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 .
Prosecution Status
Applicant’s remarks filed 10/3/2025 have been received and reviewed. The status of the claims is as follows:
Claims 1-3, 5-11, 36-39 are pending and stand rejected.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 10/03/2025 has been entered.
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.
1. Claims 1-3, 5-11, 36-39 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.
Claims 1-3, 5-11, 36-39 are directed to facilitating an auction and a series of sub-auctions, which is considered both a fundamental economic practice and a commercial interaction. Each of fundamental economic practices and commercial interactions fall within a subject matter grouping of abstract ideas which the Courts have considered ineligible (Certain methods of organizing human activity). The claims do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, and do not include additional elements that provide an inventive concept (are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the abstract idea).
Under step 1 of the Alice/Mayo framework, it must be considered whether the claims are directed to one of the four statutory classes of invention. In the instant case, claims 1-3, 5-11, 36-39 recite a system comprising a machine readable storage medium and a processor. Therefore, the claims are each directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention (apparatus).
Under step 2A of the Alice/Mayo framework, it must be considered whether the claims are “directed to” an abstract idea. That is, whether the claims recite an abstract idea and fail to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
Regarding independent claim 1, the claim sets forth a process in which an auction and a series of sub-auctions are facilitated, including through the facilitation of sales activities, in the following limitations:
a first two-dimensional array structure VAL[X, P] defined by a first dimension X comprising all possible spans for a multi- item multi-unit XOR (MIMU-XOR) auction and a second dimension P comprising all possible bidder coalitions for the MIMU-XOR auction such that each element VAL[X, P] corresponds to a respective sub-auction [X, P] and stores a value of the respective sub-auction, and a second two-dimensional array structure LastWinBid[X, P] defined by the first dimension X comprising all possible spans for the MIMU-XOR auction and the second dimension P comprising all possible bidder coalitions for the MIMU-XOR auction such that each element of LastWinBid[X,P] corresponds to the respective sub-auction [X, P] and stores a last winning bid of the respective sub-auction
receive a bid b for the MIMU-XOR auction;
track the value of each sub-auction of the MIMU-XOR auction via VAL[X, P] by looping through VAL[X, P] to update the value of each sub-auction [X, P] where the received bid b belongs to sub-auction [X, P] and the received bid b combines with winning bids in a complementary sub-auction to outbid a current winning bid in the sub-auction [X, P] and in response to updating the value of a sub-auction [X, P], update the last winning bid of the respective sub-auction [X, P] in LastWinBid[X, P] to equal the received bid b;
determine bidder support information comprising winning levels, deadness levels, winning bids, and live bids based on the value of each sub-auction stored in the first two-dimensional array structure and the last winning bid of each sub-auction stored in the second two-dimensional array structure.
The above-recited limitations set forth the fundamental economic principle of facilitating auctions, including determining winning bids and establish a commercial interaction between bidders and a seller to complete an auction process. This arrangement amounts to each of a fundamental economic principle or practice, a sales activity or behavior, and business relations. Such concepts have been considered ineligible certain methods of organizing human activity by the Courts (See MPEP 2106.04(a)).
Claim 1 does recite additional limitations:
a machine readable storage medium storing instructions; and
a processor to execute the instructions throughout a duration of an auction to
These additional elements merely amount to the general application of the abstract idea to a technological environment. The specification makes clear the general-purpose nature of the technological environment. Paragraphs 23-24 and 27 indicate that while exemplary general purpose systems may be specific for descriptive purposes, any elements or combinations of elements capable of implementing the claimed invention are acceptable. That is, the technology used to implement the invention is not specific or integral to the claim.
Therefore, considered both individually and as an ordered combination, the additional elements do no more than generally link the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment or field of use. That is, given the generality with which the additional limitations are recited, the limitations do not implement the abstract idea with, or use the abstract idea in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim. Additionally, the claims do not reflect an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field, do not effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing; and do not apply or use the abstract idea in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the abstract idea. Accordingly, the Examiner concludes that the claim fails to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, and is therefore “directed to” the abstract idea.
