DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Notice for all US Patent Applications filed on or after March 16, 2013
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 4/16/26 has been entered.
Status of the Claims
This communication is in response to communications received on 4/16/26. Claim(s) 1, 12, and 17 is/are amended, claim(s) none is/are cancelled, claim(s) none is/are new, and applicant states support can be found at instant specification [0075-0076]. Therefore, Claims 1-5, 7-8, 10-15, and 17-20 is/are pending and have been addressed below.
Claims Without Prior Art Rejections
Claim(s) 1-5, 7-8, 10-15, and 17-20 do/does not have prior art rejections. The remaining rejections are 101 as noted below.
Closest prior art to the invention include
Levi et al. (US 2016/0034835 A1) in view of Morgan et al. (US 2012/0226796 A1) and Amiri et al. (US 2021/0303969 A1) for claim(s) 1, 3-5, 7-8, 10-11, 12, 14-15, 17, and 19-20 and
Levi in view of Morgan and Amiri as applied to claim(s) 1, 12, and 17 above and further in view of Soon-Shiong et al. (US 2021/0255902 A1) for claim(s) 2, 13, and 18.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see applicant’s remarks, filed 4/16/26, with respect to rejections under 35 USC 103 for claim(s) 1-5, 7-8, 10-15, and 17-20 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The Examiner respectfully withdraws rejections under 35 USC 103 for claim(s) 1-5, 7-8, 10-15, and 17-20.
Applicant’s arguments, see applicant’s remarks, filed 4/16/26, with respect to rejections under 35 USC 101 for claim(s) 1-5, 7-8, 10-15, and 17-20 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive as far as they apply to the amended 101 rejection(s) below.
Applicant respectfully traversed the rejection on pg. 8-10.
The Examiner respectfully disagrees because applicant is relying on 2106.05(d) “well understood, routine, and conventional” however Examiner is relying on 2106.05(f) “apply it.” Examiner relied on “apply it” because of item (2) Whether the claim invokes computers or other machinery merely as a tool to perform an existing process of 2106.05(f).
Thus, the argument(s) are unpersuasive.
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) 1-5, 7-8, 10-15, and 17-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter as noted below.
The limitation(s) below for representative claim(s) 1, 12, and 17 that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, is directed to cost forecasting for cloud infrastructure.
Step 1: The claim(s) as drafted, is/are a process (claim(s) 1-5, 6-8, 10-11 recites a series of steps) and system (claim(s) 12-15, 17-20 recites a series of components).
Step 2A – Prong 1: The claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim(s) recite(s):
Claim 1: calculating a resource profile for at least one cloud resource;
performing a scheduled pattern detection process for each of the at least one cloud resources;
performing a consumer detection process for each of the at least one cloud resources to generate at least one similar consumer pattern;
computing an operational maturity score for the at least one cloud resources;
utilizing data from a consumer database, wherein the data within the consumer database is used as inputs to a neural network to perform supervised learning that trains the neural network to produce a cost forecast, the data including training set input data and training set output data;
inputting data to the neural network, wherein the input data includes the resource profile, the operational maturity score, historical data including a historical cost occurring during a previous time period, the at least one similar consumer pattern, an output of the scheduled pattern detection process, and an output of the similar consumer detection process;
obtaining the cost forecast from the neural network, based on the input data, the cost forecast including a projected monetary cost over a duration;
performing an anomaly detection process to detect an anomaly indicating a monetary cost increase of the cost forecast in response to the cost forecast exceeding a monetary cost increase threshold over the previous time period; and
generating an alert in response to detecting the anomaly from the anomaly detection process.
Claim(s) 12 and 17: same analysis as claim(s) 11.
Dependent claims 2-5, 6-8, 10-11, 13-15, and 18-20 recite the same or similar abstract idea(s) as independent claim(s) 1, 12, and 17 with merely a further narrowing of the abstract idea(s): .
The identified limitations of the independent and dependent claims above fall well-within the groupings of subject matter identified by the courts as being abstract concepts of:
a method of organizing human activity (commercial or legal interactions including advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors, or business relations) because the invention is directed to economic and/or business relationships as they are associated with cost forecasting for cloud infrastructure, and
mental process (concepts performed in the human mind including an observation, evaluation, judgment, opinion) because the invention is directed to performing an cost forecasting (that could be done in the mind) to help companies determine cloud infrastructure.
Step 2A – Prong 2: This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because:
The additional elements unencompassed by the abstract idea include computing, cloud resource, database, neural network (claim(s) 1, 12, 17), an electronic computation device comprising: a processor; a memory (claim(s) 12), a computer program product for an electronic computation device comprising a computer readable storage medium and a processor (claim(s) 17), cloud resources (claim 3-4), neural network (claim 10), neural network includes one of Long Short Term Memory Network (LSTM), Radial Basis Function Network (RBFN), Multilayer Perceptron (MLP), and Gradient Boosted Network (claim(s) 11), processor, electronic computation device (claim(s) 13-15 and 18-20).
The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements as described above with respect to Step 2A Prong 2 fails to describe:
Improvements to the functioning of a computer, or to any other technology or technical field - see MPEP 2106.05(a)
Applying or using a judicial exception to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition – see Vanda Memo
Applying the judicial exception with, or by use of, a particular machine – see MPEP 2106.05(b)
Effecting a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing - see MPEP 2106.05(c)
Applying or using 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 - see MPEP 2106.05(e) and Vanda Memo.
Thus the additional elements as described above with respect to Step 2A Prong 2 are merely (as additionally noted by instant specification [0050]) invoked as a tool and/or general purpose computer to apply instructions of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment, and/or mere application of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment and merely limiting the use of an abstract idea to a particular technological field do not integrate an abstract idea into a practical application and thus the combination and arrangement of the above identified additional elements when analyzed under Step 2A fails to necessitate a conclusion that the claims amount to significantly more than the abstract idea (MPEP 2106.05(f)&(h)).
Step 2B: The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. Thus the additional elements as described above with respect to Step 2A Prong 2 are merely (as additionally noted by instant specification [0050]) invoked as a tool and/or a general purpose computer to apply instructions of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment, and/or mere application of an abstract idea in a particular technological environment and merely limiting the use of an abstract idea to a particular technological field do not integrate an abstract idea into a practical application and thus similarly the combination and arrangement of the above identified additional elements when analyzed under Step 2B also fails to necessitate a conclusion that the claims amount to significantly more than the abstract idea for the same reasons as set forth above (MPEP 2106.05(f)&(h)).
Conclusion
When responding to the office action, any new claims and/or limitations should be accompanied by a reference as to where the new claims and/or limitations are supported in the original disclosure.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JAMES WEBB whose telephone number is (313)446-6615. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 10-3.
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/JAMES WEBB/Examiner, Art Unit 3624
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