DETAILED ACTION
This is a Non-Final Office Action in response to the Request for Continued Examination filed 05/12/2026.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 05/12/2026 has been entered.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 are currently pending in the application and have been examined.
Response to Amendment
The amendment filed 05/12/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Claim Rejections 35 U.S.C. § 101:
Applicant submits on page 8 of the remarks that amended claim 1 is not directed to a mental process. Examiner respectfully disagrees. Under the analysis of claims under step 2A of the Alice framework these claim elements are considered to be abstract ideas because they are directed to a mental process, which includes observations or evaluations. As the Federal Circuit has explained, "Courts have examined claims that required the use of a computer and still found that the underlying, patent-ineligible invention could be performed via pen and paper or in a person’s mind." Versata Dev. Group v. SAP Am., Inc., 793 F.3d 1306, 1335, 115 USPQ2d 1681, 1702 (Fed. Cir. 2015). See also Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. Symantec Corp., 838 F.3d 1307, 1318, 120 USPQ2d 1353, 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (‘‘[W]ith the exception of generic computer-implemented steps, there is nothing in the claims themselves that foreclose them from being performed by a human, mentally or with pen and paper.’’); Mortgage Grader, Inc. v. First Choice Loan Servs. Inc., 811 F.3d 1314, 1324, 117 USPQ2d 1693, 1699 (Fed. Cir. 2016). See MPEP 2106.04(a)
Applicant submits on page 10 of the remarks that independent claim 1 recites additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. Examiner respectfully disagrees and notes that the present claims do not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application in a matter that imposes meaningful limit to the judicial exception. The additional elements recited in the claims are just applying the use of a generic computer environment to perform the abstract idea. These additional elements do not provide improvement to the computer technology and do not provide a meaningful link of the abstract idea to a practical application.
Applicant submits on page 11 of the remarks that the claim recites additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception under Step 2B. Examiner respectfully disagrees and notes that in order for the dependent claims to be eligible, they need to add limitations that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception recited in the independent claim. The present claims are ineligible for lack of additional elements that would integrate the judicial exception (abstract idea) into a practical application or amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. See MPEP § 2106.07.
Independent claim 11 and the dependent claims include recitations simitar to those of independent claim 1 and are therefore rejected for the same reasons explained above.
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.
Claim(s) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-patentable subject matter. The claims are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
With respect to claims 1-20, the independent claims (claims 1 and 11) are directed, in part, to a method and a non-transitory storage medium for determining a sustainability query for a supplier. Step 1 – First pursuant to step 1 of the eligibility analysis, claims 1-10 are directed to a method comprising a series of steps which falls under the statutory category of a process and claims 11-20 are directed to a non-transitory storage medium, which falls under the statutory category of an article of manufacture. However, these claim elements are considered to be abstract ideas because they are directed to a mental process which includes observations or evaluations.
As per Step 2A - Prong 1 of the subject matter eligibility analysis, the claims are directed, in part, to assigning, by a cloud-based platform comprising a query generation engine, a scoring engine, and a data structure stored in a memory, an initial maturity classification of a supplier and storing the initial maturity classification in a data structure as a first data field of the data structure based on a response from the supplier to a query posed by the cloud-based platform, wherein the query is about a relevance of a greenhouse gas emission reporting, types of work, and contracts that the supplier has engaged in; assigning, by the cloud-based platform using a consortium approach, a maturity level of the supplier, which is connected to one or more clients, based on (i) the initial maturity classification, (ii) a standardized set of attributes including a company size, a geographic location of the supplier, and industries that impact business of the supplier, and (iii) alignment of supplier inputs to global ESG methodologies, wherein assigning the maturity level comprises updating the data structure according to the consortium approach, and wherein the maturity level is a single assigned level stored in the data structure and associated with the supplier across the one or more clients via a shared data record at any given time regardless of a number of clients connected with the supplier according to the consortium approach; dynamically determining by the cloud-based platform, based on the maturity level of the supplier retrieved from the data structure, one or more, external ESG standards, which a client identifies and wants the supplier to comply with, and a type of supplier specified by the client, a sustainability query for the supplier, wherein the sustainability query includes supplier materiality, which is client-specific, and an ESG question set configured to determine supplier compliance to global standards related to ESG, wherein the global standards include GRI (Global Reporting Initiative), VRF (Value Reporting Foundation), and SDG (Sustainable Development Goals); prompting, on a supplier display connected with the cloud-based platform, the supplier to respond to the sustainability query; receiving, by the cloud-based platform, supplier responses to the sustainability query; progressively generating, by the query generation engine on the supplier display connected with the cloud-based platform, a question in the sustainability query in response to each of supplier responses and with reference to a maturity level of the supplier and prior received