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 .
Status of Claims
This action is in reply to the response received on 21 October 2025.
Claims 1, 11, and 23 have been amended.
claims 3-5, 8, 13-15, and 18 have been previously canceled.
Claims 1-2, 6-7, 9-12, 16-17, and 19-28 are pending and have been examined.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-2, 6-7, 9-12, 16-17, and 19-28 recite allowable subject matter and would be allowable if the claims were amended or re-written to overcome the 101 rejection indicated in the Office Action below.
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, 2, 6-7, 9-12, 16-17, and 19-28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Under step 1, it is determined whether the claims are directed to a statutory category of invention (see MPEP 2106.03(II)). In the instant case, claims 1-2, 6-7, 9-10, & 21 are directed to a system, and claims 11-12, 16-17, 19-20, 22, & 24-28 are directed to a method, and claim 23 is directed to a product of manufacture.
While the claims fall within statutory categories, under revised Step 2A, Prong 1 of the eligibility analysis (MPEP 2106.04), the claimed invention recites an abstract idea of recommendations of one or more complementary items. Specifically, representative claim 11 recites the abstract idea of:
receiving, an add-to-cart command to add an anchor item to a cart;
determining, a plurality of complementary items of the anchor item based on receiving the add-to-cart command to add the anchor item to the cart
determining scores for the plurality of complementary items;
limiting, based on determining the scores for the plurality of complementary items, a quantity of one or more complementary items, of the plurality of complementary items, to be recommended through transmission to a user by removing one or more other complementary items of the plurality of complementary items , or retaining
transmitting, to the user, information regarding the one or more complementary items based on limiting the quantity of the one or more complementary items and based on a recommendation confidence, of recommending the one or more complementary items, being positive.
Under revised Step 2A, Prong 1 of the eligibility analysis, it is necessary to evaluate whether the claim recites a judicial exception by referring to subject matter groupings articulated in 2106.04(a) of the MPEP. Even in consideration of the analysis, the claims recite an abstract idea. Representative claim 11 recites the abstract idea of recommendations of one or more complementary items, as noted above. This concept is considered to be a method of organizing human activity because it relates to sale activities, as the claims specifically recite activities of receiving a command to add an anchor item to a cart, determining a plurality of complementary items of the anchor item based on the add-to-cart command to add the anchor item to the cart, determining scores for the complementary items, limiting based on determining the scores for the plurality of complementary items, to recommend to a user, by removing one or more other items of the complementary items or retaining the quantity of the one or more complementary items, and then transmitting to the user, information regarding the one or more complementary items based on the limiting the quantity of the one or more complementary items and based on a recommendation confidence, of recommending the one or more complementary items, being positive, thereby making this a sales activity or behavior. Thus, representative claim 11 recites an abstract idea.
Under revised Step 2A, Prong 2 of the eligibility analysis, if it is determined that the claims recite a judicial exception, it is then necessary to evaluate whether the claims recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application of that exception. In this case, representative claim 11 includes the additional elements of execution of computing instructions configured to run at one or more processors and stored at one or more non-transitory computer-readable media, a network, an electronic cart, electronic cart, transmission to a user device via the network, the network, and the user device. These additional elements individually and in combination do not integrate the exception into the practical application because they are merely being used to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer, as defined in the MPEP 2106.04(d). Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Claim 11 is directed to an abstract idea.
Under Step 2B of the eligibility analysis, if it is determined that the claims recite a judicial exception that is not integrated into a practical application of that exception, it is then necessary to evaluate the additional elements individually and in combination to determine whether they provide an invention concept (i.e., whether the additional elements amount to significantly more than the exception itself), as discussed in MPEP 2106.05. In this case, as noted above, the additional elements recited in the independent claim 11 are recited and described in a generic manner and merely apply the abstract idea using a generic computer (MPEP 2106.05(f)). As such, the additional elements, considered individually and in combination, do not provide an inventive concept.
As such, representative claim 11 is ineligible.
Independent claims 1 and 23 are similar in nature to representative claim 11 and Step 2A, Prong 1 analysis is the same as above for representative claim 11. It is noted that in independent claim 1 includes the additional elements of one or more processors, one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storing computing instructions that, when executed, cause the one or more processors, and claim 23 includes the additional elements of one or more non-transitory computer-readable media storage computing instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform. The Applicant’s specification does not provide any discussion or description of claimed additional elements, as being anything other than generic elements. Thus, the claimed additional elements of claims 1 and 23 are merely generic elements and the implement of the elements merely amounts to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer. As such, the additional elements of claims 1 and 23, do not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application of the abstract idea. Additionally, the additional elements of claims 1 and 23, considered individually and in combination, do not provide an inventive concept because they merely amount to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer.
