Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. 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
2. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 October 15th, 2025 has been entered.
DETAILED ACTION
3. This Non-Final Office action is in response to the application filed on June 30th, 2022 and in response to Applicant’s Arguments/Remarks filed on October 15th, 2025. Claims 1-16 are pending.
Priority
4. Application 17/855,186 was filed on June 30th, 2022 which is a continuation of PCT /JP2021/001546 filed on January 19th, 2021 which claims foreign priority to JP2020-007063 filed on January 20th, 2020.
Examiner Request
5. The Applicant is requested to indicate where in the specification there is support for amendments to claims should Applicant amend. The purpose of this is to reduce potential 35 U.S.C. §112(a) or §112 1st paragraph issues that can arise when claims are amended without support in the specification. The Examiner thanks the Applicant in advance.
Response to Arguments
6. Applicant amended the claims to include additional limitations such as present recruitment information, wherein the job applicant has a plurality of attributes, in stages according to each attribute of the job applicant,” and asserts that these limitations now make the claims patent-eligible because “it is a concrete technical implementation wherein a server dynamically controls access rights to information using user attributes stored in a database as parameters… improving the system’s data management efficiency and security.” Examiner respectfully disagrees. The claims do not recite any such technical improvements. The claims do not recite any dynamic access control mechanism, any modification to access control protocols, any improved server operation, or any technological change to how data is stored or secured. The claims merely recite presenting information “in stages according to each attribute of the job applicant,” receiving shift preferences, displaying a time chart, issuing an employment form, and generating remittance data. These operations are associated with business decisions/improvements associated with hiring, scheduling, and payroll management, and do not amount to an improvement to computer functionality or any technical field. Instead the claims recite a hiring workflow using generic computing components, which does not constitute a technological improvement, nor does it reflect anything more than the presentation of information according to business attributes. The alleged benefits asserted in the remarks are not commensurate in scope with the claim language, which is directed to organizing human activity and managing interactions between job applicants and business operators. The claims do not improve the functioning of the computer, database, server, or any other technology, rather they merely use generic computer components as tools to implement an employment related workflow. Accordingly, the arguments do not demonstrate that the claims integrate the judicial exception into a practical application, nor do they provide an inventive concept. The rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101, is maintained.
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.
7. Claims 1-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more. Claims 1-16 are directed to a system, method, or product which are/is one of the statutory categories of invention. (Step 1: YES).
Claims 1, 15, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim recites formulating and evaluating an intellectual property strategy. Claims 1, 15 and 16 the limitations of (Claim 1 being representative) recites:
[…]store a first attribute of a job applicant who wishes to work for a business operator, wherein the stored first attribute distinguishes an inside employee employed by the business operator from an outside person with experience who used to be employed by the business operator but has already retired; and […]
present recruitment information, wherein the job applicant has a plurality of attributes, in stages according to each attribute of the job applicant;
receive, from the job applicant, an entry of shift information on a preferred date and a time to work for the business operator, wherein the shift information is shared with a plurality of business operators, there are separate passwords for the job applicant and each business operator of the plurality of business operators, […]; display a time chart with the shift information to the business operator with shift information from the inside employee distinguished from shift information from the outside person with experience;
receive, from the business operator, an entry of selection information to select the job applicant to actually work based on the presented shift information;
issue a form required for employment for the job applicant selected by business operator, the form being issued according to the first attribute; and
generating remittance data for transferring money from a deposit account of the business operator to a deposit account of the job applicant.
Collectively, these steps amount to no more than receiving, storing, classifying, presenting, and transmitting information related to job applicants, shift preferences, hiring decisions and payment. These represent managing interactions between a business operator and a job applicant, and therefore, constitute the “certain methods of organizing human activity.” Other than reciting a storage unit, processing circuitry and a server configured to check the separate passwords for validity (Claims 1, 15, and 16), and nonvolatile storage medium that stores a program executable by a computer (Claim 16), the claimed invention amounts to commercial or legal interactions (i.e., issuing forms required for employment) and managing personal behavior or interactions between people (i.e., the practice of hiring people for shift work). Under its broadest reasonable interpretation, these steps covers commercial or legal interactions and/or managing personal behavior or interactions between people but for the recitation of generic computer components (see MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)(II)), and falls within the “certain methods of organizing human activity” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, Claims 1, 15, and 16 recite an abstract idea. (Step 2A- Prong 1: YES. The claims recite an abstract idea).
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claims only recite a storage unit, processing circuitry and a server (Claims 1, 15, and 16), and nonvolatile storage medium that stores a program executable by a computer (Claim 16). These additional elements are not described by the applicant and are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., generic computers performing generic computer functions) such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer components.
