncertain results to the data store.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Malamut ‘218 shows a macro recording arrangement that does not appear to include screen capture.
“JitBit Macro Recorder”, from https://www.jitbit.com/macro-recorder/, shows a system for capturing user events. A reliable date could not be obtained.
“Macro Recorder”, from Bartels Media at https://www.macrorecorder.com/, shows another system without an ascertainable date.
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/GREGORY A MORSE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2698
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