Patent Application 18315530 - PROCESSING DATA IN A DATA FORMAT WITH KEY-VALUE - Rejection

Patent Application 18315530 - PROCESSING DATA IN A DATA FORMAT WITH KEY-VALUE

Title: PROCESSING DATA IN A DATA FORMAT WITH KEY-VALUE PAIRS

Application Information

• Invention Title: PROCESSING DATA IN A DATA FORMAT WITH KEY-VALUE PAIRS
• Application Number: 18315530
• Submission Date: 2025-05-22T00:00:00.000Z
• Effective Filing Date: 2023-05-11T00:00:00.000Z
• Filing Date: 2023-05-11T00:00:00.000Z
• National Class: 707
• National Sub-Class: 741000
• Examiner Employee Number: 94974
• Art Unit: 2163
• Tech Center: 2100

Rejection Summary

• 102 Rejections: 0
• 103 Rejections: 1

Cited Patents

The following patents were cited in the rejection:

• US 0309549🔗
• US 0211572🔗

Office Action Text

    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 .

Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 1/16/2025 has been entered.

Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 1/16/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
101 Rejection
	Applicant states (pp. 12) that the claimed invention is not directed to an abstract idea falling within the category of “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity”. However, the claims are directed instead to an abstract idea as a mental process.
	Applicant further states (pp. 13) that the claimed invention is integrated into a practical application by including additional elements that apply the judicial exception in some other meaningful way. Examiner respectfully disagrees.
The additional elements included in independent claims, e.g., “processor”, “storage media” and "instructions", are high-level recitations of generic computer components and functions that represent mere instructions to apply on a computer. Viewing the additional limitations together and the claim as a whole, nothing provides integration into a practical application.
Applicant further states (pp. 15) that the claimed subject matter improves medical technology. Examiner respectfully disagrees.
All elements of independent claims are either mentally performable or high-level recitations of generic computer components and functions. They do not add significantly more or provide any "inventive concept".
	In summary, claims 1-20 are not eligible.

103 Rejection
	Applicant states (pp. 17) that the cited prior art of record combined does not teach the amended claim 1. Examiner respectfully disagrees.
	Claim 1 recites three original limitations “extracting”, “reorganizing” and “grouping” and one amended limitation “determining” incorporated from claim 3. The original limitations are taught by combining Xu and Beyer, while the amended limitation is taught by combining Xu and Beyer with Yueh.
	In summary, the cited prior art of record combined teaches the argued limitations of independent claims 1, 10 and 19.

Claim Objections
Claims 9 and 18 are objected to because of the following informalities: the claim sentence does not end with a period. Appropriate correction is required.

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.

Claims 1, 10 and 19 recite the limitation "the reference" in “the reference to the reused part”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.

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 an abstract idea as a mental process without significantly more.
Claims 1, 10 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Step 1
Claim 1 recites “A computer-implemented method”.
Claim 10 recites “A computer system” comprising computer processors, and thus is not directed to software per se.
Claim 19 recites “A computer program product” comprising computer-readable storage media. According to the instant specification (spec. [0019]), a computer readable storage medium is not to be construed as storage in the form of transitory signals per se.
Therefore, all three claims are directed to a statutory category.
Step 2A – Prong One
	Claims 1, 10 and 19 recite the following limitations directed to an abstract idea:
“extracting all keys from…data objects of the data, wherein duplicated keys are removed” recites an abstract idea as a mental process. One can mentally observe or evaluate to extract a key simply by identifying a piece of data from a data object.
“reorganizing the data…into a format with a key portion followed by a value portion, wherein the extracted keys are arranged…in a predetermined order, and the values…are arranged…in…the order of the keys” recites an abstract idea as a mental process. One can mentally evaluate or judge to arrange extracted keys in an order simply by sorting the keys.
“grouping the values corresponding to each of the extracted keys…into a respective value groups…arranged in respective value partitions of the value portion in the order…of the keys” recites an abstract idea as a mental process. One can mentally evaluate or judge to group and partition values sharing the same key, and to sort the resulting groups in the same order as the corresponding keys.
“determining a reused part…wherein the reused part…is replaced by the reference to the reused part” recites an abstract idea as a mental process. One can mentally evaluate or judge to replace copies of a value by references to a single copy of the value.
Step 2A – Prong Two
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application.
Claims 1, 10 and 19 include addition elements “processor”, “storage media” and "instructions", which are high-level recitations of generic computer components and functions that represent mere instructions to apply on a computer per MPEP §2106.05(f).
Viewing the additional limitations together and the claim as a whole, nothing provides integration into a practical application.
Step 2B
The conclusions on the mere instructions to apply the abstract idea using generic computer components and functions carry over and do not add significantly more or provide any "inventive concept".

