DETAILED ACTION
This Final Office action is in response to Applicant’s RCE filing on 12/23/2025. Claims 11, 15-17, 20-29 are pending; claims 20-29 are withdrawn; and, claims 11 and 15-17 are examined below. The effective filing date of the claimed invention is 03/03/2014.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 12/23/2025 has been entered.
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 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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 11, 15-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2015/0213443 to Geffon et al. (“Geffon”) in view of U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2007/0045402 to Rothschild (“Rothschild”) in further view of U.S. Pat. No. 6,095,413 to Tetro et al. (“Tetro”).
With regard to claims 11, 15, and 17, Geffon discloses the claimed system that links a credit account to a customer identifier (see e.g. [0010], “Some embodiments of the present technology involve using a tokenized pre-authorization to enable card-not-present transactions for in-store purchases without requiring the store to keep storing credit card information on file.” (emphasis added); [0028]), the system comprising:
a point of sale (POS) station comprising: a memory; one or more processors, a customer transaction checkout interface; a customer facing device (see Figs. 7A, 7B, RAM at 715, Processor 755, user interface components at 785, output device 765; [0073]) to receive: a customer identifying information, the customer identifying information being particular to a customer (see [0042] where the POS system is equipped with POS barcode readers that are fully capable of receiving customer specific ID data, such as a token; [0074]) the customer identifying information provided without requiring any additional credit card account identification information1 (the examiner notes that the token, or claimed customer identifying information, is provided in place of a credit card identifying information. No additional credit card account info is needed. The token includes encoded information in place of actual credit card identifying information. See Geffon at [0009]. [0015] “Some embodiments involve the token being encoded as a two-dimensional scannable barcode and the barcode being sent to the user and displayed as a digital card in a digital wallet application.” [0034]; [0045] “ The cardholder or delegate can present the token 225 to a merchant in lieu of other forms of payment.” (emphasis added); as for the limitation of “without requiring any additional credit card account identification information,” the examiner still refers to the token as being the customer identifying information, and there is nothing in Geffon that requires any additional credit card account identification information. In fact, only the token is required, [0045] “The cardholder or delegate can present the token 225 to a merchant in lieu of other forms of payment.” To be clear, referring to e.g. [0045] there is other data points that can be transferred between the parties, but nothing more is required, and referring to Geffon at [0045] everything mentioned “can be” or “may be” or “optionally be” transferred but this only indicates capability not that any else is required, as claimed; For the claimed aspect of where the customer identifying information is “at least a last four digits of SSN” the examiner has clearly referred to ); and
a communication device to communicate with a remote credit account linker computing device (see Fig. 7B, Communication interface at 790);
the remote credit account linker computing device comprising: a memory; and one or more processors (see e.g. Fig. 3, tokenization service broker) to: receive, from said POS station, said customer identifying information without requiring said credit card account identifying information identification information.” In other words, this particular limitations requires that the prior art system is capable of receiving, from the POS, customer identifying information “without requiring said any additional credit card account identification information.” There is nothing in Geffon that requires any additional credit card account id info.);
access a database of stored customer information for a plurality of customers, said database comprising: an amount of stored customer identifying information for each of the plurality of customers; and ADS-063B-2-Application No.: 14/637,327Examiner: Ludwig, P.Art Unit: 3687a link to a stored pre-existing credit account information for one or more of the plurality of customers; compare said customer identifying information received from said POS station with the stored customer identifying information of said database; determine a match between said customer identifying information received from said POS station and an identified customer of said plurality of customers; utilize the match to link said customer identifying information received from said POS station with said stored pre-existing credit account information of the identified customer (see [0065] [0066], published claim 1, etc.);
provide, to said POS station,
complete said purchase at said POS station upon receipt of
However, Geffon does not disclose providing the “stored pre-existing credit account information to said POS station,” and completing the purchase based on the receiving of the stored credit information.
Rothschild teaches at e.g. [0039] that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the credit card transaction art to include the ability to present an identifier to a POS, the POS sends the identifier to a remote server, and then the remote server matches the identifier with a credit card number and sends the credit card number to the POS terminal so that the found credit card number can be used to process the transaction, where this is performed in order to allow the user to use any associated credit cards that are associated with the initial identifier provided to the POS. See Rothschild where the national credit card information is provided to the POS terminal, then the POS terminal provides this national credit card information to a “remote server database 115”, and then further the remote server determines any associated credit cards with the national credit card, and when found “If the national credit card is cross associated with a store credit card, the remote server 114 will communicate back to the point-of-sale terminal 102 the store credit card number (i.e. store brand) and credit card name.”
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the credit card art at the time of filing to modify Geffon to include the ability to present an identifier to a POS, the POS sends the identifier to a remote server, and then the remote server matches the identifier with a credit card number and sends the credit card number to the POS terminal so that the found credit card number can be used to process the transaction, where this is performed in order to allow the user to use any associated credit cards that are associated with the initial identifier provided to the POS. See Rothschild where the national credit card information is provided to the POS terminal, then the POS terminal provides this national credit card information to a “remote server database 115”, and then further the remote server determines any associated credit cards with the national credit card, and when found “If the national credit card is cross associated with a store credit card, the remote server 114 will communicate back to the point-of-sale terminal 102 the store credit card number and credit card name.”
Further, Geffon is silent regarding where the customer identifying information comprises at least a last four digits of a social security number of said customer and a zipcode of customer.2
Tetro teaches at e.g. abstract, Fig. 2 (to the left) and 3, that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the fraud monitoring and prevention art to include the ability to receive customer information such as social security number including at least a last four digits and zip code, where this is performed in order to prevent fraud from occurring, as taught by Tetro.
