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 Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed on 05/11/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant is of the opinion that claims are not directed to abstract idea. Claims recites a distributed plurality of CIV providers, a response time window, and an exclusion logic to exclude responses is not a mere commercial interaction. Claims are directed to minimizing the usage of computing resources and energy by not requiring a user to repeatedly follow an entire consumer identity validation (CIV) process for a transaction at a same merchant using the same card. This minimizing the usage of computing resources and energy in a computing system comprising a plurality of computers connected via a network. Claims recite features related to a technical solution to a technical problem with existing computing system. Claims provide significantly more than as a whole recites as abstract idea. However, Examiner respectfully disagrees.
The claims recite creating and initiating a transaction request based on a user profile and performing user authentication which is an abstract idea. The claims state transmitting a user identifier to several providers, receiving responses each identifying an account and when it was last used, disregarding responses that arrive too late, determining which response is most recent and selecting that provider’s account for the transaction. This is automation of a certain method of organizing human activity, specifically, a commercial practice of identifying and reusing a customer’s most recently used payment account, comparable to a merchant clerk asking, “which card did you use last time?” and defaulting to it.
Claims are not integrated into a practical application, The steps of transmitting a query, receiving a response, and comparing timestamps are recited at a high level of generality with no specific protocol, message format, cryptographic authentication scheme, or query mechanism is claimed. Claims are not tied to any improvement in how a network of computer operates but only to what business result (i.e. avoiding repeated CIV) is achieved. The excluding CIV responses received after a predetermined time period is a filtering rule, not a technical mechanism. It states only that late responses are ignored that is a business rule (i.e. first-come responses only) applied to data, not a specific technical means of achieving that filtering.
Applicant’s is of the opinion that the claims “improves the conventional operation of a computing system comprising a network and several nodes” is not reflected in any claimed limitation. No claim language specifics how network load is reduced, how latency is improved or how any node’s processing is technically altered. The claim only recites abstract idea of creating and initiating a transaction request based on a user profile and performing user authentication. Applicant must also take into consideration that in order to view the claims as supplying an inventive concept the technological improvement must be present within the claims themselves (Accenture Global Servs., GmbH v. Guidewire Software, inc., 108 USPQ2d 1173 (Fed. Cir. 2013)), (Synopsys, inc. v. Mentor Graphics Corp... 120 USPQ2d 1473 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
The alleged resource saving is simply the efficiency-gain fallacy. Avoiding repeated CIV re-entry is a saving that flows from applying the abstract idea and not from any change in how the computer or network technically functions. Efficiency and resource savings inherent in automating an abstract process do not confer eligibility.
Therefore, the rejection is maintained.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 have been examined.
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 a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
In the instant case, claims 1-7, are directed to a system, claims 8-14 are directed to a computerized method and claims 15-20 are directed to one or more computer storage media. Therefore, these claims fall within the four statutory categories of invention.
The claims recite initiating a transaction request by identifying and reusing a customer’s most recently used payment account which is an abstract idea. Specifically, the claims recite “receive a user identifier…; securely transmit the received identifier to a plurality of …(CIV) provider; securely receive a plurality of CIV responses from the plurality….; exclude, from the plurality of CIV response….; determine a chronology of the timestamps…; determine a target CIV response…; and based on the determined target CIV response,…processing of the transaction …….”, grouping of abstract ideas in prong one of step 2A of the Alice/Mayo test (See MPEP 2106) because the claims involve a series of steps of receiving a user identifier, transmitting a user identifier to several providers, receiving responses each identifying an account and when it was last used, disregarding responses that arrive too late, determining which response is most recent and selecting that provider’s account for the transaction which is a process that deals with commercial interactions. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea (See MPEP 2106).
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because, when analyzed under prong two of step 2A of the Alice/Mayo test (See MPEP 2106), the additional elements of the claims such as, processor, memory, network connections, server and computer storage media merely use a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea. Specifically, processor, memory, network connections, server and computer storage media perform the steps of receiving a user identifier, transmitting a user identifier to several providers, receiving responses each identifying an account and when it was last used, disregarding responses that arrive too late, determining which response is most recent and selecting that provider’s account for the transaction. The use of a processor/computer as a tool to implement the abstract idea does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it requires no more than a computer performing functions that correspond to acts required to carry out the abstract idea. The additional elements do not involve improvements to the functioning of a computer, or to any other technology or technical field (MPEP 2106.05(a)), the claims do not apply or use the abstract idea to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition (Vanda Memo), the claims do not apply the abstract idea with, or by use of, a particular machine (MPEP 2106.05(b)), the claims do not effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing (MPEP 2106.05(c)), and the claims 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 exception (MPEP 2106.05(e) and Vanda Memo). Therefore, the claims do not, for example, purport to improve the functioning of a computer. Nor do they effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field. Accordingly, the additional elements do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea, and the claims are directed to an abstract idea.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because, when analyzed under step 2B of the Alice/Mayo test (See MPEP 2106), the additional elements of processor, memory, network connections, server and computer storage media, to perform the steps amounts to no more than using a computer or processor to automate and/or implement the abstract idea of initiating a transaction request by identifying and reusing a customer’s most recently used payment account. As discussed above, taking the claim elements separately, processor, memory, network connections, server and computer storage media perform the steps of receiving a user identifier, transmitting a user identifier to several providers, receiving responses each identifying an account and when it was last used, disregarding responses that arrive too late, determining which response is most recent and selecting that provider’s account for the transaction. These functions correspond to the actions required to perform the abstract idea. Viewed as a whole, the combination of elements recited in the claims merely recite the concept of initiating a transaction request by identifying and reusing a customer’s most recently used payment account Therefore, the use of these additional elements does no more than employ the computer as a tool to automate and/or implement the abstract idea. The use of a computer or processor to merely automate and/or implement the abstract idea cannot provide significantly more than the abstract idea itself (MPEP 2106.05(I)(A)(f) & (h)). Therefore, the claim is not patent eligible.
Dependent claims further describe the abstract idea of initiating a transaction request by identifying and reusing a customer’s most recently used payment account. Specifically, claims 2-4, 7, 9-11, 14 and 16-17 and 20 describing the authentication operation, which is part of the abstract idea. Claims 5, 12, and 18, further describing filtering of response data and prompting user for an input which is part of the abstract idea of initiating a transaction request by identifying and reusing a customer’s most recently used payment account. Claims 6, 13 and 19 further describing the request and conditions to initiate the transaction request which is part of the abstract idea of initiating a transaction request by identifying and reusing a customer’s most recently used payment account. The dependent claims do not include additional elements that integrate the abstract idea into a practical application or that provide significantly more than the abstract idea. Therefore, the dependent claims are also not patent eligible.
Conclusion
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/ZESHAN QAYYUM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3697
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