In summary, claims 1, 10 and 19 are not eligible. Claims 2-9, 11-18 and 20 depend on claims 1, 10 and 19 respectively and recite the same abstract idea.
Step 2A Prong One
Claims 2 and 11 recite sorting value groups in the same order as the corresponding keys. Claims 3 and 12 recite reuse shared values among different keys by storing and referencing a single copy of the shared value. Claims 4 and 13 recite storing single copies of shared values in reused-part partitions. Claims 5 and 14 recite replacing shared values in the value portion by referencing single copies of shared values in reused-part partitions. Claims 6, 15 and 20 recite using a search keyword to match keys in a range of the sorted list of keys. Claims 7 and 16 recite sorting keys in the same order as traversing the leaf nodes of a tree structure.
Step 2A Prong Two
Claims 9 and 18 recite additional element “JSON”, which is a high-level recitation of generic computer components and functions.
Step 2B
Claim 8 recites transmitting data in the reorganized format, which qualifies as “i. Receiving or transmitting data over a network”, and is recognized by the courts as well-understood, routine, and conventional per MPEP §2106.05(d)(II).
Claim 17 recites storing data in the reorganized format, which qualifies as “iv. Storing and retrieving information in memory”, and is recognized by the courts as well-understood, routine, and conventional per MPEP §2106.05(d)(II).
In summary, these dependent claims do not add any additional elements sufficient to make the claims non-abstract. Therefore, they are not eligible accordingly.

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.

Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Xu et al. US patent application 2022/0309549 [herein “Xu”], in view of Beyer et al. US patent application 2010/0211572 [herein “Beyer”], and further in view of Yueh. US patent 8,190,835 [herein “Yueh”].
Claim 1 recites “A computer-implemented method for processing data in a data format with key-value pairs, comprising: extracting all keys from a plurality of data objects of the data, wherein duplicated keys are removed such that only one of the same keys remains;”
Xu automatically converts unstructured documents (i.e., data objects) into lists of structured key-value pairs (i.e., data format) [0030], leveraging machine-learned detection models to accurately identify key-value pairs [0032].
Claim 1 further recites “reorganizing the data in the data format into a format with a key portion followed by a value portion, wherein the extracted keys are arranged in the key portion in a predetermined order, and”.
In Xu, a key detection model identifies a set of keys (i.e., key portion), a value detection model identifies a set of values (i.e., value portion), and a key-value pair is detected by a match score exceeding a threshold [0065]. The detected (i.e., extracted) keys are ordered (i.e., arranged) by their visual appearance in the document (i.e., predetermined order) [0047], based on which their matching (i.e., corresponding) values can be ordered (i.e., reorganized) accordingly.
Xu does not disclose limitation “the values of each of the plurality of data objects are arranged in the value portion in an order corresponding to the order of the keys, grouping the values corresponding to each of the extracted keys for the plurality of data objects into a respective value group, wherein the respective value groups are arranged in respective value partitions of the value portion in the order corresponding to the order of the keys; and”.
However, Beyer teaches a JSON document as a list of name-value pairs (i.e., key-value pairs), where a value is a JSON object that can be an atom, an array of values, or a nested JSON object (Beyer: [0005]). Each name in a name-value pair is unique (i.e., only one of the same keys remains) within the document (Beyer: [0006]), because two name-value pairs (n,v1) and (n,v2) with the same name can be equivalently represented (i.e., grouped) as one name-value pair (n,[v1,v2]), whose value is an array (i.e., partition) of values in the same order as that of the corresponding name-value pairs.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Beyer to Xu. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to adopt the nested JSON object model of Beyer to represent the key-value pairs extracted from unstructured documents by Xu for better indexing and searching.
Xu and Beyer do not disclose limitation “determining a reused part shared by the values of different data objects of the plurality of data objects; wherein the reused part of the values sharing the reused part in the value portion is replaced by the reference to the reused part.”
However, Yueh deduplicates redundant data globally across files in a shared storage architecture (Yueh: 2:64-66). Yueh breaks (i.e., partitions) each file (i.e., data object) or other digital sequence (i.e., portion) into blocks (i.e., values) of a fixed or variable size (Yueh: 7:59-62), and hash each block. A new block is duplicate of an existing block if they have the same hash, in which case the new block is replaced with a pointer (i.e., reference) to a single (i.e., shared) instance of the block (i.e., reused part) in storage (Yueh: 3:9-21). A hash recipe is used to reconstruct (i.e., arrange) a file from the list of hashes of blocks in the file (Yueh: 6:64-7:6).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Yueh to Xu and Beyer. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to utilize Yueh to minimize data redundancy globally across the JSON documents of Xu and Beyer.
Claims 10 and 19 are analogous to claim 1, and are similarly rejected.

