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 issued in response to Application filed April 29, 2025.
Claims 1-13 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on April 19, 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 § 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 5-7 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.
Claims 5 and 7 recite the limitation "the second taxonomy" in the claim; however, there is no prior mention of a second taxonomy within Independent claim 1. Thus, there is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 5 states “The method of claim 1, wherein the first taxonomy and/or the second taxonomy comprises…”; however, based on the dependency of claim 5, there is no prior mention of a second taxonomy and therefore anything that follows or is reliant upon the second taxonomy is deemed invalid. More specifically, Independent claim 1 only discusses a first taxonomy.
Claim 6 states “the specific first taxonomy and/or the specific second taxonomy”; however, it is unclear to the examiner if the cited “specific” first taxonomy and “specific” second taxonomy are the same first and second taxonomies as discussed within the preceding claims. If so, it is further unclear why they are now deem “specific” and if not, there is an antecedent basis issue as well as an indefinite issue due to the claims being unclear as to what the differences are between the two.
Claim 7 is rejected as being indefinite based on its dependency of claims 5 and 6.
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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, 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) 1-13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bohme (U.S. Patent Application No. 2021/0133172) in view of “OCEL Standard”; By: Ghahfarokhi; Published 2020; referred to hereinafter as ‘OCEL’.
Regarding Claim 1, Bohme discloses a computer-implemented method for generating a data model of recorded process data, wherein the recorded process data is a multidimensional data set which comprises data recorded during executions from processes and is extracted from at least one external computer system, wherein a process comprises a number of process steps, wherein a number of object instances participate in executing the number of process steps, wherein the method comprises:
Bohme teaches ontology based storage and retrieval technology that allows to include hierarchical and relational query concepts when retrieving the data from the system. Hierarchical in the context of the present method shall mean that extended fact relation fields (XFRF) are attached to and do only exist if a parent data element is present. Relational in the context of the present method shall mean that the XFRF data fields are composed into a relational data structure that reflects the structure of a given input dataset. Each XFRF may be connected to a taxonomy or ontology that defines its semantic context. For the sake of clarity, both the taxonomy or ontology must not be part of the XFR or xfactDB but will reside outside as an independent data structure. However, each XFRF has its taxonomy or ontology ancestor information included in the inverted index to speed-up semantic look-up operations (Figures 1-3 and 5; par [0012-0016], Bohme). Bohme also teaches Example 9: Data Model Complexity Considerations. If multiple complex structures similar to the one shown in Example 8, but different in their hierarchical composition of nested materials, parts and/or properties, are to be stored in a single xfactDB, then the data model needs to cover the data variability for different complex materials and their parts, as well as amounts of parts, properties of materials at each hierarchical level, and possibly related processes. The dependencies of each part to its upper level and of each property to its material or part at each level have also to be covered. This happens via a so-called “role” that is realized and corresponds to a hierarchical field name of an extended fact (par [0101-0103], Bohme).
OCEL teaches exchanging data between information systems and process mining analysis tools; wherein Object-Centric Event Logs (OCEL) are discussed beginning at conceptualization such that an OCEL contains events and objects related to a business process, such as Order-to-Cash (O2C) and Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) processes in ERP systems. Each event represents an execution record of an underlying business process. An event is associated with an identifier, an activity, and a timestamp. Also, the execution of an event involves a set of related objects. In this event, three objects (o1, i1, and i2) are involved in its execution. An event may involve several event attributes. Each event attribute has an attribute name and attribute value. Attribute names and attribute values are related to attribute type. Objects represent physical and informational entities composing business processes such as materials, documents, products, invoices, etc. Each object has an identifier and is associated with an object type. In the second row of Table 2, the object with identifier i1 is an item (i.e., object type). As shown in Figure 1, there exist many-to-many relationships between objects and events. Multiple objects can be involved in an event, and an object can be involved in many events (Section 2; OCEL). OCEL further teaches Meta-model for the OCEL that defines three classes (i.e., log, event, and object) (Section 4.1; OCEL). OCEL also teaches Serialization of the OCEL, wherein mapping (linking) is taught such that each event contains an identifier (with key id, and having type string), an activity (with key activity, and having type string), and a timestamp (with key timestamp, and having type date). Moreover, each event is associated with an object map and an attribute map and each object contains an identifier, is associated with an object type and to an attribute map (Section 5.1; OCEL).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate OCELs teachings into the Bohme system. A skilled artisan would have been motivated to combine in order to exchange data between information systems and process mining analysis tools; thus improving interoperability to support a widespread collection of languages.