As such, claims 1 and 23 are ineligible.
Dependent claims 2, 6-7, 9-10, & 21, 12, 16-17, and 19-22, & 24-28, depending from claims 1 and 11 respectively, do not aid in the eligibility of the independent claims 1, 11, and 23. The claims of 2, 6-7, 9-10, & 21, 12, 16-17, and 19-22, & 24-28, merely act to provide further limitations of the abstract idea and are ineligible subject matter.
It is noted that dependent claims include the additional element of a session change (claims 10 & 20), a machine learning model (claim 25), and a session (claim 28). Applicant’s specification does not provide any discussion or description of the additional elements as being anything other than a generic element. The claimed additional element, individually and in combination with other features of the claims, does not integrate into a practical application and does not provide an inventive concept because it is merely being used to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer (see MPEP 2106.05(f)). Accordingly, claims 10, 20, 25, and 28 are directed towards an abstract idea. Additionally, the additional element of claims 10, 20, 25, and 28 considered individually and in combination, does not provide an inventive concept because it merely amounts to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract idea using a generic computer. It is further noted that the remaining dependent claims 2, 6-7, 9, 12, 16-17, 19, 21-22, 24, and 26-27 do not recite any further additional elements to consider in the analysis, and therefore they would not provide additional elements that would integrate the abstract idea into a practical application and would not provide an inventive concept.
As such, dependent claims 2, 6-7, 9-10, & 21, 12, 16-17, and 19-22, & 24-28 are ineligible.
Reasons for Allowable Subject Matter
Prior art considerations:
Upon review of the evidence at hand, it is concluded that the totality of evidence in combination, neither anticipates, reasonably teaches, nor renders obvious the below noted features of the Applicant’s invention. In regards to the independent claims, the feature as follows:
In claim 1: eliminating one or more other complementary items, of the plurality of complementary items, based on the respective score for each of the one or more other complementary items being lower than a threshold or by retaining the quantity of the one more complementary items based on the respective score for each of the one or more complementary items being higher than the respective score for each of the one or more other complementary items, and information regarding the one or more complementary items based on limiting the quantity of the one or more complementary items and based on a recommendation confidence, of recommending the one or more complementary items, being positive.
In claim 11: information regarding the one or more complementary items based on limiting the quantity of the one or more complementary items and based on a recommendation confidence, of recommending the one or more complementary items, being positive.
In claim 23: information regarding he one or more complementary items based on limiting the quantity of the one or more complementary items and based on a recommendation confidence, of recommending the one or more complementary items, being positive.
The most apposite prior art of record includes Cui, X., et al. (PGP No. US 2020/0104898 A1), in view of Yeh, S., et al. (PGP No. US 2019/0187864 A1), Balakrishnan, S., et al. (PGP No. US 2017/0178006 A1), and Levy, K., et al. (PGP No. US 2010/0268661 A1), to teach a system for recommending complementary products.
The reference of Cui discloses that a user purchasing items via an electronic interface can purchase an item of interest as well as recommendations of products that are associated with the item of interest, and can select the products using voice commands via the interface (Cui, see: paragraph [0032]). The system of Cui is able to determine the specific item of interest based on the user’s voice and converts the voice command into a text version of the command by using a text mining module (Cui, see: paragraphs [0061] and [0097]). Cui further describes that based off of the determined first item of interest, the system can present recommended accessory items to het user along, and at that time the user may initiate a purchase of the accessory items by adding them to a cart (Cui, see: paragraphs [0037] and [0064]). Cui does explain that the item of interest and the recommended items can be ranked based on a co-purchase frequency and calculating the ranking order with an algorithm (Cui, paragraph [0140]). Next, Cui describes that in real-time, a recommendation can be determined for the user (Cui, paragraph [0037]), and a confidence ratio is calculated so that the system of Cui can more accurately determine the relevant category of item to recommend (Cui, paragraph [0077]). A likelihood of an item-accessory relationship is determined by how many times items are purchased together, resulting in a more customizable and relevant recommendation for the user, and goes as far to not recommend a certain item if the likelihood or confidence is determined to be negative or falls below a certain threshold (Cui, see: paragraphs [0076], [0137] and [0148]).