Claim 2 recites “The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the respective value groups are arranged in the value portion in the order corresponding to the order of the keys.”
Xu orders (i.e., arranges) the detected (i.e., extracted) keys by their visual appearance in the document (i.e., data object) [0047], based on which their matching (i.e., corresponding) values (i.e., value portion) can be ordered accordingly.
Xu and Beyer teach claim 1, where a JSON document in Beyer is a list of name-value pairs, and a value is a JSON object which can be an atom, an array (i.e., group) of values, or a nested JSON object (Beyer: [0005]).
Claim 11 is analogous to claim 2, and is similarly rejected.

Claim 3 recites “The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the value portion comprises a reused-part partition in which the reused part is arranged in a position corresponding to a reference to the reused part.”
Xu, Beyer and Yueh teach claim 1, where Yueh deduplicates redundant data globally across files in a shared storage architecture (Yueh: 2:64-66). Yueh breaks (i.e., partitions) each file or other digital sequence (i.e., value portion) into blocks of a fixed or variable size (Yueh: 7:59-62), and hash each block. A new block is duplicate of an existing block if they have the same hash, in which case the new block is replaced with a pointer (i.e., reference) to a single (i.e., shared) instance of the block (i.e., reused part) in storage (Yueh: 3:9-21). A hash recipe is used to reconstruct (i.e., arrange in position) a file from the list of hashes of blocks in the file (Yueh: 6:64-7:6).
Claim 12 is analogous to claim 3, and is similarly rejected.

Claim 4 recites “The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein the reused part is arranged in the reused-part partition as one of a list of reused parts shared by the values of the different data objects, and the reference to the reused part comprises the position of the reused part within the list of the reused-part partition.”
Xu, Beyer and Yueh teach claim 3, where Yueh breaks (i.e., partitions) a file (i.e., data object) or other digital sequence into blocks (Yueh: 7:59-62), and hash each block (i.e., value). A new block is duplicate of an existing block if they have the same hash, in which case the new block is replaced with a pointer (i.e., reference) to a single (i.e., shared) instance of the block (i.e., reused part) in storage (Yueh: 3:9-21). A hash recipe is used to reconstruct (i.e., arrange in position) a file from the list of hashes of blocks in the file (Yueh: 6:64-7:6).
Claim 13 is analogous to claim 4, and is similarly rejected.

