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 .
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 obviousness-type 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); and 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 a nonstatutory double patenting ground provided the conflicting application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with this application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement.
Effective January 1, 1994, a registered attorney or agent of record may sign a terminal disclaimer. A terminal disclaimer signed by the assignee must fully comply with 37 CFR 3.73(b).
Claims 1-20 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-20 of US Pat. 12,373,492. Although the conflicting claims are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because they basically claim the same claimed invention.
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 non-patentable subject matter. The claimed invention is directed to one or more abstract ideas without significantly more. The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than judicial exception. The eligibility analysis in support of these findings is provided below.
Step 1:
The claimed method (1-7claims), system (claims 8-14), and non-transitory computer readable storage medium (claims 15-20) are directed to one of the eligible categories of subject matter and therefore satisfies step 1.
Step 2A, Prong One:
Independent claim 1 (8 and 15) recites the following limitations that can be practically performed in the mind and/or with a pen and a piece of paper:
Accessing a plurality of content items…
Step 2A, Prong Two:
The additional elements are:
Step 2A, Prong Two:
determining, using one or more processors, content-based signals indicating relationships among the plurality of content items;
determining, using the one or more processors, account-based signals indicating access patterns of the user account with respect to the plurality of content items;
generating, using a stack generation model of the content management system, a content stack comprising a subset of content items from the plurality of content items, the subset of content items selected based on relationships between the content-based signals and the account-based signals; and
providing the content stack for display via a graphical user interface of a client device associated with the user account.
The additional of aforementioned elements of dependent claims are directed to generic computer functions. As such, these additional elements are using generic computer functions as a tool to perform.
Step 2B:
For Step 2B, the additional elements, taken individually and in combination, do not result in the claim, as a whole, amounting to significantly more than the identified judicial exception. MPEP 2106.07(a)(III)(B) identifies the list of cases in MPEP 2106. 05(d)(II) as available bases. Taking these aforementioned additional elements as an ordered combination, these additional elements add nothing that is not already present when the elements are considered separately.
As per dependent claims 6-7, 9-14 and 16-20:
Step 2A, Prong Two:
Claims 6-7, 9-14 and 16-20 recited the additional element; however, the additional elements of dependent claims are directed to generic computer functions.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kumar (US
Pub. 2023/0251862) in view of Nudd et al. (US Pat. 12,135,942, hereinafter "Ni")..
Regarding claim 1 (claims 8 and 15), Kumar discloses a computer-implemented method comprising: accessing a plurality of content items associated with a user account within a content management system (¶ [0014], accessing data);
determining, using one or more processors, content-based signals indicating relationships among the plurality of content items (¶¶ [0014], [0035], determining data including activities of users’ accounts);
determining, using the one or more processors, account-based signals indicating access patterns of the user account with respect to the plurality of content items (¶¶ [0014][-0015], determining data including activities of users’ access patterns);
generating, using a stack generation model of the content management system, a content stack comprising a subset of content items from the plurality of content items, the subset of content items selected based on relationships between the content-based signals and the account-based signals (¶¶ [0014], [0035], generating graph and relationships based on the analyzed data); and
providing the content stack for display via a graphical user interface of a client device associated with the user account (Fig. 1, “24” display).
Kumar discloses generating and formulating graph, but does not explicitly disclose stack formation graph. However, Nudd, in the same field of endeavor, discloses stack formation graph (24: 15-29, a stack of topics).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate Nudd into Kumar to enhance processing subset of data to be analyzed and tracked.
Regarding claim 2, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein providing the content stack for display comprises formatting the plurality of content items in a ranked order based on a cosine similarity between a vector representation of a topic prompt and content item features derived from the content-based signals (Nudd, 21: 26-40, matrix similarity between the input text and the LDA model, and output a list of document ids sorted in a decreasing order of their similarity to the input text as well as the original topic id).
Regarding claim 3, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: monitoring user account activity to determine account-based signals comprising topic features derived from the user account activity (¶ [0031]); and determining, utilizing the topic features, the relationships between the content-based signals and the account-based signals (¶[0031] On-demand self-service).
Regarding claim 4, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein determining the account- based signals comprises identifying a frequency, a recency, or a duration of access for the plurality of content items by the user account (¶ [0014]).