Under step 2B of the Alice/Mayo framework, it must finally be considered whether the claim includes any additional element or combination of elements that provide an inventive concept (i.e., whether the additional element or elements are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the abstract idea). In the instant case, as indicated above, the additional elements merely provide a generic, non-particular operating environment for the abstract idea. Accordingly, the Examiner asserts that the additional elements, considered both individually, and as an ordered combination, do not provide an inventive concept, and the claim is ineligible for patent.
Regarding Claims 2-3, 5-11, 36-39
Dependent claims 2-3, 5-11, 36-39 merely provide embellishments to the abstract idea, and do not confer eligibility on the claimed invention.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the 35 USC 101 rejection have been fully considered, but they are not persuasive. Applicant generally asserts that “the invention is not directed to an abstract idea, and even if the invention includes an abstract idea, the invention includes significantly more than the abstract idea.” More particularly, applicant asserts, in response the Examiner’s assertion that the claim sand specification are silent as to if or how the array structures are implemented in memory, Applicant asserts:
Independent claim 1 has been amended to specifically recite that the array structures are implemented in a machine readable storage medium, which may for example according to paragraph [0027] of the Specification, be a memory, such as a RAM, EEPROM, or a storage drive. The memory is communicatively coupled to the processor for the retrieval and processing of the data stored in the memory as described, for example in paragraph [0024] of the Specification and illustrated in FIGS. 2, 3B, and 3C of the Drawings. Accordingly, the claims and the specification describe how the array structures are implemented in memory.
With regard to the cited paragraphs of the Specification, the Examiner notes that these portions describe the machine readable storage medium in the context of the storage and retrieval of instructions to perform the claimed operations, and do not contain any reference to the array structures. Even if one of ordinary skill in the art would have interpreted the recitation in paragraph [0029] that the “arrays of the structure…are created and stored” as storing the claimed array structures in the machine readable storage medium, such a disclosure still would not be sufficient to describe how the arrays are stored in the medium, only setting forth that they are stored.
In response to the Examiner’s assertion that the present disclosure and claims do not seek to implement a solution to a problem in the software arts, applicant argues that:
The Specification, however, discloses in paragraph [0003] that "in a typical multi-item combinatorial auction, the number of possible bundles that bidders can bid on increases exponentially with respect to the number of heterogeneous items, and finding the winning bids (i.e., winner determination) is computationally intractable. In MIMU auctions, specifically, winner determination is known to be NP-complete (nondeterministic polynomial-time complete)."…Computationally intractable refers to problems that, while solvable in principle, require an unreasonable, often exponential or factorial, amount of time and resources, such as processing power or memory, to solve as the input size grows, making them practically impossible for even the most powerful computers to handle efficiently. NP-complete problems are the hardest problems within the NP complexity class. They are problems where a proposed solution can be verified quickly (in polynomial time), but finding the solution itself might take an exponentially long time on a standard computer. Therefore, the present disclosure and claimed bidder support in MIMU-XOR auctions is a solution to a problem in the software arts.
However, the Examiner asserts that NP-complete problems are not exclusive to software arts, but are rather problems that emerge in field of computational complexity theory. Paragraph [0003] makes no mention of software, computers, or any manner of technology at all. The problems to be solved by the invention are set forth entirely in the context of buyer knowledge of auction status in complex auctions. Accordingly, arguments that the claimed invention seeks to solve pre-existing problems in the software arts are not persuasive. Additionally, even if NP-complete problems were considered to be a specific problem in the software arts, the claimed invention does not provided a technical solution to NP-complete problem solving by computers, it provides an algorithmic solution to a particular commercial problem that happens to be an NP-complete problem in computational complexity theory.
