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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 March 12, 2026, has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s response to Office action was received on March 12, 2026.
In response to Applicant’s amendment of the claims, no claim elements/limitations are currently being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f)/sixth paragraph.
In response to Applicant’s amendment of the claims, please note the new claim rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112, written description requirement, below in this Office action.
In response to Applicant’s amendment of the claims, the corresponding 101 claim rejections, from the previous Office action, have been correspondingly amended, below in this Office action.
Regarding the 101 rejections, Applicant first argues that the claims are now patent-eligible as being directed to a technical improvement to data integrity and verification that cannot be performed as a “mental process.” As an initial matter, the 101 rejections do not rely on a finding of a recitation of an abstract idea based on “mental process”, but rather “certain method(s) of organizing human activity” instead. So arguing that there is no mental process is not directly relevant to Examiner’s 101 rejections.
Regarding the technical improvement argument, this is an argument for eligibility based on MPEP 2106.05(a). Improvements to a computer or other technology is a consideration for eligibility under both Step 2A, Prong 2, and Step 2B. In either of these analysis steps, there must be meaningful contribution to the alleged improvement from the additional element(s) beyond the judicial exception/abstract idea; in other words, the alleged improvement cannot be provided by the abstract idea alone. For example, MPEP 2106.05(a) states: “It is important to note, the judicial exception alone cannot provide the improvement.” Examiner provides a listing of the “additional elements” in the rejections. Note from the 101 rejections that each of the additional elements can be dismissed under MPEP 2106.05(f) as “mere instructions to apply an exception”, as merely generic/general-purpose computing system components. For example, MPEP 2106.05(f)(2) states: “Use of a computer or other machinery in its ordinary capacity for economic or other tasks (e.g., to receive, store, or transmit data) or simply adding a general purpose computer or computer components after the fact to an abstract idea (e.g., a fundamental economic practice or mathematical equation) does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or provide significantly more.” For further example, Examiner’s list of additional elements includes elements like “storing data in a memory”. Storing data in a memory is such a widely used phenomenon in computing, widely known, and non-specific, that it is generic in the computing field. It does not reflect any kind of improvement over its common, typical usage in computing here, and thus cannot have a meaningful contribution to any kind of alleged improvement in Applicant’s arguments, the kind that would be needed to invoke the technological or computing improvement 101 consideration here. This same reasoning applies to the other additional elements listed in the 101 rejections.
Note that Examiner treated the digital-signature-related features as part of the abstract idea. This is because digitally signing and checking a digital signature may both be considered as mere particular processing of particular input data, similar to calculating a mathematical function. Thus, these functions may be grouped into the overall abstract idea of “certain method(s) of organizing human activity”, as they are part of that overall task. However, even if Examiner had treated the digital-signature-related features as additional elements, note that such features would qualify as merely further generic computing system components and could thus also be dismissed under mere instructions to apply an exception (MPEP 2106.05(f)). See the above discussion.
Therefore, for at least the above reasons, the claims do not invoke the improvement consideration for eligibility under MPEP 2106.05(a), and Examiner does not find these arguments to be persuasive.
Applicant next argues further based on the claims not reciting a mental process. “Mental process” is just one of the types of abstract idea discussed in the MPEP. See MPEP 2106.04(a). As can be seen from the 101 rejections themselves, Examiner is not relying on the abstract idea being a type of “mental process” but rather instead the abstract idea being a type of “certain method(s) of organizing human activity”. Therefore, Applicant’s arguments concerning “mental processes” do not directly address the basis of Examiner’s abstract-idea determination.
Applicant next argues by analogy to USPTO 101 Example 47, claim 3. In Example 47, claim 3 found eligibility as compared to Example 47, claim 2, by concluding with steps (d)-(f) which were found to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application via improving the functioning of a computer or technical field. Steps (d)-(f) use the output from an artificial neural network to drop malicious network packets and block future traffic from the source address. In comparison, Applicant has amended the independent claims such that the result of using the reliability verification procedure is used to either restrict access to or flag a post when the verification procedure has been failed by the post. Examiner believes this is distinguishable from steps (d)-(f) in claim 3 of Example 47. Although both claims take the result of an automated analysis and use that result in a way that relates to restricting communications, steps (d)-(f) in Example 47, claim 3, were determined in the example to invoke the improvement consideration (MPEP 2106.05(a)), while Examiner did not find this with the restricting access or flagging the post of Applicant’s independent claims. With respect to “restricting access”, this is much more general than the above steps (d)-(f) of Example 47. “Restricting access” to online content has been a regular occurrence for some time, for example, as those who maintain web sites regularly control what visitors may or may not access on a web site. Regarding the other alternative, “flagging”, this may be interpreted as simply making an indication that a post has failed its reliability verification. It does not add much beyond the performance of the verification itself, and thus Examiner was able to include it in the abstract idea itself. Therefore, Examiner does not find Applicant’s Example 47 argument to be persuasive.