Regarding claim 5, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein generating the content stack comprises, generating a structural representation of the content stack based on the content- based signals comprising an indication of a composition of the plurality of content items in relation to the account-based signals comprising content interaction data associated with the user account (Nudd, Fig. 17).
Regarding claim 6, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: receiving, from the client device, a user account interaction indicating a relevance for at least one content item in the content stack, and updating the stack generation model based on the relevance for the at least one content item (Nudd, 20: 20-35, updated the content/stack).
Regarding claim 7, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: generating feature vectors for each the plurality of content items comprising one or more attributes derived from the content-based signals and one or more attributes derived from the account-based signals (¶ [0019]; and generating the content stack utilizing the feature vectors (¶ [0019], featured vectors).
Regarding claim 9, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the system of claim 8, wherein determine the account-based signals comprises determine interaction patterns of the user account with other user accounts of a content management system (¶ [0019], access patterns).
Regarding claim 10, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the system of claim 8, wherein determine the content-based signals indicating the relationships between the plurality of content items comprises filter the plurality of content items based on a predetermined filtering logic (¶ [0093], filtering functions).
Regarding claim 11, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the system of claim 8, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the system to modify a composition of the organized content representation based on inputs from the client device (¶ [0054]).
Regarding claim 12, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the system of claim 8, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the system to utilize a machine-learning model to embed the plurality of content items into a latent vector space representing topics or descriptions of the plurality of content items (¶ [0024]; Nudd, 25:30-36).
Regarding claim 13, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the system of claim 8, wherein generating the organized content representation further comprises: utilizing a large language model to determine topic features for at least a portion of the plurality of content items (Nudd, 20: 26-40); and determining cosine similarities between the topic features and the plurality of content items (Nudd, 20: 26-40).
Regarding claim 14, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the system of claim 8, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the system to: generate a first personalization profile for a user of the user account corresponding to a first user account context associated with the user account (¶ [0035]); generate a second personalization profile for a user of the user account corresponding to a second user account context associated with the user account (¶ [0014] various relationships) ; generate the organized content representation for the first personalization profile; and generate an additional organized content representation for the second personalization profile (¶ [0103], to personalize content; Nudd, 5: 30-36, personalized contents).
Regarding claim 16, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein generate the content stack comprises utilize a machine-learning model to determine the relationships of the plurality of content items (Nudd, 20: 40-45).
Regarding claim 17, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the computing device to: access a topic prompt to perform a task, generate a content item, or retrieve the content item (Nudd, 25: 15-35); and generate the content stack based on content items of the plurality of content items that satisfy a similarity threshold with the topic prompt (Nudd, 25: 15-35).
Regarding claim 18, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the computing device to: filter the plurality of content items for inclusion in the content stack based on access permissions associated with the user account; generate a personalization profile for a user of the user account (¶ [0103], to personalize content; Nudd, 5: 30-36, personalized contents); and associate the personalization profile with a new user account of the content management system (Kumar, ¶ [0103], to personalize content; Nudd, 5: 30-36, personalized contents).
Regarding claim 19, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 15, wherein the instructions, when executed by the at least one processor, further cause the computing device to: determine a topic prompt representing an intent corresponding to the user account (Kumar, ¶ [0103], to personalize content; Nudd, 5: 30-36), and generate the content stack comprising a subset of the plurality of content items comprising at least a portion of plurality of content items that satisfy a similarity threshold to the topic prompt (Kumar, ¶ [0103], to personalize content; Nudd, 5: 30-36 and Nudd’s threshold).
Regarding claim 20, Kumar in view of Nudd discloses the non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 19, further comprising: determine, based on at least one of a change in the relationships between the plurality of content items or a change in the access patterns of the user account with the plurality of content items, an update to at least one of the content-based signals or the account-based signals (Nudd, 20: 20-35, updated the content/stack); generate, based on the update, an updated topic prompt representing an updated intent corresponding to the user account; and modify the content stack based on the update by modifying the content stack to comprise a subset of the plurality of content items that satisfy the similarity threshold with the updated topic prompt (Nudd, 20: 20-35, updated the content/stack).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TUANKHANH D PHAN whose telephone number is (571)270-3047. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri, 10:00am-18:00pm.
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, Boris Gorney can be reached on 571-270-5626. 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 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 or 571-272-1000.
/TUANKHANH D PHAN/ Examiner, Art Unit 2154
Prosecution Insights