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One Case a Day | China: The Impact of Application Scenarios on Inventiveness Determination - Invalidation Decision No. 58271 (2022)
Case Introduction
Strong winds and dropping temperatures, let's continue with case studies.
When a combination of features disclosed by the closest prior art achieves new functions in a new application scenario, these combined features will constitute distinguishing technical features. A feature that is common knowledge in one field may no longer be considered common knowledge when entering a new application scenario. The filing date of this case is 2004, the era of Windows 2000, yet the protected solution relates to the currently popular AI technology, which can be considered ahead of its time.
Case Information
- Application Number: 200410053749.9
- Title of Invention: A Chatbot System
- Request Date: October 22, 2020
- Case Number: 4W111293
- Decision Number: No. 58271
- Decision Date: September 7, 2022
Key Points of the Decision
... The determination of inventiveness should be considered holistically from the perspective of the inventive concept. If the technical solution of the claimed invention differs from the prior art in terms of application scenario, and there are differences in the connection relationships between components and the functions realized by each component, and these distinctions enable the claimed technical solution to achieve beneficial technical effects, then the claimed technical solution possesses inventiveness.
Important Information of the Case
The involved Claim 1 is as follows:
- A chatbot system, comprising at least:
a user; and a chatbot (9), wherein the chatbot (9) possesses an artificial intelligence server (3) with artificial intelligence and information service functions and its corresponding database, and the chatbot also possesses a communication module (21), said user conducts various dialogues with the chatbot (9) through an instant messaging platform or SMS platform, characterized in that, the chatbot (9) also possesses a query server (4) and its corresponding database and a game server (5), and the chatbot is provided with a filter (22) to distinguish whether the user statement received by said communication module (21) is a formatted statement or natural language, and forwards the user statement to the corresponding server based on the distinction result, said corresponding server includes the artificial intelligence server (3), the query server (4), or the game server (5).
The requester cited 14 prior art documents to evaluate inventiveness and used Comparative Documents 5, 13, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 14, and 15 respectively as the closest prior art for evaluation (a moment of sympathy for the collegial panel teachers here ^_^).
Comparative Document 5 discloses a natural language processing device for interactive command input, which can use statement data created from natural language to input commands interactively, allowing users to mix natural language commands and device-specific commands for input without distinguishing between commands and natural language.
The input unit (101) can receive both device-specific commands input by the user and commands based on text data created from natural language given to the user. The judgment unit (102) evaluates the input data received by the input unit (101) to determine whether the input data is a device-specific command or a command based on text data created from natural language. Based on the judgment result, the judgment unit (102) outputs accordingly: when it is judged as a device-specific command, the data (command) is output to the command execution unit (108); when judged as natural language, the data is output to the natural language processing unit (103). The natural language processing unit (103) parses the natural language received from the judgment unit (102) and determines instructions corresponding to the semantic content of the text data for the backend system (109).
Regarding the identification of distinguishing technical features, the requester argued: (1) The judgment unit (102) of Comparative Document 5 and the filter of Claim 1 perform the same function, both capable of judging whether the input is a specific command or natural language. If it is a specific command, it is sent to the command execution unit (108) for execution; if it is natural language, it is sent to the natural language processing unit (103) for execution. (2) The artificial intelligence in the artificial intelligence server is natural language parsing. Comparative Document 5 has already disclosed natural language parsing, meaning it has disclosed the artificial intelligence function performed by the artificial intelligence server.
Collegial Panel's View
The collegial panel held:
The natural language processing unit (103) of Comparative Document 5 can only convert natural language into specific commands and then feed them back to the judgment unit (102). It is only equivalent to the dialogue module of this patent converting natural language into formatted command statements. Since Comparative Document 5 lacks intelligent chat functionality, it can actually only execute directly input specific commands or convert input natural language into specific commands for execution. It cannot achieve fast/slow分流 processing by distinguishing between natural language and specific commands, nor does it disclose forwarding natural language to an artificial intelligence server. The protected subject matter of Claim 1 is a chatbot, whose artificial intelligence server not only parses natural language but also conducts intelligent chatting based on the parsed meaning of the natural language. In contrast, Comparative Document 5 parses natural language to convert it into machine language commands for execution and does not possess intelligent chat functionality. This differs from the intelligent chat function of the artificial intelligence server in this patent.
Therefore, compared to Comparative Document 5, the distinguishing features of the solution protected by Claim 1 at least include: (1) chatbot, artificial intelligence server and its corresponding database, game server; (2) filter, forwarding the user statement to the corresponding server based on the distinction result, said corresponding server includes the artificial intelligence server, query server, or game server; (3) communication module, said user conducts various dialogues with the chatbot through an instant messaging platform or SMS platform.
Based on the above distinguishing features, the actual technical problem solved by Claim 1 is determined to be: how the chatbot provides formatted statement query services and game service functions, and how to more intelligently process natural language / improve the processing efficiency and intelligence level of the chatbot for natural language.
It was further found that other comparative documents and evidence of common general knowledge did not disclose the distinguishing features related to the filter. Although the filter itself is a known device, using the filter in a chatbot and improving processing efficiency for better intelligent chatting by forwarding distinguished results to different servers does not belong to common general knowledge. That is, based on the conventional technical knowledge mastered by a person skilled in the art, the collegial panel, standing from their perspective, could not determine that the above distinguishing features belong to common general knowledge. Claim 1 containing the above distinguishing features is used in the specific application scenario of a chatbot, which can improve the processing efficiency and intelligence level of the chatbot for natural language, and has a positive and significant technical effect on enhancing the performance of the chatbot.
Therefore, the technical solution of Claim 1, with Comparative Document 5 as the closest prior art, complies with the provisions of Article 22, Paragraph 3 of the Patent Law regarding inventiveness.
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