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
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 4/22/2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Double Patenting
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13.
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The actual filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/applying-online/eterminal-disclaimer.
Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of US Pat. 12,308,987. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because they are directed to substantially similar methods, systems, and/or mediums, for example contrast claim 1 with claim 1 ‘987:
Instant Claim 1
‘987 claim 1
A method comprising:
A method comprising:
detecting a phrase based on a real-time transcription and discussion points of a conference;
determining a topic based on keywords within a neighboring word range of a phrase detected based on a conference;
determining a topic based on keywords within a neighboring word range of the phrase;
determining that the topic of the conference is unrelated to the discussion points of the conference by processing the transcription using a machine learning (ML) model trained for contextual awareness;
determining that the topic of the conference is unrelated to the discussion points of the conference by processing the real-time transcription using a machine learning (ML) model trained for contextual awareness;
transmitting a prompt to participants related to the topic to confirm that the topic is unrelated to the discussion points;
generating a future discussion point based on the topic for a future conference.
generating a future discussion point based on the topic responsive to receiving one or more confirmation responses; and adding a future conference including the future discussion point to respective calendars of the participants related to the topic.
That is, the differences between the claims would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art in that the scope of the instant invention overlaps with the scope of the patent. Further, instant claims 2-20, correspond similarly to subject matter of ‘987 claims 2-20. Therefore, if a patent were to be granted, it may result in an improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” of the subject matter and may lead to possible harassment by multiple assignees.
Claims 1-20 are rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of US Pat. 11,916,687. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because they are directed to substantially similar methods, systems, and/or media; see particularly the rejections above and further the Terminal Disclaimer between US Pat. 11,916,687 and US Pat. 12,308,987 and the accompanying Double Patenting rejections presented in the case history of Pat. 12,308,987.
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 9-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claims 9-14 are directed systems comprising a server that when interpreted in light of the specification may read on software alone which is non- statutory. In order to comply, the claimed systems must explicitly comprise hardware (e.g. a processor, memory) so they may not be reasonably be interpreted as software alone.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-4, 6, 7, and 9-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Allen et al (US Pub. No. 2020/0160278), hereafter, “Allen,” in view of Abuelsaad et al (US Pub. No. 2014/0164510; cited on IDS), hereafter, “Abuelsaad.”
As to claim 9, Allen discloses a system comprising: a server configured to (Abstract and Fig. 1):
determine a topic based on keywords within a neighboring word range of a phrase detected based on a conference ([0049], “Embodiments determine that John is staying on topic, based on the sentences with identified keywords in his speech and the keywords in Judith's speech. Two nearby sentences, referred to as “sentence pairs” may be analyzed to determine if they are deviatory or non-deviatory. The keywords may be compared with one another, and to other words, in corpus (170 of FIG. 1) to determine that the keywords are related to the same topic. The corpus may include dictionary definitions, a thesaurus, and/or an antonym dictionary, etc. John's speech has a low deviation score, based on analysis of sentence pairs which indicate that the current discussion within the meeting is related to the agenda, and therefore he is staying on topic.”);
process the transcription using a machine learning (ML) model trained for contextual awareness to determine that the topic of the conference is unrelated to the discussion points of the conference ([0078]-[0086] and [0090]-[0092]); and
identify a future discussion point based on the topic for a future conference ([0056], particularly, “The corpus may include dictionary definitions, a thesaurus, and/or an antonym dictionary, etc. John's speech has an elevated deviation score, which indicates that the keywords in his speech are related, but not directly relevant to, the agenda topic. Accordingly, this topic may be “parked” in a “parking lot” so that it may be returned to at a later time, such as at the end of the meeting, or in another meeting at another time.”)
However, Allen does not explicitly disclose generating a future discussion point based on the topic for a future conference. Rather, Allen has a “parking lot” with the topic that may be returned to in another meeting, but does not specifically indicate that the discussion point for a future conference is actually generated as part of the process.
But, Abuelsaad discloses a system configured to generate a future discussion point based on a topic for a future conference ([0031], particularly, “If an agenda topic is determined to be unfinished at the conclusion of the meeting, the meeting management engine (100) reschedules the unfinished meeting agenda topics for a later meeting. In the example of FIG. 1, the third agenda topic (112) is classified as unfinished because it was still in progress at the conclusion of the meeting. Thus, the topic is likely to need additional discussion.”)