Applicant further asserts that:
The features of amended claim 1 (and further features in the dependent claims)recite an improvement to computer functionality and are not abstract. The claimed invention is not merely an abstract idea but provides a specific, technical solution to a long-standing technical problem. The specific claim features of using sub-auctions and the first array structure to store values of sub-auctions and the second array structure for storing last winning bids of sub- auctions significantly improve the functioning of a computer. As described in paragraph [0041] of the Specification, the implementation of claim 1 utilizing the recited first array structure and the second array structure to track the values and last winning bids of each sub-auction of the MIMU-XOR auction trades exponential storage space for fast calculation (i.e., in real time) of winning and deadness levels. As an example, on a regular personal computer, it would take the Integer Programming (IP) approach (the only known approach prior to the present disclosure) more than 8 hours to calculate all winning and deadness levels for a MIMU-OR auction with 3 items and 15 units per item after one bid. In contrast, it takes the disclosed implementation only 5.25 milliseconds to do so on the same computer (i.e., the disclosed implementation achieves a speedup of 5.5 million times). (See also paragraphs [0003] and [0018]). As a result, bidder support information can be queried very efficiently, which was computationally intractable prior to the claimed solution. For example, a straightforward IP approach to calculate all winning levels and deadness levels is several orders of magnitude slower than the disclosed approach in calculating all bidder support information. Accordingly, the features of claim 1 improve the functionality of a computer in a similar manner as Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
The first array structure and the second array structure of claim 1 are analogous to the self-referential table in Enfish, which improved database functionality by enabling faster searches and reduced memory usage. In claim 1, the first and second array structures improve computational performance by avoiding the computationally intensive process required by IP methods. Claim 1 is not merely applying an auction process on a generic computer but specifies a technical solution: two-dimensional arrays structured by spans and bidder coalitions, which support the efficiency of the bidder support system of claim 1. These array structures are not a generic data storage mechanism but a specific configuration designed for MIMU-XOR auctions, enabling real-time processing of complex auction data. The significant speedup (5.5 million times) indicates a technological improvement, as it allows the computer to handle large-scale combinatorial auctions in real time, a capability not feasible with conventional IP methods.
As previously noted by the Examiner, the claimed array structures, unlike the referential table in Enfish, that are not specifically linked to any functioning of computer memory, or to the storage and later retrieval of information from that memory. The present claims and specification are entirely silent as to how the array structures are implemented in memory. Instead, they are described (and claimed) only in the context of their algorithmic operation within instructions to support an auction, and that they are broadly stored on a machine-readable medium. The arrays are merely utilized as mathematical tools to perform the abstract determinations of bidder support information during an auction (such as winning and deadness levels). The Court, in Enfish noted that the claims at issue were “directed to a specific improvement to the way computers operate, embodied in the self-referential table” and further “the self-referential table recited in the claims on appeal is a specific type of data structure designed to improve the way a computer stores and retrieves data in memory.”
Here, the claimed method does not alter or in any way improve the manner in which the claimed processor operates – it only improves the manner in which abstract determinations of bidder support information are performed.
In Enfish, the Court contrasted the claims at issue with those in Alice and Versata which were held to be ineligible, but noting that “we are not faced with a situation where general-purpose computer components are added post-hoc to a fundamental economic practice or mathematical equation. Rather, the claims are directed to a specific implementation of a solution to a problem in the software arts.” The present disclosure and claims do not seek to implement a solution to a problem in the software arts. Paragraph [0003] - [0004] set forth the problem to be solved by the invention as entirely commercial in nature. They make no mention of software, computers, or any manner of technology at all. The problems to be solved by the invention are set forth entirely in the context of buyer knowledge of auction status in complex auctions.
Applicant still further asserts that:
Even if claim 1 is deemed as being directed to an abstract idea, claim 1 includes an inventive concept that adds significantly more to transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible application. The first and second array structures are two-dimensional, with dimensions comprising all possible spans and bidder coalitions for the MIMU-XOR auction. These are not generic data structures but tailored configurations that account for the unique combinatorial complexity of MIMU-XOR auctions, where XOR rules restrict bidders to one winning bid, and spans represent all possible item-unit combinations. These structures enable efficient storage and retrieval of sub-auction statuses including values and last winning bids.
