DETAILED ACTION
This is in reference to communication received 05 June 2026. Cancellation of claims 2, 6 and 8 – 20 is acknowledged. Addition of claims 21 – 30 is acknowledged. Claims 1, 3 – 5, 7 and 21 – 30 are pending for examination. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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, 3 – 5, 7 and 21 – 30 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.
Independent claim 21, representative of claims 1 and 26, in part is directed toward a statutory category of invention, the claim appears to be directed toward a judicial exception namely an abstract idea. Claim 21 recites invention directed to a business-entity which engages in selling products in their brick-and-mortar stores, brick-and-mortar club-stores and online over the internet. Said business-entity
Maintains offline purchase data by plurality of members including purchases obtained via point-of-sale (POS) checkout devices and scan-and-go (SNG) self-checkout order devices within one or more retail facilities; obtain online activity data indicating member identifiers (IDs) of members of a retail store, online interactions by the members with the digital advertisement, including clicks and views associated with the digital advertisement, and first time stamps of the online interactions associated with a digital advertisement for a product; online activity data is processed to filter-out online activity associated with non-human entities (e.g., a bot). multichannel purchase data for the product is retrieved based on the member IDs and time-window filter is applied to the multichannel purchase data for removing one of the in-store purchases based on a time period between the in-store purchase and an online interaction with the digital advertisement, preceding the in-store purchase, exceeding a threshold; determine a correlation between the filtered online activity data and the time-window-filtered multichannel purchase data is determined which will used for creating a multichannel attribution report indicating return on ad spend (ROAS) data for a digital advertisement for a product and clicks associated with the digital advertisement, with in-store purchases of the product by the plurality of members, and generated report is presented to a user.
These limitations describe marketing/sales/advertising activities. maintaining transaction data by plurality of customers and/or members, collecting interaction associated with an advertising of a product, filtering out interaction traffic data generated by a non-human entity (e.g., a bot); filtering out a subset of transaction data based upon a time duration to determine effect of the advertising on the customer’s purchases, generating a report and presenting the generated report to a user. Generating and causing presentation of the attribution report to a user would be the marketing team (or person) providing, such as a visual presentation, the valuation information to the marketing team’s management.
In addition, the additional elements of using a machine-learning model to identify online activities associated with non-human entities (e.g. bots) is recited at a high level of generality. These additional elements fail to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
Represented claims 1 and 21, which do recite statutory categories (machine, product of manufacture, for example), the same analysis as above applies to these claims since the method steps are the same. However, the judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. These claims add the generic computer components (additional elements) of a system comprising one or more hardware processors and a memory (claim 1), and a non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising instructions that when executed by a processor of a machine cause the machine to perform the method addressed above (claim 15).
The processor, memory, and non-transitory machine-readable medium are recited at a high-level of generality such that they amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. 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. The claims are directed to an abstract idea.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element of the processor, memory, and non-transitory machine-readable medium amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. The claims are not patent eligible.
When taken as an ordered combination, nothing is added that is not already present when the elements are taken individually. When viewed as a whole, the marketing activities amount to instructions applied using generic computer components.
As for dependent claims 22 – 25 and representative claims 3 – 5, 7, and 26 – 30 dependent on the aforementioned independent claims, and include all the limitations contained therein. These claims do not recite any additional technical elements, and simply disclose additional limitations that further limit the abstract idea with details regarding descriptions of various data that will generated, defining what information does ROAS data reflect and utilization of the ML model.
Thus, the dependent claims merely provide additional non-structural (and predominantly non-functional) details that fail to meaningfully limit the claims or the abstract idea(s).
Therefore, claims 1, 3 – 5, 7 and 21 – 30 are not drawn to eligible subject matter, as they are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Jessica Malnik published article “Identify and Filter Bot Traffic in Google Analytics with These 10 Tips” teaches there are malicious bots that can cause major headaches for website owners like DDOS attacks. The key is to get better at identifying and filtering out bot traffic so that you have a reliable Analytics data on what humans – not bots – are actually doing on your website.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Naresh Vig whose telephone number is (571)272-6810. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 06:30a - 04:00p.
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/NARESH VIG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3622
August 7, 2026
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