Applicant next argues 101 based on the BASCOM decision. In BASCOM, an improvement for eligibility purposes was found via the arrangement of elements in a network, specifically the content filter being at a particular node in the network that resulted in advantages. Applicant appears to be analogizing Applicant’s graph structure of nodes having digitally signed pieces of information. The two situations are distinguishable at least because the nodes in BASCOM represented actual physical computing sites in a computing network. In contrast, the graph structure in Applicant’s claims is an arrangement of information in which chains of associated information are connected to each other. For example, an image in a post may be associated with information about the image, which may be associated with a camera model that generated that information, which may be associated with the manufacturer of the camera. These nodes do not necessarily correspond to physical computers or devices, like in BASCOM. Furthermore, there does not appear to be a comparable technological improvement in Applicant’s claims in terms of a particular technological advantage that flows from configuring Applicant’s graph structure in its particular way. Since the analogy does not hold up, Examiner does not find the BASCOM argument to be persuasive.
Regarding Applicant’s “claim as a whole” argument, Examiner stands by Examiner’s above finding that the additional elements beyond the judicial exception/abstract idea are not technologically improved, neither individually nor in combination. Since the additional elements do not meaningfully contribute to any alleged improvement, for at least such reason and even when looking at the claims as a whole, the claims do not invoke the 101 improvement consideration for eligibility under MPEP 2106.05(a). Therefore, Examiner does not find this argument to be persuasive.
Applicant next argues that the claims are eligible under Step 2B because “programmatic tracing through a graph of cryptographically signed objective attributes” is other than well-understood, routine, conventional activity. (This consideration is discussed in MPEP 2106.05(d).) Examiner disagrees. This argument is not persuasive because much of this argued feature is contained within the abstract idea, such as the graph of particular cryptographically signed information and how it is traced through. The fact that this is done in a “programmatic” way, such as on a generic computer, does not result in meaningful contribution from the additional elements, similar to as discussed above with respect to the improvement eligibility consideration, and eligibility considerations under Step 2B must have some meaningful contribution from the additional elements beyond the abstract idea. Therefore, Examiner does not find this Applicant argument to be persuasive.
Applicant also argues that the lack of prior art rejections support eligibility, but that is not the case here. See MPEP 2106.05(I), which states: “Specifically, lack of novelty under 35 U.S.C. 102 or obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 of a claimed invention does not necessarily indicate that additional elements are well-understood, routine, conventional elements. Because they are separate and distinct requirements from eligibility, patentability of the claimed invention under 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 with respect to the prior art is neither required for, nor a guarantee of, patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. 101. The distinction between eligibility (under 35 U.S.C. 101 ) and patentability over the art (under 35 U.S.C. 102 and/or 103 ) is further discussed in MPEP § 2106.05(d).” Therefore, Examiner does not find this Applicant argument to be persuasive.
Novel/Non-Obvious Subject Matter
Examiner has determined that all of Applicant’s claims have overcome having prior art rejections. The reason for this is that Examiner does not believe that, at the time of Applicant’s priority date, it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skill in the art to combine prior art disclosures to result in the particular combinations of elements/limitations in the claims, including the particular configurations of the elements/limitations with respect to each other in the particular combinations, without the use of impermissible hindsight.
Claim Interpretation
In response to Applicant’s amendment of the claims, no claim elements/limitations are currently being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f)/sixth paragraph.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention.
As per independent claims 1, 6, 8, and 10, the last paragraph of each of these claims has been amended to include the language of “restricting access to or”. Examiner was unable to find support for this amended language in Applicant’s application-as-originally-filed. “Restricting access” is recited as one of two alternatives that may occur based on a detected breach in the computational integrity of the chain of custody (the other being “flagging”). As part of reviewing Applicant’s application-as-originally-filed for support for “restricting access”, Examiner performed a text-string search of Applicant’s specification-as-originally-filed for “restrict”, “access”, “flag”, “block”, and “hid”, but Examiner did not find support for the language of “restricting access to or”. The closest portions of Applicant’s application-as-originally-filed that Examiner found to providing support were portions that discussed the application’s reliability-checking procedure for posts, such as Applicant’s specification-as-originally-filed, paragraph [0036]. The dependent claims incorporate this written description issue via their dependencies from the independent claims. Therefore, claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112, written description requirement.
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) 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
As per Claim(s) 1, 6, 8, and 10, Claim(s) 1, 6, 8, and 10 recite(s):
- generating a graph structure of information including associating a distinct piece of digitally signed property information indicating a first objective attribute related to a post and a second objective attribute related the post regarding at least one of another property information or a generation agent of the property information;
- data being the graph structure of information;
- in response to receiving a request to verify a reliability of the post, tracing back through the graph structure of information from the post to associated one of the other property information and the generation agent by recursively performing cryptographic verification of the digitally signed property information at each node in a path to establish a verified chain of custody;
- a function being an endorsement function;
- flagging the post based on a detected breach in the computational integrity of the verified chain of custody.
