Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Reexamination Certificate
1995-03-08
2001-10-02
Poinvil, Frantzy (Department: 2768)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06298327
ABSTRACT:
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyrights whatsoever.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
A microfiche appendix consisting of 20 microfiche and of 1,937 frames is included as part of the specification.
The background of the invention is set forth in two parts: the field of the invention and the description of related art.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a computer-implemented expert support system for authoring invention disclosures.
2. Description of Related Art
Prior-art, knowledge-based software systems serve a variety of purposes. U.S. Pat. No. 4,675,829 discloses a method and apparatus for performing inheritance in knowledge-based systems. U.S. Pat. No. 4,839,822 discloses an expert system which provides one or more suggested treatments for a patient with physical trauma. U.S. Pat. No. 4,943,933 discloses a method and apparatus for handling definitions of relationships between knowledge and data in a database used as the knowledge of an expert system. U.S. Pat. No. 4,945,476 discloses a knowledgebase having particular utility as a medical/pathology knowledgebase containing textual and pictorial information on various diseases. U.S. Pat. No. 5,025,392 discloses an apparatus and method for providing a microcomputer-based expert system having a knowledgebase of failure analysis of metals. U.S. Pat. No. 5,043,915 discloses an inference system provided with a first knowledgebase for storing general knowledge which is a theorem, and a second knowledgebase for storing associative knowledge which is different in knowledge structure from the general knowledge. U.S. Pat. No. 5,051,932 discloses a system for controlling a process exhibiting both linear and non-linear behavior. U.S. Pat. No. 5,067,148 discloses an expert system for planning telephone facilities networks. The disclosures of the above patents are incorporated by reference herein as if fully set forth.
A variety of publications and software programs are used by inventors in authoring invention disclosures. Some inventors use forms provided by their technology managers, supplemented by library research findings as guidance during preparation of invention disclosures. Practitioners of rDNA technology use the DOS version of AuthorIn sequence input software or PatentIn sequence-input software.
A number of books and two software products are available to assist novice inventors in preparing U.S. patent applications. The book
Patent It Yourself
by Robert Pressman (Pressman, R.
Patent It Yourself
. Berkeley, Calif.: Nolo Press, 1995) is highly regarded by many. “Patent Writer” software is available as DOS shareware from World Permission Software (
Patent Writer. User's Manual V
. 2.00. Long Beach, Calif.: World Permission Software, 1992).
A Windows software product for authoring of U.S. patent applications called “Patent It Yourself” is published by Nolo Press (
Patent It Yourself
, Version 1.0. Berkeley, Calif.: Nolo Press, 1994). The software contains an on-line version of Robert Pressman's book and “the forms and instructions needed to patent a product in the United States.” This product is of high quality, having been developed by the Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS). The limitations of this software are as follows: (1) It is appropriate for preparation of only U.S. patent applications in fairly “low-tech” fields; (2) It provides only basic legal guidance; (3) Users must learn to use a proprietary word processor with limited features, and text prepared with other word processors must be imported into the proprietary word processor as RTF or ASCII text files; (4) The “built-in” patent application headings are not the headings recommended by the PTO. One inventor known to the applicants was required by a PTO Examiner to amend his specification to use the “correct headings.”
Many inventors have been the recipients of documents generated by a Windows software tool available to PTO Examiners called “Action Writer.” This software is a WordPerfect-for-Windows macro program that provides “canned” text for use in office actions. The focus of the program is on providing the rationale for rejecting patent claims and for responding to the patentability arguments of applicants.
Other information on the background of the invention is disclosed in a report entitled “Expert System for Recombinant DNA Invention Disclosure, Phase I Progress Report Volumes I and II,” October, 1994, published by Yellowstone Environmental Science, Inc., 920 Technology Boulevard, Bozeman, Montana 59715. That disclosure is incorporated herein as if fully set forth.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is expert support system software that enables inventors to adequately disclose (communicate) the characteristics of their inventions to their technology manager and research sponsor, as well as to their patent professional (i.e., patent attorney or patent agent). The disclosure must allow the technology manager and/or research sponsor to decide whether to invest in protecting the invention. If protection is sought, it must also be complete enough for the patent professional to be able to determine whether patent protection is appropriate and, if so, to be used as a basis for preparation and prosecution of a patent application. Thus, three types of users are served by the proposed software product: inventors, technology managers, and patent professionals. Because the invention facilitates communication among parties with different vocabularies, perspectives, values, experiences and expertise, it can be classified as “domain-interaction” software. This type of software facilitates knowledge-sharing among “experts” from different domains. Such systems empower users by improving bi-directional communication of “mission-critical” domain knowledge. They eliminate the “say what?” bottlenecks which hamper productivity improvement.
Scientist/inventors interact with patent attorneys, for example, at a high level of sophistication in the preparation of patent applications that will eventually become patents with value as intellectual property. Scientist/inventors are experts in technological domain and patent attorneys are experts in the intellectual property domain. It is the responsibility of the patent attorney to teach the scientist/inventor how to disclose his/her invention, and to offer an opinion as to the patentability of the invention. It is the responsibility of the scientist/inventor to disclose the characteristics of his/her invention in the manner stipulated by the attorney, and to teach the attorney why the invention is useful, novel and unobvious.
Each expert participating in such an interaction provides information about his/her domain and receives information about the other expert's domain. Because domain knowledge can be complex and its language “foreign,” exchanges of information are typically clarified by guidance, explanations, and examples. Guidance is provided in “layers” so its depth can be controlled by the person requesting it. The expert providing the information may want to know “why” it was requested, as well as “what” to provide, and “how” to provide it. Some explanatory knowledge is acquired by means of knowledge engineering methods, and is resident in the software in the form of “advisors” or “guides” accessible by means of forward chaining expert systems. Default explanatory information is customized by an expert for particular interactions or interaction types. Each expert also reports to the other on the status of his/her respective domain. Domain status data changes over time and is visualized for effective communication.
Domain-interaction software systems are categorized as hybrid systems. The components of such systems include a user interface (possibly different for each user gr
Hunter Robert M.
Stewart Frank M.
Hunter Robert M.
Poinvil Frantzy
YES Technologies
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