Paragraph [0041] of the Specification explain how the features of claim 1 tracks sub- auctions in a dynamic-programming fashion, updating the arrays. This approach achieves a 5.5 million times speedup over IP methods, which require solving complex optimization problems for winner determination. For a MIMU-OR auction (3 items, 15 units), IP takes over 8 hours, while the disclosed system takes 5.25 milliseconds. The dramatic speedup indicates a non- conventional and non-routine implementation. IP is a standard method for combinatorial auction winner determination, but its computational intensity makes real-time bidder support impractical for large auctions. Claim 1 recites the use of two-dimensional arrays that is a specific technical solution that trades exponential storage for computational speed, a non-trivial design choice. This mirrors Amdocs (Israel) Ltd. v. Openet Telecom, Inc., 841 F.3d 1288 (Fed. Cir. 2016), where a distributed architecture's scalability was deemed inventive despite using generic components.
In response, the Examiner emphasizes that computational improvement is not equivalent to an improvement to a computer or computer field and that “dynamic-programming” is a mathematical optimization method, and not inherently a computerized process. Dynamic programming is specification utilized to simplifying a complex problem by breaking it down into simpler sub-problems in a recursive manner. This is consistent with the use of the claimed arrays as a computational tool to simplify the performance of a complex algorithmic problem of determining bidder support information, such as winning and deadness levels, as an auction progresses. That a less efficient algorithmic approach (Integer Programming) may be chosen to perform the abstract steps of determining bidder support information in the facilitation of an auction does not indicate that use of the claimed algorithmic approach (a manner of dynamic programming) improves the functioning of any computer or computer technology. It only indicates that the claimed approach may be a more efficient algorithmic approach for the abstract determining bidder support information of an auction. Further, unlike the claims in Amdocs, the present claims do not specify the nature of the architecture of the claimed approach, and fails to specify how the claimed invention is implemented in a computer system (e.g., in memory), only that the invention is stored on a machine readable medium implemented by a computer. The increased specificity with which the arrays are now claimed does not further specify their linkage to any computing technology or technological operations, but merely further specify the algorithmic constructs and approaches to implementing the invention.
Ultimately, the recited machine functions solely as an obvious mechanism for permitting the idea to be achieved. The claims at issue here do not rise to overriding the routine and conventional sequence of events ordinarily performed by the computer, nor do they set forth with any specificity the interactions of the machine itself. Conversely, the claims are only specific in how the computer is used to facilitate the judicial exception itself, and are silent as to any detail or property that would transform the otherwise generic computer into a specialized or special purpose machine. Not unlike the analysis in Content Extraction v. Wells Fargo, there is no inventive concept in the use of the generic computer. The inventive concept within the claims at issue resides solely in the manner in which the exception is performed.
Applicant further asserts that:
The system recited by claim 1 enables real-time bidder support (winning levels, deadness levels, winning bids, and live bids), critical for continuous MIMU auctions where bidders join and leave dynamically. (See Specification, Para. [0002]). This practical application integrates the abstract idea into a specific technological context. Similar to McRO, Inc. v. Bandai Namco Games America Inc., 837 F.3d 1299 (Fed. Cir. 2016), where claims were eligible because they used specific rules to automate lip-sync animation, improving computer functionality, the array structures of claim 1 automate and accelerate bidder support calculations, improving the computer's ability to process complex auction data. Accordingly, claim 1 specifies non- conventional data structures and processes tailored to MIMU-XOR auctions that improve the functioning of a computer and provide a practical application. Therefore, Applicant submits that the claims are patent eligible in line with the Federal Circuit's Enfish decision, which observes that many advancements in computer technology, "by their very nature, may not be defined by particular physical features but rather by logical structures and processes." Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327, 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
The Examiner respectfully disagrees, as the claims in McRO solved problems in a specific technological field of computer-generated imagery, and provided a specific solution to more effectively render facial expression within that field. The present disclosure and claims do not contemplate a similar technological problem or technological field. Instead, they address a computational problem in a commercial field (tracking auction status in MIMU-XOR auctions).
For the above reasons, applicant’s arguments are not persuasive, and the claims are held to be ineligible.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 MICHAEL A MISIASZEK whose telephone number is (571)272-6961. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday. 8:00 AM - 5:30 PM.
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/MICHAEL MISIASZEK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3688