Next, the reference of Yeh is relied upon, as Yeh also optimizes recommendations for a user. Yeh describes a voice-based interface that can recognize specific commands of a user, such as commanding, by voice, to add an item to a shopping cart (Yeh, see: paragraphs [0027] and [0065]).
Further, the reference of Levy teaches the features regarding finding related items to a target item, and determines such relationships between the user and the categories of items, calculates values of relatedness between item, and then using the values to re-order related items to present to the user as the system updates calculated values (Levy, see: paragraphs [0178]-[0179]).
The reference of Balakrishnan teaches that by using feedback data of a user regarding specific items, the data is then maximized to gain user parameters and changes in entropy of information between user parameters before and after feedback for any pair of items is determined (Balakrishnan, see: paragraphs [0029], [0033], and [0036]).
Although the cited references teach the above features for providing recommendations of complementary products, the references do not fully teach the amended claim limitations that now recite allowable subject matter as stated above. For example, the reference of Cui measures the number of instances recommendations are made for certain accessory products where the number may fall above or below a threshold (Cui, see: paragraph [0140]), but does not describe any type of co-bought score that would fall above or below a threshold and would result in limiting a quantity of complementary items. In another example, the reference of Levy describes removing duplicate items that have already been added (Levy, see: paragraph [0245]), but does not remove the items because of a respective co-bought score that is lower than a predetermined score threshold. Therefore, it is emphasized that the claims as whole and is asserted the totality of evidence fails to set forth, either explicitly or implicitly, an appropriate rational for further modification of the evidence at hand to arrive at the claimed invention. Moreover, the combination of features as claimed, would not have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art because any combination of evidence at hand to reach the combination of features as claimed would require substantial reconstruction of the Applicant’s claimed invention relying on improper hindsight bias and resulting in an inappropriate combination.
It is hereby asserted by the Examiner, that in light of the above and in further deliberation overall all of the evidence at hand, that the claims recite allowable subject matter, as the evidence at hand does not anticipate the claims and does not render obvious any further modification of the references to a person of ordinary skill in the art.
Examiner’s Comment
As noted in the Office Action mailed on 04 September 2024, the non-patent literature (NPL) document titled Haptik announces launch of Buzzo: Voice Assistant for eCommerce, published in Asian News International (2021), cited on PTO-892 document as reference U, and hereinafter referred to as “Haptik”, describes a voice assistant for user’s during digital shopping sessions. Haptik further describes that the AI powered assistant is used to help users navigate, search, and interact with products found on websites and can specifically use voice search to complete online transactions, as well as receive relevant product recommendations that are similar to products of interest with upselling or cross selling marketing techniques. Although Haptik describes such features, Haptik does not disclose or teach the allowable subject matter as stated above. As such, Haptik does not remedy the deficiencies of the noted prior art.
Response to Arguments
With respect to the rejections made under 35 USC § 112(a) and 35 USC § 112(b), and in light of the Applicant’s amendments to the claims, the rejections are withdrawn.
With respect to the rejections made under 35 USC § 103, in light of the Applicant’s amendments to the claims, and the reasons stated above for allowable subject matter, the 103 rejection has been withdrawn.
With respect to the rejections made under 35 USC § 101, the Applicant’s arguments filed on 21 October 2025, have been fully considered but are not considered persuasive.