Each of the above limitations falls within the abstract-idea category of “Certain methods of organizing human activity.” Specifically, those limitations relate to the following subject matter that is grouped into the category of “Certain methods of organizing human activity”:
- managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions): manages trustworthiness of communications between people.
To the extent that any of these limitations are recited alongside recitations of generic computer components, as described below in this rejection: If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers subject matter recognized as certain methods of organizing human activity but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the “Certain method of organizing human activity” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim(s) recite an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the additional elements when considered both individually and as an ordered combination do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. The claim(s) recite the following additional elements/limitations, each of which are addressed in the list below with the reason(s) why they do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application:
- a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing therein an information management program that causes a computer to execute a process; post uploaded on the Internet; storing data in a memory; programmatically; information stored in a layer having a particular function, that layer being separate from an Internet layer; restricting access to the post; an information processing apparatus comprising: a memory; and a processor coupled to the memory and the processor configured; an information processing system comprising: an information processing apparatus; and an operation terminal that is able to access the information processing apparatus, wherein the information processing apparatus includes: a memory, and a processor coupled to the memory and the processor configured; an information management method that causes a computer to execute a process, by a processor; generation agent (when a computing component): These element(s)/limitation(s) amount to mere instructions to apply an exception. See MPEP 2106.05(f). In making this determination, examiners may consider whether the claim invokes computers or other machinery merely as a tool to perform an existing process. Mere instructions to apply an exception is a consideration with respect to both integration of an abstract idea into a practical application and significantly more. MPEP 2106.05(f)(2) states: “Use of a computer or other machinery in its ordinary capacity for economic or other tasks (e.g., to receive, store, or transmit data) or simply adding a general purpose computer or computer components after the fact to an abstract idea (e.g., a fundamental economic practice or mathematical equation) does not provide significantly more. See Affinity Labs v. DirecTV, 838 F.3d 1253, 1262, 120 USPQ2d 1201, 1207 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (cellular telephone); TLI Communications LLC v. AV Auto, LLC, 823 F.3d 607, 613, 118 USPQ2d 1744, 1748 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (computer server and telephone unit).” This is the case with these particular claim element(s)/limitation(s). Those elements/limitations do not meaningfully limit the claim because implementing an abstract idea on a generic computer does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, similar to how the recitation of the computer in the claim in Alice amounted to mere instructions to apply the abstract idea of intermediated settlement on a generic computer. Therefore, these particular claim element(s)/limitation(s) do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application for at least this reason.
Thus, taken alone, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. Looking at the limitations as an ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present when looking at the elements taken individually. There is no indication that the combination of elements improves the functioning of a computer or improves any other technology.
Accordingly, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim(s) are directed to an abstract idea.
The claim(s) do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception, either individually or as an ordered combination. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of computer-related components amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer components. Mere instructions to apply an exception using generic computer components cannot provide an inventive concept.
The claim(s) are not patent eligible.
As per dependent claim(s) 2-5, 7, 9, and 11-20, these claim(s) incorporate the above abstract idea via their dependencies on the respective independent claim(s). The additional element(s)/limitation(s) of the respective independent claim(s) do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, nor do they add significantly more, with respect to those dependent claim(s), under the same reasoning as above with respect to the respective independent claim(s).
Those dependent claim(s) add the following generic computer components, which do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, nor add significantly more, under the same reasoning as given above with respect to generic computer components in the independent claim(s). Those additional generic computer components and their corresponding dependent claim(s) are as follows:
- posted on an SNS (Social Networking Service) (claim 2);
- viewing data (claims 4 and 13)
- referring to data storage (claim 4);
- transmitting (claims 4-5);
- transmission source (claim 4);
- transmission destination (claim 5);
- storing data (claim 11);
- separate (abstraction) layers (claim 14);
- Internet layer (claim 14);
- automatically (claim 15);
- content server (claim 20).
The remaining added elements/limitations of those dependent claim(s) do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application nor add significantly more because they all merely add further functional step(s) and/or detail to the abstract idea; as part of the abstract idea, they cannot integrate into a practical application or be significantly more than the abstract idea of which they are a part. For example, claim 3 merely adds detail to the data content of the other property information.
Thus, taken alone, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, nor add significantly more. Looking at the limitations as an ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present when looking at the elements taken individually. There is no indication that the combination of elements improves the functioning of a computer or improves any other technology.
Claim(s) 1-20 are therefore not drawn to eligible subject matter as they are directed to an abstract idea that is not integrated into a practical application and is without significantly more.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Abilash, US 20200327254 A1.
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/NATHAN ERB/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3628