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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 November has been entered.
Status of Claims
In the response filed November 24, 2025, Applicant amended claims 1, 10, 16, and 21. Claims 1-21 are pending in the current application.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed with respect to the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. First, Applicant asserts that the claims does not fall under the certain methods of organizing activity grouping because the claims are not directed to managing personal behavior. Examiner respectfully disagrees. The claims, under the broadest reasonable interpretation, exemplify managing personal behaviors or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions), but for the recitation of generic computer components. For instance, other than reciting a memory and a processor, nothing in the claims disqualifies the steps from managing personal behaviors or relationships or interactions with people. The claims encompass a healthcare provider collecting patient information (e.g., related to appointments) and transmitting messages to the patient (e.g., a link to review and sign healthcare documents). Second, Applicant asserts that claims recite various improvements such as providing application-like experiences without requiring them to download an application thereby minimizing bandwidth usage and manual effort needed by patient, and security and privacy is improved since the webpage is generated dynamically for the specific patient. Examiner respectfully disagrees. While Applicant’s specification does disclose reducing bandwidth and manual effort of the patient, the specification does not disclose details on how this is an improvement in technology itself. The improvements disclosed in the specification are not to the technology, but to the patient’s well-being and convenience. Moreover, the claims do not have any limitations that address these issues. Regarding Desjardins, the claims are not evaluated at a high level of generality as shown by the rejection and response. The rejection is maintained.
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 1-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claims are not directed to patent eligible subject matter.
Claims 1-21 do fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claims recite a machine (i.e., non-transitory computer-readable medium and system) and process (i.e., a method).
Although claims 1-21 fall under at least one of the four statutory categories, it should be determined whether the claim wholly embraces a judicially recognized exception, which includes laws of nature, physical phenomena, and abstract ideas, or is it a particular practical application of a judicial exception (See MPEP 2106 I and II).
Claims 1-21 are directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, natural phenomenon, or abstract idea) without significantly more.
Part I: Step 2A, Prong One: Identify the Abstract Idea
Under step 2A, Prong One of the Alice framework, the claims are analyzed to determine if the claims are directed to a judicial exception. MPEP §2106.04(a). The determination consists of a) identifying the specific limitations in the claim that recite an abstract idea; and b) determining whether the identified limitations fall within at least one of the three subject matter groupings of abstract ideas (i.e., mathematical concepts, mental processes, and certain methods of organizing human activity).
The identified limitations of independent claims 16 and 21 (representative of independent claims 1 and 10) recite:
a memory comprising computer-executable instructions; and
one or more processors configured to execute the computer-executable instructions and cause the system to perform an operation comprising:
detecting occurrence of a first defined event, of a plurality of defined events, within a healthcare supply platform;
identifying a user corresponding to the occurrence of the first defined event;
generating a link to a customized webpage based on a defined webpage template corresponding to the first defined event;
generating a first transmission based on a defined message template corresponding to the first defined event, wherein the first transmission includes the link to the customized webpage; and
transmitting the first transmission to the user; and
in response to receiving a request, via the link, from a cellular device:
generating the customized webpage, wherein the customized webpage comprises data associated with the occurrence of the first defined event; and
enabling access to the data associated with the occurrence of the first defined event, without use of a healthcare application on the cellular device, by returning the customized webpage to the cellular device.
The identified limitations, under the broadest reasonable interpretation, exemplify managing personal behaviors or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions), but for the recitation of generic computer components. For instance, other than reciting a memory and a processor, nothing in the claims disqualifies the steps from managing personal behaviors or relationships or interactions with people. The claims encompass a healthcare provider collecting patient information (e.g., related to appointments) and transmitting messages to the patient (e.g., a link to review and sign healthcare documents). The claim limitations fall within the Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activities groupings of abstract ideas. Thus, the claimed invention recites an abstract idea.
Part I: Step 2A, prong two: additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application
Under step 2A, Prong Two of the Alice framework, the claims are analyzed to determine whether the claims recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. In particular, the claims are evaluated to determine if there are additional elements or a combination of elements that apply, rely on, or use the judicial exception in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception, such that the claims are more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the judicial exception.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. As a whole, the memory and processor in the steps are recited at a high-level of generality such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. For instance, the steps use a generic server and electronic devices. Accordingly, this additional element does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
Dependent claims 2-9, 11-15, 17-20, when analyzed as a whole are held to be patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the additional recited limitations fail to establish that the claims are not directed to an abstract idea. For instance, the dependent claims recite collecting information from the patient and transmitting messages based on the collection.
Since these claims are directed to an abstract idea, the Office must determine whether the remaining limitations “do significantly more” than describe the abstract idea.
Part II. Determine whether any Element, or Combination, Amounts to“Significantly More” than the Abstract Idea itself
Under Part II, the steps of the claims, when considered individually and as an ordered combination, do not improve another technology or technical field, do not improve the functioning of the computer itself, and are not enough to qualify as "significantly more". For example, the steps require no more than a conventional computer to perform generic computer functions. As stated above in Prong Two, the memory and processor in the steps are recited at a high-level of generality such that it amounts no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Therefore, based on the two-part Mayo analysis, there are no meaningful limitations in the claim that transform the exception into a patent eligible application such that the claim amounts to significantly more than the exception itself. Claims 1-21, when considered individually and as an ordered combination, are rejected as ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Dependent claims 2-9, 11-15, and 17-20, when analyzed as a whole, are held to be patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the additional claims do no recite significantly more than an abstract idea.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Nagaraja et al. (US 2020/0244605 A1)
Sim et al. (US 2020/0226481 A1)
The aforementioned prior art references teach healthcare AI assistants or chatbot and detecting an occurrence of an healthcare event (Nagaraja Paragraph [0134] and Sim Paragraph [0143]). Sim teaches identifying a user (Paragraph [0143]). However, the references do not teach or suggest generating a link to a customized webpage based on a webpage template, generating a first transmission based on a message template including a link to the customized webpage as recited in claims 1, 10, and 16. Moreover, the prior art references do not teach or suggest predicting additional healthcare resources using a machine learning model as recited in independent claims 4, 13, and 18.
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/CHINYERE MPAMUGO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3685