DETAILED ACTION
The following is a FINAL office action upon examination of the application number 18/162219.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 9/15/2025, 10/31/2025, and 1/23/2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Response to Amendment
Claims 1-3, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 18, and 20 have been amended.
Claims 4, 5, 9, 11, 17, and 19, have been canceled.
Claims 1-3, 6-8, 10, 12-16, 18, and 20 are pending in the application and have been examined on the merits discussed below.
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 1-3, 6-8, 10, 12-16, 18, and 20 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.
(Step 1) Claims 1-3, 6-8, 10, and 12 are directed to a method; thus these claims are directed to a process, which is one of the statutory categories of invention. Claims 13-16 and 18 are directed to a non-transitory computer readable medium, which is a manufacture, and this a statutory category of invention. Claim 20 is directed to a system comprising a computer processor; thus the system comprises a device or set of devices, and therefore, is directed to a machine which is a statutory category of invention.
(Step 2A) The claims recite an abstract idea instructing how to track and analyze content consumption to predict trends, which is described by claim limitations reciting:
for each user of one or more users within an organization:
detecting an initiation of an … content consumption session;
obtaining a user profile associated to each user of the one or more users that initiated the … content consumption session, wherein the user profile comprises a user business intent associated with the organization;
obtaining a tracking mode for the … content consumption session;
collecting … consumption information of an … resource based on the tracking mode, wherein the collecting comprises:
extracting a granularity from the … resource; and
generating a metadata file, wherein the metadata file comprises … a summary of content provided by the … resource; and at least one engagement metric; and
following a termination of the … content consumption session of each user:
analyzing the metadata file to determine a similarity between a meaning associated the collected … consumption information and the user business intent to obtain a semantic similarity score, wherein the semantic similarity score reflects a level of significance of the collected … consumption information; and
producing a weighted … consumption information based on the semantic similarity score, wherein the weighted … consumption information is proportional to the semantic similarity score; and
collectively evaluating the weighed … consumption information from each user to obtain crowd-sourced results, wherein the crowd-sourced results comprise predictions for emergent trends within the research domain of which the one or more users are considered subject matter experts.
The identified limitations in the claims describing tracking and analyzing content consumption to predict trends (i.e., the abstract idea) fall within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas, which covers fundamental economic practices. Dependent claims 2, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 18 recite limitations that further describe/narrow the abstract idea (i.e., tracking and analyzing content consumption); therefore, these claims are also found to recite an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because additional elements such as the non-transitory computer readable medium (CRM) comprising computer readable program code, which when executed by a computer processor, enables the computer processor to perform a method in claim 13 and the compute processor configured to perform a method in claim 20, do not add a meaningful limitation to the abstract idea since these elements are only broadly applied to the abstract ideas at a high level of generality; thus, none of recited hardware offers a meaningful limitation beyond generally linking the abstract idea to a particular technological environment, in this case, implementation via a computer/processor.
Additional elements reciting collecting online consumption information of an online resource… do not improve the computer or technology and only add insignificant extra-solution activities (data gathering). Additional elements reciting online content consumption; online resource; and a universal resource locator (URL) associated with the online resource…do not yield an improvement in the functioning of the computer itself, nor do they yield improvements to a technical field or technology; further, these additional elements only generally link the abstract idea to a technological environment. Similarly, additional elements in claim 3 related to opening a software application… add additional elements that do not yield an improvement; these additional elements are recited at a high level of generality and only generally link the abstract idea to a technological environment. Accordingly, these additional element do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea.
(Step 2B) The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component (see Spec. [0071]). Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. Additional elements reciting collecting online consumption information of an online resource… do not improve the computer or technology and only add insignificant extra-solution activities (data gathering). With respect to data gathering limitations, the courts have recognized the use of computers to receive and transmit data as a well-understood, routine, and conventional, 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). Additional elements reciting online content consumption; online resource; and a universal resource locator (URL) associated with the online resource… do not yield an improvement and only generally link the abstract idea to a technological environment. Additional elements in claim 3 related to opening a software application… add additional elements that do not yield an improvement; these additional elements are recited at a high level of generality and only generally link the abstract idea to a technological environment. 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. There is no indication that the combination of elements improves the functioning of a computer or improves any other technology.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 10/31/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
With respect to the rejection under 35 USC 101, Applicant argues that the claims do not recite a judicial exception.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. The identified limitations in the claims describing tracking and analyzing content consumption to predict trends (i.e., the abstract idea) fall within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas, which covers fundamental economic practices. Further, the problem solved by the claims is one that exists outside of the real of technology (how to attribute and weighing user consumption interactions across multiple sources and sessions) and the solution relying on the use of similarity scores to weight consumption information does not provide a technical solution.
