DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Introductory Remarks
This action is in response to communications filed on 15 October 2025. Claim(s) 1-20 is/are presently pending in the application, of which, claim(s) 1, 8, and 15 is/are presented in independent form.
This application properly claims benefit, as a continuation, of U.S. Application Nos. 63/387,878 and 18/173,169 filed on 16 December 2022 and 23 February 2023, respectively.
No IDS has been received.
Examiner’s Note
The rejections below group claims that may not be identical, but whose language and scope are so substantively similar as to lend themselves to grouping, in the interests of clarity and conciseness. Any citation to the instant specification herein is made to the PGPub version (if applicable). The examiner notes that no statement has been entered regarding the inventorship of individual claims as required under 37 CFR 1.56, and therefore assumes that all claims have the same inventorship or are directed to inventions that were commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the 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 15-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because said claims are directed to a machine-storage medium, but both said claims and the respective specification (paragraph 0095 describes various examples of what this may include, but does not limit it to a non-transitory embodiment. See generally 0095-97) fail to disclose whether said machine-storage medium is limited to a non- transitory medium or transitory propagating signal. Reading said claims under the broadest reasonable interpretation machine-storage medium is considered to read on a transitory propagating signal. See the "Subject Matter Eligibility of Computer Readable Media" (1351 OG 212 - Feb. 23, 2010); see also Ex Parte Mewherter, 107 USPQ2d 1857 (2013). A claim directed to only signals per se is not a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter and therefore is not directed to statutory subject matter. A claim reciting only a musical composition, literary work, compilation of data, signal or legal document per se does not appear to be a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. See MPEP § 2106. Thus, both said claims and said specification fail to define said machine-storage medium to be statutory.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
The claim(s) recite(s) mental process steps of receiving and processing data. In this analysis, only those claim limitations stipulated as additional elements are considered to be limitations distinct from the abstract idea itself.
With respect to the independent claims, claim 1 is representative. Claim 1 recites, “receiving training input data comprising tuples of unstructured questionnaire and completion data sets, tuples of unstructured questionnaire and structured query data sets, questionnaire completion model parameters, and structured query model parameters”, which is merely receiving data. The claim then recites, “training a questionnaire completion model using the tuples of unstructured questionnaire and completion data sets and the questionnaire completion model parameters”, “training a structured query model using the tuples of unstructured questionnaire and structured query data sets and the structured query model parameters”, “adapting the questionnaire completion model parameters based on input-output training pairings of unstructured questionnaires and completions”, and “adapting the structured query model parameters based on input-output training pairings of unstructured questionnaires and structured queries”, which is merely processing the input data. This closely parallels the holding of Electric Power Group v. Alstom, S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353-54, 119 USPQ2d 1739, 1741-42 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
There are no additional elements in the claim. Therefore, the judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application nor can it amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. Thus, the claims are patent-ineligible.
The other independent claims add generic computing components in the form of “at least one processor” (claim 8), “at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the machine to perform operations” (claim 8), and “a machine-storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operation” (claim 15). The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the additional elements amount to nothing more than implementation of the abstract idea in a computer environment and/or is merely using a computer as a tool to perform the concept. See MPEP 2016.04(d)(I) and 2106.05(f). These claims does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above, the additional elements amount to nothing more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer component(s). These cannot provide an inventive concept, and thus the claims are patent-ineligible.
The dependent claims add nothing more than additional abstract idea, which again do nothing to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TYLER J TORGRIMSON whose telephone number is (571)270-5550. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 9 am - 5:30 pm.
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/TYLER J TORGRIMSON/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2165
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