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 .
Notice to Applicant
This is the first Non-Final Office Action in response to Application Serial Number: 18/204,655, filed on June 01, 2023. Claims 1-21 are pending in this application and have been rejected 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.
Step 1: The claimed subject matter falls within the four statutory categories of patentable subject matter.
Claims 1-14 are directed towards a method and claims 15-21 are directed towards a system, both of which are among the statutory categories of invention.
Step 2A – Prong One: The claims recite an abstract idea.
Claims 1-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claims recite managing employee work schedules and wallet credit balances.
Claim 1 recites limitations directed to an abstract idea based on certain methods of organizing human activity and mental processes. Specifically, creating a rotation by a manager, wherein the rotation comprises one or more employees as a part of a staff group, work shifts, and a rotation period, wherein each employee of the one or more employees is assigned a predefined shift work credit value and the predefined shift work credit value is added to a corresponding credit wallet balance associated with each employee of the one or more employees; allowing a first employee of the one or more employees to bid for avoiding a work shift, wherein the bid comprises a bid credit value, wherein the bid credit value is a part of the credit wallet balance; receiving the bid for avoiding the work shift from the first employee and the one or more employees; allowing a second employee of the one or more employees to sign up to take the bid work shift before auto-allocation; determining whether the second employee or the one or more employees self-assign the bid work shift before auto-allocation; assigning the bid work shift to the second employee if the second employee self-assigned the bid work shift; or auto assigning the bid work shift to the one or more employees based on an auto-allocation technique if no self-assignment occurs; rescheduling the work shifts of the first employee, the second employee or the employee assigned with the auto allocated bid work shift; and adjusting the credit wallet balance of the first employee, and the second employee or the employee assigned with the auto allocated bid work shift constitutes methods based on managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people, as well as methods based on observations, evaluations, judgements and/or opinion that can be performed mentally by a combination of the human mind and a human using pen and paper. The recitation of an admin user interface and an employee user interface does not take the claim out of the certain methods of organizing human activity and mental processes groupings. Thus the claim recites an abstract idea. Claim 15 recites certain method of organizing human activity for similar reasons as claim 1.
Step 2A – Prong Two: The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application.
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, claim 1 recites an admin user interface and an employee user interface at a high-level of generality such that they amount to no more than generic computer components used as tools to apply the instructions of the abstract idea; see MPEP 2106.05(f). Thus, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limitations on practicing the abstract idea. Claim 1 is directed to an abstract idea. The system comprising a processor coupled to memory, admin user interface and employee user interface recited in claim 15 also amounts to no more than generic computer components used as tools to apply the instructions of the abstract idea; see MPEP 2106.05(f). Thus, the additional elements recited in claim 15 do not integrate the abstract idea into practical application for similar reasons as claim 1.
Step 2B: The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The additional elements in the claims other than the abstract idea per se, including the system comprising a processor coupled to memory, admin user interface and employee user interface amount to no more than a recitation of generic computer elements utilized to perform generic computer functions, such as receiving or transmitting data over a network, e.g., using the Internet to gather data, 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); and electronic recordkeeping, Ultramercial, 772 F.3d at 716, 112 USPQ2d at 1755 (updating an activity log). 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, since there are no limitations in the claim that transform the abstract idea into a patent eligible application such that the claim amounts to significantly more than the abstract idea itself, the claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter.
§ 101 Analysis of the dependent claims.
Regarding the dependent claims, dependent claim 3 recites limitations that are not technological in nature and merely limits the abstract idea to a particular environment. Claim 2 recites sending a communication message to the one or more employee on creation of the rotation, which is considered an insignificant extra-solution activities of collecting and delivering data; see MPEP 2106.05(g). Claim 4 recites opening a hyperlink via the employee user interface and claim 10 recites automatic shift allocation via the admin user interface, both of which merely recite instructions to apply the abstract idea using generic computer components; MPEP 2106.05(f). Additionally, claims 4-14 and 16-21 recite steps that further narrow the abstract idea by reciting methods that constitute certain methods of organizing human activity, mental processes and mathematical concepts, respectively. Therefore claims 2-14 and 16-21 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.
Reasons Claims are Patentably Distinguishable from the Prior Art
Examiner analyzed claim 1 in view of the prior art on record and finds not all claim limitations are explicitly taught nor would one of ordinary skill in the art find it obvious to combine references with a reasonable expectation of success as discussed below.