The claims 1, 15, and 16 further recite a server configured to check the separate passwords for validity which amounts to extra-solution activity. MPEP 2106.04(d)(I) indicates that extra-solution activity cannot provide a practical application. Accordingly, these additional elements, when considered separately and as an ordered combination, do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Claims 1, 15, and 16 are directed to an abstract idea without a practical application. (Step 2A-Prong 2: NO: the additional claimed elements are not integrated into a practical application).
Claims 1, 15, and 16 do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because, when considered separately and as an ordered combination, they do not add significantly more (also known as an “inventive concept”) to the exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of a storage unit, processing circuitry and a server (Claims 1, 15, and 16), and nonvolatile storage medium that stores a program executable by a computer (Claim 16) to perform the noted steps 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 (“significantly more”).
Also, as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element of a server configured to check the separate passwords for validity has been re-evaluated under the “significantly more” analysis and determined to be well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field. The prior art of record indicates that utilizing a server to check passwords for validity is well-understood, routine, conventional activity Te et al. (US 6,078,381 B1; filed October 26, 1999) discloses (col. 1; lines 33-41) Accordingly, it is common practice to register users of a system together with a unique password to authenticate the identity of the user of the secure network or secure web server system in association with a list of system resources (e.g. files, applications, hardware such as printers and scanners and the like) to which the user, once authenticated, may be granted access. The access of the user to a particular resource must generally be implemented by an administrator. Gavrilov et al. (US 2005/0228982; filed March 9, 2005) discloses (Abstract) “Systems, methods, computer-readable media and application program interfaces are disclosed for enabling server applications to verify purported authentication information, such as passwords, provided by clients in connection with server access requests by leveraging trusted credentials maintained by separate trusted authorities. In some cases, the server applications may lack trusted credentials that may be used to verify the purported authentication information. In those cases, the server applications may identify security principal accounts managed by the separate trusted authorities for which the provided authentication information may be purported to be valid for by the requesting clients. Further, the server applications may request the separate trusted authorities to authenticate the purported authentication information before granting access to the requesting clients. In other cases, the server applications may maintain locally trusted credentials that may be used to verify the provided authentication information without involving the separate trusted authorities.” [0101] At step 220, application directory service agent 26 may determine whether a matching user entry represents a proxy user or a bindable user in network 94, although other types of users may be determined. The determination of which type of user the matching user entry represents may be made so that application directory service agent 26 may perform a portion of method 200 related to verifying purported authentication information that is appropriate for each type of user. Generally, however, application directory service agent 26 may not have access to one or more locally trusted credentials for authenticating proxy users while agent 26 may have access to locally trusted credentials for authenticating bindable users, for example. Well-understood, routine, conventional activity cannot provide an inventive concept (“significantly more”).
For further clarity of record, the step of displaying a time chart is merely the well‐understood, routine, and conventional functions of “Receiving or transmitting data over a network, e.g., using the Internet to gather data, Symantec, 838 F.3d at 1321, 120 USPQ2d at 1362 (utilizing an intermediary computer to forward information); TLI Communications LLC v. AV Auto. LLC, 823 F.3d 607, 610, 118 USPQ2d 1744, 1745 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (using a telephone for image transmission); OIP Techs., Inc., v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1363, 115 USPQ2d 1090, 1093 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (sending messages over a network); buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1355, 112 USPQ2d 1093, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (computer receives and sends information over a network); but see DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, L.P., 773 F.3d 1245, 1258, 113 USPQ2d 1097, 1106 (Fed. Cir. 2014) ("Unlike the claims in Ultramercial, the claims at issue here specify how interactions with the Internet are manipulated to yield a desired result‐‐a result that overrides the routine and conventional sequence of events ordinarily triggered by the click of a hyperlink."
Accordingly, even when considered separately and as an ordered combination, nothing in the claim adds significantly more (i.e. an inventive concept) to the abstract idea. Thus claims 1, 15, and 16 are not patent eligible. (Step 2B: NO. The claims do not provide significantly more).
Dependent Claims 2-14 are similarly rejected because they merely further narrow the same abstract idea of independent claim 1 as discussed above and hence are abstract for at least the reasons presented above. Claims 2-4, merely describe different attributes and editing the attributes, claims 5-8 merely further describe display and shift information, claim 9 merely describes editing attributes and displaying shift information, claim 10 merely describes receiving conditions and displaying recruitment, claim 11 merely describes notifying the job applicant, claim 12 merely describes selecting the job applicant, claim 13 merely describes setting a salary, and claim 14 merely describes receiving an evaluation and storing the evaluation which further defines the abstract idea. Therefore claims 2-14 are considered patent ineligible for the reasons given above.
Conclusion
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/JESSICA LEMIEUX/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3626