Claim 5 recites “The computer-implemented method of claim 3, wherein the value partitions of the value portion following the reused-part partition, wherein the reused part of the values sharing the reused part in a respective value partition is replaced by the reference to the reused part.”
Xu, Beyer and Yueh teach claim 3, where Yueh breaks (i.e., partitions) a file or other digital sequence (i.e., value portion) into blocks (Yueh: 7:59-62), and hash each block (i.e., value). A new block is duplicate of an existing block if they have the same hash, in which case the new block is replaced with a pointer (i.e., reference) to a single (i.e., shared) instance of the block (i.e., reused part) in storage (Yueh: 3:9-21).
Claim 14 is analogous to claim 5, and is similarly rejected.

Claim 6 recites “The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: identifying one of the keys of the plurality of data objects of the data based on a search keyword; determining a search range within the value portion corresponding to the identified key based on the order of the keys; and”.
Xu orders the detected keys by their visual appearance in the document (i.e., data object) [0047], based on which their matching values (i.e., value portion) are ordered accordingly.
Xu and Beyer teach claim 1, where a JSON document of Beyer is a list of name-value pairs, and a value is a JSON object which can be an atom, an array of values, or a nested JSON object (Beyer: [0005]).
Xu does not disclose limitation “searching for the search keyword within the search range corresponding to the identified key.”
However, Beyer indexes JSON documents in two separate files, one for document IDs and the other for payloads (Beyer: [0034]). Using the parse tree of a search query (i.e., keyword), Beyer searches the first file to identify candidate documents (i.e., keys) that may match the query. Beyer then searches the second file (i.e., search range) to check if those candidates match the query exactly (Beyer: [0039]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Beyer to Xu. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to adopt the nested JSON object model of Beyer to represent the key-value pairs of Xu extracted from unstructured documents for better indexing and searching.
Claims 15 and 20 are analogous to claim 6, and are similarly rejected.

Claim 7 recites “The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the predetermined order for the extracted keys is an order of traversing leaf nodes of a tree structure of the data in the data format with key-value pairs.”
Xu orders the detected (i.e., extracted) keys by their visual appearance in the document (i.e., predetermined order) [0047], based on which their matching values are ordered accordingly.
Xu and Beyer teach claim 1, where a JSON document (i.e., data format) of Beyer is a list of name-value pairs (i.e., key-value pairs), and a value is a JSON object which can be an atom, an array of values, or a nested JSON object (Beyer: [0005]).
Xu does not disclose this claim; however, Beyer indexes JSON documents in two separate files, one for document IDs and the other for payloads (Beyer: [0034]). Using the parse tree of a search query, Beyer searches the first file to identify candidate documents that may match the query. Beyer then searches the second file to check if those candidates match the query exactly (Beyer: [0039]), by recursively traversing the tree to atom (i.e., leaf) nodes (Beyer: [0048]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to apply the teachings of Beyer to Xu. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to adopt the nested JSON object model of Beyer to represent the key-value pairs of Xu extracted from unstructured documents for better indexing and searching.
Claim 16 is analogous to claim 7, and is similarly rejected.

Claim 8 recites “The computer-implemented method of claim 1, further comprising: transmitting the data in the reorganized format.”
After identifying key-value pairs (i.e., reorganized format) from documents, Xu outputs (i.e., transmits) the identified key-value pairs [0063] using input/output devices [0081].

Claim 9 recites “The computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the data format comprises JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)”.
Xu and Beyer teach claim 1, where a JSON document (i.e., data format) of Beyer is a list of name-value pairs, where a value is a JSON object which can be an atom, an array of values, or a nested JSON object (Beyer: [0005]).
	Claim 18 is analogous to claim 9, and is similarly rejected.

Claim 17 recites “The computer system of claim 10, further comprising: storing the data in the reorganized format.”
Xu stores data defining the identified key-value pairs (i.e., reorganized format) in a database accessible to users [0063].

Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. For example, Cao et al. TDDFS: A Tier-Aware Data Deduplication-Based File System. ACM Transaction on Storage 15:1, 2019, pp. 1-26.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHELLY X. QIAN whose telephone number is (408)918-7599. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8-5 PT.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Tony Mahmoudi can be reached on (571)272-4078. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SHELLY X QIAN/Examiner, Art Unit 2163                                                                                                                                                                                                        


/TONY MAHMOUDI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2163