See Tetro at Fig. 2:
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See also Tetro at Abstract, “The information input by the user is retrieved and used for identification purposes. . . . The social security number input by the user is next checked to determine if it corresponds to the user. A database having a stored list of social security numbers is accessed, wherein each of the stored social security numbers includes at least one address stored therewith corresponding to an address of an individual identified by the respective social security number. The addresses stored in association with the input social security number are retrieved and compared with the input address to determine if the input address corresponds to any of the retrieved stored addresses. If the input credit card information has been confirmed by the issuer as being valid and the address input by the user matches any of the retrieved addresses stored in association with the input social security number, the electronic credit card transaction is authorized and allowed to transpire.” (emphasis added). Referring to Fig. 2 at col. 4 ln. 30-60 The user is prompted to input . . . billing address, and social security number in steps 200, 202, and 204. Further yet, referring to Fig. 3 at col. 6, ln 30-40 A typical address has a field containing the actual street address, the name and/or number of the street, the city, the state, and the zip code.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the fraud prevention art at the time of filing to include the ability for a customer to input social security number and zip code, where this is beneficial as a form of identification and fraud prevention. See e.g. Tetro at Title and abstract, A method and system for authorizing an electronic credit card transaction having enhanced measures for detecting fraudulent transactions.
The examiner notes that the primary reference Geffon discloses the claimed limitation(s) relating to providing customer identifying information “in place of a credit card account identification information” and “without requiring any additional credit card information. . . .” As found above, “the examiner notes that the token, or claimed customer identifying information, is provided in place of a credit card identifying information. The token includes encoded information in place of actual credit card identifying information. See Geffon at [0009]. [0015] “Some embodiments involve the token being encoded as a two-dimensional scannable barcode and the barcode being sent to the user and displayed as a digital card in a digital wallet application.” [0034]; [0045] “ The cardholder or delegate can present the token 225 to a merchant in lieu of other forms of payment.” (emphasis added).” See Geffon [0004] addressing card not present transactions; [0010] Some embodiments of the present technology involve using a tokenized pre-authorization to enable card-not-present transactions for in-store purchases (emphasis added). As found above, Geffon does not disclose where the customer can use the customer’s social security number for identification. In the obviousness rejection above, the examiner has referred to Tetro to show that the customer can use the customer’s social security number (including at least the last 4 digits) for identification purposes. This is all that is required in the claimed language.
With regard to claim 16, Geffon further discloses where said customer identifying information comprises a password for said customer (see e.g. [0031]).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 11/17/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
The examiner notes that the examiner’s 103 rejection was affirmed by PTAB on 09/23/2025. Accordingly, Applicant isn’t arguing that the cited art does not teach the prior claim language. Applicant now only argues that the cited references do not teach the added limitation of “without requiring any additional credit card information.” See claim 11. The examiner refers to the same cited references to teach this additional limitation. See the explanation above. Just like the language that was deleted from the claim, the examiner refers to Geffon to teach this added limitations.
Applicant argues that each of the references “teach away” from the claimed invention because they each require additional credit card account id info, and the claims are now performed “without requiring any additional credit card identification information.” This is incorrect. The references do not teach away based on this. Above, the examiner refers to Geffon to teach this limitation, as Geffon teaches at e.g. Fig. 3, 306, Send Token to Broker, and then Broker inspects the token); [0065-66]; there is no requirement in Geffon to send “any additional credit card account identification information” as the token is used in lieu of the credit card itself; the examiner notes that the claims are system claims, and therefore the device(s) must be capable of performing the claimed functional steps, such as “receive, from said POS station, said customer identifying information without requiring said any additional credit card account identification information.” In other words, this particular limitations requires that the prior art system is capable of receiving, from the POS, customer identifying information “without requiring said any additional credit card account identification information.” There is nothing in Geffon that requires any additional credit card account id info.
The examiner notes the claimed language of “without requiring. . . .” A reference that includes more information could still disclose/teach/suggest the claimed invention unless the reference made it explicitly clear that more additional information was required, and not that the additional information was preferential. Rarely are disclosures drafted that something is required. The inventions are drafted to include other add-on embodiments, but none of it is likely required and can be added/removed at any given time, unless explicitly mentioned in the Spec. The examiner does not find that in the prior art there is any requirement as the token is used in lieu of, or in place of a credit card, and the transaction is performed based on the token. There is no requirement for any more data.
Conclusion
All claims are identical to or patentably indistinct from, or have unity of invention with claims in the application prior to the entry of the submission under 37 CFR 1.114 (that is, restriction (including a lack of unity of invention) would not be proper) and all claims could have been finally rejected on the grounds and art of record in the next Office action if they had been entered in the application prior to entry under 37 CFR 1.114. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL even though it is a first action after the filing of a request for continued examination and the submission under 37 CFR 1.114. See MPEP § 706.07(b). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/PETER LUDWIG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3627
1 For this limitation Applicant refers the examiner to [0024-27] of Applicant’s Specification. In this portion of the Specification, the customer has left his physical credit card at home, so the customer provides personal information such as the last four digits of the user’s SSN, driver’s license, etc. Then the merchant/remote server proceeds to look up the customer’s credit card so that the customer can use the card in a card-not-present transaction. The claimed language has been interpreted in light of this teaching by Applicant’s Specification.
2 The examiner notes that this was found by the examiner in the most-recent Final Office action (03/17/2023) at page 6, where the examiner proceeded to refer to Tetro to teach this limitation(s).