Regarding Claim 2, the combination of Bohme in view of OCEL, disclose the method of claim 1, further comprising assigning a number of first pointers to the object type, wherein each first pointer refers to a single class of a respective first taxonomy (pg.4, 1st full paragraph; OCEL - Each object has an identifier and is associated with an object type. In the second row of Table 2, the object with identifier i1 is an item (i.e., object type)).
Claim 3 contains similar subject matter and features as claim 1 above; except instead of object type/information it is focused on event type/information (see similar section of OCEL above… along with pgs.15-16 and pg.18).
Claim 4 contains similar subject matter as claim 2 above; and is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 5, the combination of Bohme in view of OCEL, disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the first taxonomy and/or the second taxonomy comprises a tree structure, wherein the tree structure comprises a root node, a number of child nodes of the root node and a number of further child nodes of each child node, wherein in the root node, each child node and each further child node a respective class is stored in the first taxonomy or the second taxonomy, wherein each class
stored in a child node or a further child node comprises an attribute in which a reference to
its parent class is stored (Figure 5; par [0015], [0100-0101]; Bohme… also see pg.10, 1st section; OCEL - An element can be nested, i.e., a parent element can contain child elements.).
Regarding Claim 6, the combination of Bohme in view of OCEL, disclose the method of claim 5, wherein each class stored in a child node or a further child node of the specific first taxonomy and/or the specific second taxonomy is related through an inheritance relationship to its parent class (Figure 5; par [0015-0016], [0100-0101]; Bohme).
Regarding Claim 7, the combination of Bohme in view of OCEL, disclose the method of claim 6, wherein each class of the first taxonomy comprises a number of mandatory object type attributes and a number of optional object type attributes, wherein each class of the second taxonomy comprises a number of mandatory event type attributes and a number of optional event type attributes, wherein each class stored in a child node or a further child node of the respective first taxonomy and/or the respective second taxonomy inherits all attributes of its parent class (pg.8, Section 4.1; OCEL - an event contains required elements (e.g., id, activity, timestamp, and relevant objects) and possibly also optional elements (e.g., event attributes)… an object contains required (e.g., type) and optional (e.g., color and size) elements).
Regarding Claim 8, the combination of Bohme in view of OCEL, disclose the method of claim 1, further comprising storing a scope value in at least one attribute of the first data structure, wherein the scope value comprises a pointer into an emerging hierarchical structure (pg.15; Section 5.1; OCEL – the global with scope= ’log’; the global with scope= ’event’; the global with scope= ’object’).
Claim 9 contains similar subject matter as claims 3 and 8 above; and is rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding Claim 10, the combination of Bohme in view of OCEL, disclose the method of claim 8, wherein the scope value is a string comprising categorical data that is separated by a delimiter (pg.16; Listing 1: XML OCEL example; OCEL – example <global scope= “event”>).
Regarding Claim 11, the combination of Bohme in view of OCEL, disclose the method of claim 1, further comprising discovering a process graph from the object-centric data model, wherein the process graph is provided for an analysis of the recorded process data (pg.2, Section 1 and pg.3, Section 2; OCEL - The purpose of the OCEL standard is to provide a general standard to interchange event data with multiple case notions. The goal is to exchange data between information systems and process mining analysis tools.).
Regarding Claim 12, the combination of Bohme in view of OCEL, disclose the method of Claim 9, wherein the scope value is a string comprising categorical data that is separated by a delimiter (pg.16; Listing 1: XML OCEL example; OCEL – example <global scope= “event”>).
Claim 13 contains similar subject matter as claim 11 above; and is rejected under the same rationale.
Points of Contact
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHELCIE L DAYE whose telephone number is (571) 272-3891. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 7:30-4:00pm. 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, Apu Mofiz can be reached on 571-272-4080. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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Chelcie Daye
Patent Examiner
Technology Center 2100
June 13, 2026
/CHELCIE L DAYE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2161
Prosecution Insights