supplier responses; adjusting, by the cloud-based platform, a compliance score for the supplier in real-time based on the supplier responses to the progressive questions in the sustainability query and the maturity level, by updating an ESG index value stored in the data structure in real-time using an ESG scoring engine that maps the external ESG standards and the global standards to the ESG question set based on question labels, wherein the compliance score is adjusted after each successive supplier response; updating, in supplier dashboard on the supplier display and one or more client dashboards of the one or more clients on one or more associated displays connected with the cloud-based platform, the compliance score automatically in response to detecting a change in at least one of the data structure, client-specific supplier materiality, and the mapped external or global ESG standards by triggering, via the ESG scoring engine, a recalculation of the ESG index value upon receipt of a new or modified supplier response; providing, by the cloud-based platform, the compliance score to the client; ranking, by the cloud-based platform, suppliers based on their respective compliance scores; generating, on the supplier display connected with the cloud-based platform, a badge based on the compliance score; and displaying, by the cloud-based platform, the badge on a supplier website, invoices, and other materials associated with the supplier, wherein cloud-based platform controls a supplier compliance score update, a supplier ranking output, and a compliance verification status based on the compliance score and the badge, and wherein the badge indicates that the supplier has completed an ESG assessment, participated in ESG measurement and verification, or participated in ESG assessment and audit. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation covers an observation or evaluation, then it falls under the “mental process” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
As per Step 2A - Prong 2 of the subject matter eligibility analysis, this judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, independent claims 1 and 11 recite the additional elements: “cloud-based platform”; “query generation engine”; “scoring engine”; “data structure”; “memory”; “a non-transitory storage medium”; “one or more hardware processors”. These additional elements are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic device performing a generic computer function of receiving and storing data) such that these elements amount no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Examiner looks to Applicant’s specification in at least figures 1 and 3 and related text and [0073] to understand that the invention may be implemented in a generic environment that “ the physical computing device 300 includes a memory 302 which may include one, some, or all, of random access memory (RAM), non-volatile memory (NVM) 304 such as NVRAM for example, read-only memory (ROM), and persistent memory, one or more processors 306 which may comprise hardware processors, non-transitory storage media 308, UI (user interface) device 310, and data storage 312. One or more of the memory components 302 of the computing device 300 may take the form of solid state device (SSD) storage. As well, one or more applications 314 may be provided that comprise instructions executable by one or more hardware processors 306 to perform any of the operations, or portions thereof, disclosed herein.” Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they are mere instructions to implement the abstract idea on a computer.
As per Step 2B of the subject matter eligibility analysis, the claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The additional elements are mere instructions to apply the abstract idea on a computer. When considered individually, these claim elements only contribute generic recitations of technical elements to the claims. It is readily apparent, for example, that the claim is not directed to any specific improvements of these elements and the invention is not directed to a technical improvement. When the claims are considered individually and as a whole, the additional elements noted above, appear to merely apply the abstract concept to a technical environment in a very general sense – i.e. a generic computer receives information from another generic computer, processes the information and then sends information back. In addition, when taken as an ordered combination, the ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present as when the elements are taken individually. Their collective functions merely provide generic computer implementation. Therefore, when viewed as a whole, these additional claim elements do not provide meaningful limitations to transform the abstract idea into a practical application of the abstract idea or that amount to significantly more than the abstract idea itself. The most significant elements of the claims, that is the elements that really outline the inventive elements of the claims, are set forth in the elements identified as an abstract idea. The fact that the generic computing devices are facilitating the abstract concept is not enough to confer statutory subject matter eligibility.
The dependent claims further refine the abstract idea. These claims do not provide a meaningful linking to the judicial exception. Rather, these claims offer further descriptive limitations of elements found in the independent claims and addressed above – such as by describing the nature and content of the data that is received/sent. While these descriptive elements may provide further helpful context for the claimed invention these elements do not serve to confer subject matter eligibility to the invention since their individual and combined significance is still not significantly more than the abstract concepts at the core of the claimed invention.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-20 are allowable over prior art but have other pending rejections as indicated above.
The claims would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) set forth in this Office Action.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to FRANCIS Z SANTIAGO-MERCED whose telephone number is (571)270-5562. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7am-4:30pm EST.
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/FRANCIS Z. SANTIAGO MERCED/ Examiner, Art Unit 3625
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