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 .
Response to Amendment
The examiner acknowledges applicant’s arguments in the Response dated March 5, 2026 as part of the Request for Continued Examination directed to the rejection set forth in the Final Office Action dated December 9, 2025. Claims 1-20 are pending in the application and subject to examination as part of this office action.
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 an abstract idea without significantly more.
The determination of subject matter eligibility under 35 USC 101, relies on the Mayo/Alice two-step analysis.
In step 1 of the analysis, the claims are evaluated to determine whether they fall within one of the four statutory categories (i.e., process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter). In the present case, claims 1-11 are directed to a live streaming platform server (i.e., a machine) and claims 12-20 are directed to a method (i.e., a process). The claims are, therefore directed to one of the four statutory categories.
Under prong 1 of step 2A, the examiner is directed to determine whether the claim recites a judicial exception. The claims are compared to groupings of subject matter that have been found by courts as abstract ideas. These groupings include
(a) Mathematical concepts—mathematical relationships, mathematical formulas or equations, mathematical calculations;
(b) Certain methods of organizing human activity—fundamental economic principles or practices (including hedging, insurance, mitigating risk); commercial or legal interactions (including agreements in the form of contracts; legal obligations; advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations); managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions); and
(c) Mental processes—concepts performed in the human mind (including an observation, evaluation, judgment, opinion).
Claim 1 recites a live streaming platform server comprising:
a processor; and
a memory device that stores a plurality of instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
receive, from a streaming device operating separate from the live streaming platform server, data associated with a play of a wagering game being displayed in association with the streaming device,
communicate, to a client device operating separate from each of the live streaming platform server and the streaming device, data associated with a live stream that is at least partially based on the data received from the streaming device,
responsive to the client device being associated with a first attribute:
determine a first streaming functionality of the client device, and
communicate, to the client device, data associated with a first command that causes a first change in operation of the client device, the first command being determined based on the determined first streaming functionality of the client device, and
responsive to the client device being associated with a second, different attribute:
determine a second, different streaming functionality of the client device, and
communicate, to the client device, data associated with a second command that causes a second change in operation of the client device, the second command being determined based on the determined second, different streaming functionality of the client device.
Claim 10 recites a live streaming platform server comprising:
a processor; and
a memory device that stores a plurality of instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to:
receive, from a streaming device operating separate from the live streaming platform server, data associated with a play of a wagering game being displayed in association with the streaming device,
communicate, to a client device operating separate from each of the live streaming platform server and the streaming device, data associated with a live stream that is at least partially based on the data received from the streaming device,
responsive to a client device being located at a first location associated with a gaming establishment:
determine a first benefit, and
communicate, to the client device, data associated with a command that causes a change in operation of the client device, the command being determined based on the determined first benefit, and
responsive to the client device being located at a second, different location remote from the gaming establishment, forgo communicating data associated with any command that causes the change in operation of the client device.
Claim 12 recites a method of operating a live streaming platform server, the method comprising:
receiving, from a streaming device operating separate from the live streaming platform server, data associated with a play of a wagering game being displayed in association with the streaming device,
communicating, to a client device operating separate from each of the live streaming platform server and the streaming device, data associated with a live stream that is at least partially based on the data received from the streaming device,
responsive to a client device being associated with a first attribute:
determining, by a processor, a first streaming functionality of the client device, and
communicating, to the client device, data associated with a first command that causes a first change in operation of the client device, the first command being determined by the processor based on the determined first streaming functionality of the client device, and
responsive to the client device being associated with a second, different attribute:
determining, by the processor, a second, different streaming functionality of the client device, and
communicating, to the client device, data associated with a second command that causes a second change in operation of the client device, the second command being determined by the processor based on the determined second, different streaming functionality of the client device.
The present claims are directed to determining one or more attributes of a client device in a streaming environment and/or one or more attributes of a user of the client device in the streaming environment (Specification [0018]). In these embodiments, based on the determined attributes of the client device (e.g., a determined location of the client device) and/or the determined attributes of the user of the client device (e.g., a streaming status of the user of the client device), the system determines certain benefits for the user of the client device (Specification [0018]). Such benefits include, amongst others, enabling a user of the client device the opportunity to wager on plays of games occurring at a streaming device and/or enabling the user of the client device to interact with a user of the streaming (Specification [0018]). In certain embodiments, the one or more servers enable web-based game play using a personal gaming device only if the personal gaming device satisfies one or more jurisdictional requirements (Specification [0173]).
These steps fall under the category of certain methods of organizing human activity. The claims fall into the sub-category of fundamental economic practices because they recite a wagering game. The claims also determining whether the client device is allowed to wager or whether wagering is disabled based on the streaming functionality of the claims. This falls into the sub-category of commercial or legal interactions since wagering requires compliance with jurisdictional requirements. The claims also fall into the sub-category of managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people because they recite steps involved in providing a game. The determining steps also fall into the category of mental processes because they can be performed in the human mind, or by a human using a pen and paper.
Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
Under prong 2 of Step 2A, the examiner considers whether additional elements integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. To do so, the examiner looks to the following exemplary considerations, looking at the elements individually and in combination:
• an additional element reflects an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field;
• an additional element that applies or uses a judicial exception to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition (not considered relevant to the present claims);
• an additional element implements a judicial exception with, or uses a judicial exception in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim;
• an additional element effects a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing; and
• an additional element applies or uses the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception.
The additional elements in the present claims are a processor, a memory device, a streaming device, a client device, an electronic gaming machine, a slot machine interface board, a personal gaming device, and a live streaming platform server. The additional elements do no integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. In particular, the additional elements do not reflect an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field. The additional elements do not implement a judicial exception with, or uses a judicial exception in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim. The additional elements do not effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing. The additional elements do not apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment. Accordingly, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea.
Under step 2B, the examiner evaluates whether the additional elements amount to significantly more than the judicial exception itself. The examiner considers if the additional elements:
• add a specific limitation or combination of limitations that are not well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field, which is indicative that an inventive concept may be present; or
• simply appends well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial exception, which is indicative that an inventive concept may not be present.
The present claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The additional elements are well-understood, routine, and conventional:
a processor, a memory device, a slot machine interface board (Bradford et al., US 6,709,333 B1, game device 100 includes the normal and well known internals needed in order to have a functioning game, such as at least one central processor, associated memory, input/output interfaces, peripheral interfaces to the video display, control buttons and lever, monetary input devices, slot machine interface board (SMIB), together with the firmware and software needed to implement the full functionality of the game (these internals not shown); the gaming device 100 may alternatively comprise a live table game of chance, such as a blackjack table [C8:7-21]); and
a streaming device, a client device, an electronic gaming machine, a personal gaming device, a live streaming platform server (Qureshi et al., US 2011/0145063 A1, examples of well known computing systems, environments, and/or configurations that may be suitable for use with aspects of the invention include, but are not limited to, mobile computing devices, personal computers, server computers, hand-held or laptop devices, multiprocessor systems, gaming consoles, microprocessor-based systems, set top boxes, programmable consumer electronics, mobile telephones, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframe computers, distributed computing environments that include any of the above systems or devices, and the like [0046]).
Thus, taking the claimed elements individually yields no difference from taking them in combination because each element simply performs its respective function. The claims merely amount to an instruction to apply the abstract idea using generic, functional, and conventional components well-known in the art. Viewed as a whole, these additional claim elements do not provide meaningful limitations to transform the abstract idea into a patent eligible application of the abstract idea such that the claims amount to significantly more than the abstract idea itself. Therefore, claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Prior Art
There are currently no prior art rejections against claims 1-20.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to the rejections under 35 USC 101 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant states that “the association of the client device with an attribute results in differing streaming functionality of the client device (e.g., causes a change in operation of the client device to enable or disable a placement of a wager on a play of a wagering game), such association is not merely a ‘business decision.’” (Response [p. 8])
The examiner maintains that the limitations are not directed to a technical solution to a technical problem. In the present instance, incorporating the abstract idea onto generic computing components is no more than generally linking the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use.
Applicant argues:
Regarding the position that the claimed live streaming platform servers and methods of operating live streaming platform servers are directed to an abstract idea of a mental process, Applicant respectfully submits that a human mind with the aid of pencil and paper is not capable of communicating, to a client device, data associated with a command that causes a change in operation of the client device, the command being determined based on a determined streaming functionality of the client device or a determined benefit. (Response [pp. 8-9])
The examiner maintains that the “determining” steps can be performed by the human mind. The examiner never argued that communicating data is a mental process.
Next, applicant argues:
Applicant also respectfully submits that the claimed live streaming platform servers and methods of operating live streaming platform servers represent a solution to the technical problem of failing to differentiate a streaming experience by modify the operation of a client device based on an attribute of that client device. (Response [p. 9])
Applicant goes no to state “there the tailoring of streaming functionality of a particular client device based on an attribute of that individual client device overcomes a recognized technical limitation of prior streaming systems and thus integrates the alleged abstract idea into practical application” (Response [p. 9]).
“[D]ifferentiat[ing] a streaming experience by modifying the operation of a client device based on an attribute of that client device” is not a technical problem. The only difference is the service provided to a user. This “solution” is not directed to a technical problem. The examiner is unable to find any technical improvement in the proposed claims.
The examiner maintains the rejections under 35 USC 101.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WERNER G GARNER whose telephone number is (571)270-7147. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30-15:30 EST.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, DAVID LEWIS can be reached at (571) 272-7673. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/WERNER G GARNER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3715