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 .
Introduction
The following is a non-final Office action in response to Applicant’s RCE submission filed on 5/18/2026. Currently claims 1-20 are pending and claims 1, 9, and 15 are independent. Claims 1, 4, 6, 9, 15, 16, 17, 20 have been amended from the previous claim set dated 12/30/2025. No claims have been added or cancelled.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 5/18/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendments
Applicant’s amendments are acknowledged and necessitated the new grounds of rejection in this Office Action. In light of the amendments the 35 USC § 103 rejections are withdrawn because none of the prior art of record, taken individually or in combination, teach the claimed invention as detailed in the independent claims, wherein the novelty of the claimed invention is in the combination of limitations and not in any single limitation. Specifically, none of the prior art discloses a ride matching system which utilizes machine learning to evaluate regional coverage feature improvement by considering matching a provider to one or another alternate request while also considering response times based on predicted regional coverage features and threshold response times based on sub-region coverage features and also the opportunity costs to the providers while also satisfying an overall network coverage efficiency condition.
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 1-20 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), specifically an abstract idea, without significantly more. With respect to claims 1-20, following the guidance set forth in MPEP 2106, the inquiry for patent eligibility follows two steps: Step 1: Does the claimed invention fall within one of the four statutory categories of invention? Step 2A (Prong 1): Is the claim “directed to” an abstract idea? Step 2A (Prong 2): Is the claim integrated into a practical application? Step 2B: Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to “significantly more” than the abstract idea?
In accordance with these steps, the Examiner finds the following:
Step 1: Claim 1 and its dependent claims (claims 2-8) are directed to a statutory category, namely a method. Claim 9 and its dependent claims (claims 10-14) are directed to a statutory category, namely a system/machine. Claim 15 and its dependent claims (claims 16-20) are directed to a statutory category, namely a method.
Step 2A (Prong 1): Claims 1, 9, and 15, which are substantially similar claims to one another, are directed to the abstract idea of “Certain methods of organizing human activity”, or more particularly, “Concepts relating to commercial or legal interactions (including: advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations) (See MPEP 2106).” In this application that refers to using a computer system to manage and analyze the process of organizing rides. To clarify this further, the Applicant’s disclosed invention is a conceptual system meant to perform the same function that a dispatcher might perform for a taxi company. The abstract elements of claims 1, 9, and 15, recite in part “Receive request…Determine coverage features…Generate predicted availability measures…Generate utilization score…Generate response time score…Generate coverage improvement metrics…Generate match…”. Dependent claims 2-8, 10-14, 16-20 add to the abstract idea the following limitations which recite in part “Receive locations…Determine coverage…Update inputs…Generate score…Generate metric…Determine response time…Generate response score…Generate metric…Combine weighted average…Generate filter…Exclude provider devices…Generate predicted time…Generate coverage metrics…Generate efficiency metric…generate match…”. All of these additional limitations, however, only serve to further limit the abstract idea, and hence are nonetheless directed towards fundamentally the same abstract idea as independent claims 1, 9, and 15.
Step 2A (Prong 2): Independent claims 1, 9, and 15, which are substantially similar claims to one another, do not contain additional elements that effectively integrate the exception into a practical application of the exception. These claims do include the limitation that recites in part “Processors…Server…Non-transitory computer readable medium…ML model…matching model…Markov model…Requestor device…Provider device…Transition matrix…” which limits the claims to a networked/computer based environment, but this is insufficient with respect to integration into a practical application because it is merely applying the abstract idea to a general computer (See MPEP 2106.05(f)).
Additionally, dependent claims 2-8, 10-14, 16-20 do not include any additional elements to conduct a further Step 2A (Prong 2) analysis.
Step 2B: Independent claims 1, 9, and 15, which are substantially similar claims to one another, include additional elements, when considered both individually and as an ordered combination, which are insufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The additional elements of these claims recite in part “Processors…Server…Non-transitory computer readable medium…ML model…matching model…Markov model…Requestor device…Provider device… Transition matrix…”. These items are not significantly more because these are merely the software and/or hardware components used to implement the abstract idea (manage and analyze the process of organizing rides) on a general purpose computer (See MPEP 2106.05(f)). This is exemplified in the Applicant’s specification in [0162] – “Embodiments of the present disclosure may comprise or utilize a special-purpose or general-purpose computer…”.
Additionally, dependent claims 2-8, 10-14, 16-20 do not include any additional elements to conduct a further 2B analysis.
Accordingly, whether taken individually or as an ordered combination claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 USC § 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception, an abstract idea, without significantly more.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 5/18/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive and/or are moot in light of the new rejections addressed above.
Regarding the arguments related to the 35 USC § 101 rejections, as addressed above according to the MPEP guidance for 35 USC § 101 rejections, the Examiner maintains that the claimed invention is an abstract idea, without significantly more, and not integrated into a practical application.
Applicant first argues that the claimed invention is patent eligible because the claimed invention is an improvement to a technology. Examiner does not find this persuasive because the claimed invention is interpreted as an improvement to the business process of matching rides that is facilitated through the use of a computer, and not an improvement to a computer (e.g. inventing a faster processor or more efficient memory).
Further, Applicant argues that the claimed invention controls eligibility of provider devices, and therefore overcomes the 101 rejection within the Step 2A (Prong 1) analysis. Examiner does not find this persuasive, however, because the claims fail to disclose that the providers’ devices are actually controlled. Rather, the claims are interpreted as the analysis preformed by the system merely determine which providers to engage or not.
As identified above, and in light of the amendments the 35 USC § 103 rejections are withdrawn because none of the prior art of record, taken individually or in combination, teach the claimed invention as detailed in the independent claims, wherein the novelty of the claimed invention is in the combination of limitations and not in any single limitation. Specifically, none of the prior art discloses a ride matching system which utilizes machine learning to evaluate regional coverage feature improvement by considering matching a provider to one or another alternate request while also considering response times based on predicted regional coverage features and threshold response times based on sub-region coverage features and also the opportunity costs to the providers while also satisfying an overall network coverage efficiency condition.
The closest prior art includes:
Dutta (US 20200012974 A1)
Broyles et al. (US 20180259351 A1)
Chachra et al. (US-10706487-B1)
Vora et al. (US 20200175632 A1)
Bentley et al. (US-10832294-B1)
Lidbetter et al. (US-11429910-B1)
van Ryzin et al. (US-20200005206-A1)
Balva et al. (WO-2019203788-A1)
and
U. Kalabić, et al. “Cap-and-trade scheme for ridesharing," 2020 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), Rhodes, Greece, 2020, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/ITSC45102.2020.9294268. [online], [retrieved on 2025-03-03]. Retrieved from the Internet <https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9294268?source=IQplus>
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Michael R Koester whose telephone number is (313)446-4837. The examiner can normally be reached Monday thru Friday 8:00AM-5:00 PM EST.
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/MICHAEL R KOESTER/Examiner, Art Unit 3624
/Jerry O'Connor/Supervisory Patent Examiner,Group Art Unit 3624
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