Garcia et al. (US 20060224477 A1) teaches a computer system that permits an employee and/or an employment agency to bid on filling a vacant work shift position (see par. 0004). Specifically, Garcia discloses an employee bids to work on unfilled work shift positions includes a system for rewarding the people who participate in that auction. A person is awarded different numbers of points as a reward for performing various functions of the work shift assignment process. The employee may spend his or her points toward selected perquisites from the employer (see par. 0030), the employees accumulate reward points which can be spent at hospital stores, shops, cafeterias and other food establishments in place of money, in which case the points have a monetary equivalent. Points could also be used for other perquisites, such as preferred parking locations and preference in scheduling vacation time. Thus when a bid has been accepted a corresponding number of reward points is added to the current point balance, monthly point balance and year to date point balance, in the worker profile record. Thereafter, when the employee spends points, that number of points is deducted from the value in the current point balance field. A deduction to the employee reward point balances may be made when the employee fails to work an assigned work shift (see par. 0039). The scheduling system also allows an employee to trade scheduled work assignments with another employee, or to offer a scheduled work assignment to any other employee within the business without accepting an assignment in return (see par. 0045) and an amount of reward points associated completing a work shift trade is added at step 125 to balances in fields 36, 37 and 38 in each worker's profile record 20. In some cases some reward points may be given to an employee who offers a work shift assignment even though another employee does not accept that offer or the change was rejected by a supervisor (see par. 0054).
Takao (WO 2014174610 A1) teaches a work plan creation system that can fairly create a work plan according to the wishes of the staff. Specifically, Takao discloses in the work plan creation system, each employee is given points. Each staff member sets points (auction price) according to his / her desired strength of rest or work from his / her points on the day he / she wants to take a break or work. If there are concentrated requests for holidays and work on the same day, holidays and work are assigned in descending order of the number of points. The holiday wish determination / adjustment unit determines whether there is a holiday desired or whether there is a conflict based on the desired holiday data in the desired schedule storage unit. A holiday wish conflict occurs when the number of holiday applicants exceeds a predetermined allowable number of absentees set for each date (the number of absentees allowed on that day: the desired allowable number of employees). The point determination unit compares each person's multiplying points on each day when a holiday desired conflict occurs. The holiday acquirer determination unit selects holiday applicants in the order of multiplying points based on the presence / absence of holiday wishes and the presence / absence of competition, and determines the holiday acquirer on the corresponding day in order from the higher rank. The confirmed schedule creation unit determines a work schedule (work plan) for the next month based on the determination by the holiday acquirer determination unit. The point settlement unit subtracts or adds points from each person based on the determined work schedule, and settles individual points. For example, in the case of November 4th, the multiplying points of A and C that actually took a holiday are subtracted, but the multiplying points of B and D where the holiday wish is rejected are not subtracted. That is, the points multiplied by B and D are returned to the principal without deduction. Since B and D are not given holidays, no penalty points are imposed. Further, since bonus points + 5P are set on November 4 when competition is predicted, bonus points are awarded to those who work (except A and C) on this day. Points are not subtracted when paying leave is taken, but a penalty is imposed for absenteeism.
However, Garcia and Takao, individually or in combination, do not explicitly teach the combination of claim limitations as a whole as recited in independent claim 1. Thus, claim is found to be distinguishable over the prior art. Claim 15 is distinguishable over the prior art for similar reasons as cited for claim 1. Dependent claims 2-14 and 16-21 are distinguishable because they depend on claims 1 and 15 respectively.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Wayne et al. (US 20240020756 A1) – Apparatus and methods for enabling workers to compete for currently upcoming shifts are described. In an example, an apparatus may include a schedule display circuit to display a customized view of upcoming shifts where the customization is based on the identify of a worker, their skills/properties and shift requirements. All the workers may have a common employer. A bidding interface circuit may enable the workers to bid on upcoming shifts shown in their customized view. A bid evaluation circuit may evaluate the submitted bids, determine a quality of each bid and determine a winning bid for each shift. A shift allocation circuit then assigns upcoming shifts to workers based on the winning bid.
Londono et al. (A Trading System for Fairly Scheduling Fixed-Sized Delay Tolerant Jobs at a Shared Link) – This work presents a trading system that enables the users to trade their finite allowances in an scenario where they have fixed-size atomic jobs. The trading system makes it possible that tasks with strict timing requirements are completed on time, and flexibility is rewarded with either a larger share of the off-peak capacity or a lower total cost for their owners. The trading system is proven to always converge. Simulation on real traces show significant reductions on the peak-to-valley ratio on the link utilization..
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Crystol Stewart whose telephone number is (571)272-1691. The examiner can normally be reached 9:00am-5:00pm.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Patty Munson can be reached at (571)270-5396. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/CRYSTOL STEWART/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3624