In response to the Applicant’s arguments found on pages 12-15 of the remarks stating “Applicant respectfully asserts that the claims integrate the alleged abstract idea into a practical application under Prong Two of Step 2A” and “claim 1 as a whole integrates into a practical application because it is directed to improvements in the technical field of network bandwidth management by reducing waste of network bandwidth by limiting a quantity of the one or more complementary items that are recommended when an anchor item is added to an electronic cart,” and further “the claims themselves reflect the disclosed improvement,” and in regards to the Squires PTAB Decision stating “Similarly, the claimed invention demonstrates an improvement by reducing waste of network bandwidth” and “the paragraphs of the specification cited above provide an explanation of the technical improvement” and “This clearly indicates that the improvement is reducing waste of network bandwidth by limiting as claimed,” the Examiner respectfully disagrees. Under Step 2A Prong Two of the eligibility analysis, the claims are not recited in a manner that would demonstrate that the additional elements would integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. The claims as a whole, are still reciting the additional elements in a generic manner and are merely being used to apply the abstract idea with a generically recited processor and computing components. Further, the claims do not reflect an improvement to the technology or technical field, as they do not include components or steps of the invention that provide an improvement, nor does the specification provide details of any type of improvement to the actual technology itself (MPEP 2106.04(d)(I)). The MPEP (2106.05(a)) provides guidance on how to evaluate whether claims recite an improvement in the functioning of a computer or an improvement to other technology or technical field. For example, as indicated in 2106.05(d)(1) of the MPEP “the specification should be evaluated to determine if the disclosure provides sufficient details such that one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize the claimed invention as providing an improvement,” and that “[t]he specification need not explicitly set forth the improvement, but it must describe the invention such that the improvement would be apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art.” Looking to the specification is a standard that the courts have employed when analyzing claims as it relates to improvements in technology. For example, in Enfish, the specification provided teaching that the claimed invention achieves benefits over conventional databases, such as increased flexibility, faster search times, and smaller memory requirements. Enfish LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327, 1335-36 (Fed. Cir. 2016). Additionally, in Core Wireless the specification noted deficiencies in prior art interfaces relating to efficient functioning of the computer. Core Wireless Licensing v. LG Elecs. Inc., 880 F.3d 1356 (Fed Cir. 2018). With respect to McRO, the claimed improvement, as confirmed by the originally filed specification, was “…allowing computers to produce ‘accurate and realistic lip synchronization and facial expressions in animated characters…’” and it was “…the incorporation of the claimed rules, not the use of the computer, that “improved [the] existing technological process” by allowing the automation of further tasks”. McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games America Inc., 837 F.3d 1299, (Fed. Cir. 2016).
In this case, Applicant’s specification provides no explanation of an improvement to the functioning of a computer or other technology. The specification in this case, provides brief statements regarding an improvement to the bandwidth, but the specification sets forth the improvement in a conclusory manner, such as a “bare assertion of an improvement without detail necessary to be apparent to a person of ordinary skill in the art” (see MPEP 2106.04(d)(I)), and the claims focus “on a process that qualifies as an ‘abstract idea’ for which computers are invoked merely as a tool”. Id citing Enfish at 1327, 1336. This is reflected in paragraphs [0086] of Applicant’s specification, which describe Applicant’s claimed invention is directed toward solving problems such as “determining a recommendation confidence for recommending one or more complementary items from an item catalog for an anchor item. These techniques described herein can provide a significant improvement over conventional approaches of excessive recommendations that not only are ineffective” and “excessive recommendations that do not sufficiently reflect the users’ preferences”. Although the claims include computer technology such as execution of computing instructions configured to run at one or more processors and stored at one or more non-transitory computer-readable media, a network, an electronic cart, electronic cart, transmission to a user device via the network, the network, and the user device, such elements are merely peripherally incorporated in order to implement the abstract idea of recommending complementary items. This is unlike the improvements recognized by the courts in cases such as Enfish, Core Wireless, and McRO. Unlike precedential cases, neither the specification nor the claims of the instant invention identify such a specific improvement to computer capabilities. The instant claims are not directed to improving the existing technological process but are directed to improving the commercial task of providing recommendations of complementary items. The claimed process, while arguably resulting in improved confidence in recommending complementary items, is not providing any improvement to another technology or technical field, such as to bandwidth of a network, as the claimed process is not, for example, improving the processor and computer components that operate the system. Rather, the claimed process is utilizing different data while still employing the same processor or computer components used in conventional systems to improve item recommendation, e.g. commercial process. The Examiner also notes that the instant claims are not similar to those discussed in Squires PTAB Decision. In that decision, it was determined that the claims and specification did in fact support the disclosed improvement. In that decision, it was determined that the specification supported the improvement to “effectively learn new tasks in succession whilst protecting knowledge about previous tasks” and also provided support that “the claimed improvement allows artificial intelligence (AI) systems to ‘us[e] less of their storage capacity’ and enables ‘reduced system complexity’” such that when evaluating the claim language, the independent claim 1 reflected that improvement (see Ex Parte Desjardins et al Rehearing Decision). In this case, however, the instant claims, as stated above, do not reflect an improvement to the technology or to a technical field, and nor does the specification support details of an improvement to the technology or technical field. As such, the claims are directed to an abstract idea, they do not recite specific technological improvements, and do not recite additional elements sufficient to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, and thus, the Examiner maintains the 101 rejection.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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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/ASHLEY D PRESTON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3688