The analysis of content consumption information to predict trends in different domains does not provide an improvement to the technology. An improvement in the abstract idea itself (e.g. a recited fundamental economic concept) is not an improvement in technology. For example, in Trading Technologies Int’l v. IBG, 921 F.3d 1084, 1093-94, 2019 USPQ2d 138290 (Fed. Cir. 2019), the court determined that the claimed user interface simply provided a trader with more information to facilitate market trades, which improved the business process of market trading but did not improve computers or technology.
Additional elements reciting collecting online consumption information of an online resource… do not improve the computer or technology and only add insignificant extra-solution activities (data gathering). Additional elements reciting online content consumption; online resource; and a universal resource locator (URL) associated with the online resource…do not yield an improvement in the functioning of the computer itself, nor do they yield improvements to a technical field or technology; further, these additional elements only generally link the abstract idea to a technological environment.
With respect to the rejection under 35 USC 101, Applicant argues that the claims are analogous to claim 1 of example 37.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Examiner disagrees with the Applicant’s assertion that the present claims are similar to Example 37. The additional elements in claim 37 recite a specific manner of automatically displaying icons to the user based on usage which provided a specific improvement to interfaces for electronic devices; in contrast, additional elements in the present related to online content consumption; online resource; and a universal resource locator (URL) associated with the online resource…do not yield an improvement and only generally link the abstract idea to a technological environment.
Examiner notes that paragraph 17 does not describe any improvements related to efficiency, accuracy, or privacy preservation. As per MPEP 2106.05(a), if it is asserted that the invention improves upon conventional functioning of a computer, or upon conventional technology or technological processes, a technical explanation as to how to implement the invention should be present in the specification. That is, the disclosure must provide sufficient details such that one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize the claimed invention as providing an improvement. An indication that the claimed invention provides an improvement can include a discussion in the specification that identifies a technical problem and explains the details of an unconventional technical solution expressed in the claim, or identifies technical improvements realized by the claim over the prior art. For example, in McRO, the court relied on the specification’s explanation of how the particular rules recited in the claim enabled the automation of specific animation tasks that previously could only be performed subjectively by humans, when determining that the claims were directed to improvements in computer animation instead of an abstract idea. McRO, 837 F.3d at 1313-14, 120 USPQ2d at 1100-01. In contrast, the court in Affinity Labs of Tex. v. DirecTV, LLC relied on the specification’s failure to provide details regarding the manner in which the invention accomplished the alleged improvement when holding the claimed methods of delivering broadcast content to cellphones ineligible. 838 F.3d 1253, 1263-64, 120 USPQ2d 1201, 1207-08 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
With respect to the rejection under 35 USC 101, Applicant argues that the claims include significantly more.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Additional elements reciting collecting online consumption information of an online resource… do not improve the computer or technology and only add insignificant extra-solution activities (data gathering). Additional elements reciting online content consumption; online resource; and a universal resource locator (URL) associated with the online resource… do not yield an improvement and only generally link the abstract idea to a technological environment. An improvement in the abstract idea itself (e.g. a recited fundamental economic concept) is not an improvement in technology. For example, in Trading Technologies Int’l v. IBG, 921 F.3d 1084, 1093-94, 2019 USPQ2d 138290 (Fed. Cir. 2019), the court determined that the claimed user interface simply provided a trader with more information to facilitate market trades, which improved the business process of market trading but did not improve computers or technology. Similarly, using certain weights for consumption information and similarity scores to make predictions only improves a business process but does not improve the performance of a computer or the technology.
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 ALAN TORRICO-LOPEZ whose telephone number is (571)272-3247. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10AM-5PM.
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/ALAN TORRICO-LOPEZ/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3625