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad in order to automatically create meetings so as to provide time in future meetings for unfinished topics.
As to claim 1 and 15, they are rejected by a similar rationale to that set forth in claim 9’s rejection.
As to claim 2, the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 9’s rejection further disclose detecting the phrase based on a transcription and discussion points of the conference (Allen, [0056]-[0061] and Abuelsaad, [0024]).
As to claims 3, 11, and 17, the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 9’s rejection further disclose determining the topic is based on a keyword that references one or more subjects (Allen, [0056]-[0061] and Abuelsaad, [0024]).
As to claims 4, 12, and 18, the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 9’s rejection further disclose the one or more subjects is based on a plan for the conference (Allen, [0056]-[0061] and Abuelsaad, [0024]).
As to claims 6 and 14, the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 9’s rejection further disclose determining the topic includes performing a semantic analysis on the transcription (Allen, [0078]-[0086], [0090]-[0092] and Abuelsaad, [0024]).
As to claim 7, the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 9’s rejection further disclose determining the topic includes performing a semantic analysis on the transcription when a threshold is met for a duration of time that a keyword or phrase is not detected (Allen, [0078]-[0086], [0090]-[0092] and Abuelsaad, [0024]).
As to claims 10 and 16, the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 9’s rejection further disclose the ML model is configured to detect that a further discussion of the topic is to be left for a later time (Allen, [0056] and Abuelesaad, [0031]).
As to claim 13 and 19, the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad as combined for the same reasons set forth in claim 9’s rejection further disclose the one or more subjects is learned from a previous conference plan (Allen, [0056] and Abuelesaad, [0031]).
Claims 5, 8, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Allen and Abuelsaad in further view of Vangala et al (US Pub. No. 2022/0284402; cited on IDS), hereafter, “Vangala.”
As to claims 5 and 20, the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad disclose the parent claim but do not disclose including an audio portion of the conference in respective calendars.
However, Vangala discloses including an audio portion of a conference in respective calendars ([0009], particularly, "Based upon the one or more keywords and the identifier for the user, the Al personalization application obtains identifiers for one or more invitees (or potential invitees) for the meeting and/or computer-readable content (e.g., a document, a spreadsheet, a slideshow presentation, an email, a copy of a real-time message, an audio recording, a video recording, etc.) that is to be (or that may be) included in an electronic invitation for the meeting via the user graph for the user." And further, [0089], particularly, "The computing device 1100 may be used in a system that identifies invitees for a meeting and/or identifies computer-readable content that is to be included in an electronic invitation for the meeting.. In addition to storing executable instructions, the memory 1104 may also store user graphs, tenancy graphs, vector representations of graphs, contextual data, audio-visual recordings of electronic meetings, transcripts of electronic meetings, computer-readable content (e.g., documents, emails, and so forth), etc."; see [0007] for the disclosure of calendars).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective to filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad with Vangala in order to provide more relevant information to participants of meetings so as to conduct more productive meetings.
As to claim 8, the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad disclose the parent claim but do not disclose including a video portion of the conference associated with the future discussion point in respective calendars.
However, Vangala discloses including a video portion of the conference associated with the future discussion point in respective calendars ([0009], particularly, "Based upon the one or more keywords and the identifier for the user, the Al personalization application obtains identifiers for one or more invitees (or potential invitees) for the meeting and/or computer-readable content (e.g., a document, a spreadsheet, a slideshow presentation, an email, a copy of a real-time message, an audio recording, a video recording, etc.) that is to be (or that may be) included in an electronic invitation for the meeting via the user graph for the user." And further, [0089], particularly, "The computing device 1100 may be used in a system that identifies invitees for a meeting and/or identifies computer-readable content that is to be included in an electronic invitation for the meeting…In addition to storing executable instructions, the memory 1104 may also store user graphs, tenancy graphs, vector representations of graphs, contextual data, audio-visual recordings of electronic meetings, transcripts of electronic meetings, computer-readable content (e.g., documents, emails, and so forth), etc."; see [0007] for the disclosure of calendars).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective to filing date of the application to combine the teachings of Allen and Abuelsaad with Vangala in order to provide more relevant information to participants of meetings so as to conduct more productive meetings.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to THOMAS J DAILEY whose telephone number is (571)270-1246. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30am-6:00pm.
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/THOMAS J DAILEY/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2458
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