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 .
Status of the Claims
Note: Applicant is reminded of the requirements of 37 CFR 1.121 as detailed in MPEP 714(II)(C)(B): “All claims being currently amended must be presented with markings to indicate the changes that have been made relative to the immediate prior version. The changes in any amended claim must be shown by strike-through (for deleted matter) or underlining (for added matter).” Examiner notes that at least claims 1-2, 4, 7, and 10 do not comply with this requirement because the ‘marked-up’ version of those claims does not include strikethroughs of deleted claim language relative to the immediate prior version. Examiner requests that all future amendments properly denote each addition and/or deletion to the claims as required.
The status of the claims as of the response filed 8/4/2025 is as follows: Claims 5-6, 8, and 11-12 are cancelled, and all previously given rejections for these claims are considered moot. Claims 1-4, 7, and 9-10 are currently amended. Claims 13-24 are new. Claims 1-4, 7, 9-10, and 13-24 are currently pending in the application and have been considered below.
Response to Amendment
Objection to Claims
The claims have been sufficiently amended to correct the minor informalities objected to in paras. 5-6 and 8 of the non-final rejection mailed 5/2/2025, and thus the corresponding objections are withdrawn. However, the objectionable language of claims 3 and 9 identified in para. 7 of the non-final rejection is still present, such that the corresponding objections for claims 3 and 9 are upheld.
Rejection Under 35 USC 112(b)
The claims have been amended to sufficiently clarify the indefinite elements and limitations identified in the non-final rejection such that the corresponding 35 USC 112(b) rejections are withdrawn.
Rejection Under 35 USC 112(d)
The claims have been amended to correct the improper dependency issues identified in the non-final rejection such that the corresponding 35 USC 112(d) rejections are withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Rejection Under 35 USC 101
On pages 4-5 of the response filed 8/5/2025 Applicant argues that the structured naming convention of the claims “isn’t a mental step; it’s a precise algorithm and encoding scheme that ensures machine-readable, collision-free file identifiers… [which] yields faster retrieval and fewer naming errors in database systems, analogous to the self-referential table improvement upheld in Enfish.” Applicant’s arguments are fully considered, but are not persuasive. Examiner first notes that the claims have not been characterized as reciting a mental process, so Applicant’s argument that the naming convention “isn’t a mental step” is moot. Examiner maintains that arranging the names of medications into a URL format fits into the abstract idea grouping of certain methods of organizing human activity, e.g. managing personal behavior, relationships, or interactions between people, because a person is capable of managing their personal behavior to arrange, group, and organize medical treatments by a variety of criteria like administration time, alphabetically, and through the use of formal and generic names separated by dash characters. Further, the claims as presently drafted do not reflect a “precise algorithm” as Applicant appears to allege, and para. [0007] of the specification even notes that in the “arguably… best form” of the instant invention, “no algorithm is used,” showing that this feature does not reflect the alleged improvements of the invention. Additionally, Applicant’s specification makes no mention of the supposed improvements to computer technology of ensuring “machine-readable, collision-free identifiers” that yield “faster retrieval and fewer naming errors in database systems” as Applicant alleges. The specification broadly discusses the instant invention as improving upon other known methods of entering and analyzing treatment information to a computer by allowing the entered information to “directly coincid[e] with the physical storage of treatments according to their administration times” (see [0008]), which Examiner submits is not an improvement to computer technology itself, and instead reflects alleged improvements in the abstract concept of organizing/arranging treatment data. Because these functions are part of the abstract idea itself, they do not confer eligibility (see MPEP 2106.05(a): “It is important to note, the judicial exception alone cannot provide the improvement. The improvement can be provided by one or more additional elements.” See also 2106.05(a)(II): “it is important to keep in mind that an improvement in the abstract idea itself… is not an improvement in technology”).
On page 5 Applicant argues that “by making the dash-separated string itself the URL, the invention ties the abstract ordering directly to we infrastructure, solving a web-specific computing problem: ensuring automatic, deterministic mapping from user input to resource location, avoiding manual hyperlink creation.” Applicant’s arguments are fully considered, but are not persuasive. Examiner notes that the claims as presently drafted do not reflect a strictly automatic URL creation process; rather, a human actor managing their personal behavior could follow the steps laid out by the claims to manually create a URL. Further, even if such steps were recited as being performed automatically or by a computer itself, any improvements to manual URL creation would be attributed to the increased speed of using generic computing components to automate otherwise-abstract processes and thus would not provide a technical improvement. See MPEP 2106.05(f)(2): “‘claiming the improved speed or efficiency inherent with applying the abstract idea on a computer’ does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or provide an inventive concept.”
On page 5 Applicant argues that “the claims mandate a programmatic pipeline that processes an uploaded file whose name encodes treatment names into rows corresponding to a table with seven medically relevant columns…, enforcing a software-specific routine.” Applicant further asserts that “this ordered application of rules for display is analogous to the rule-based processing in McRO, where unconventional timing and morph-weight rules for animation were held non-abstract.” Applicant’s arguments are fully considered, but are not persuasive. Examiner maintains that the organization of medication names into a string and arrangement of corresponding medication data into a table format is part of the abstract idea itself, because a human actor managing their personal behavior could perform such data organization/formatting steps manually. The fact that such steps are implemented via a software pipeline that involves uploading a file for display amounts to mere instructions to “apply” these otherwise-abstract data organization/formatting functions within a digital/computing environment and do not provide a technical improvement. In contrast, in McRO the claimed invention recited a very specific set of rules that allowed a computer to perform animation in a manner that was previously only performable by human animators. The very fact that the animation could not be previously performed by computers and that the rules applied by the claimed invention solved this problem was the reason the claimed invention in McRO was found to be not directed to an abstract idea by improving an existing technological process. Here there is no evidence on record that establishes that the claimed invention was only previously performable by humans in the manner of McRO. The claimed invention thus does not provide an analogous technological improvement, and is instead directed to the abstract idea of treatment data organization/management, which is not understood to be a technological problem.
On pages 5-6 Applicant argues that “requiring clinical-safety fields… transforms routine data entry into an enforced decision-support architecture, improving patient-safety workflows and decision support in healthcare ID, automating checks that would otherwise be manual and error-prone.” Applicant further asserts that “integration of domain-specific risk mitigation into a computing workflow exemplifies a practical application of the judicial exception, satisfying [the particular treatment and prophylaxis consideration].” Applicant’s arguments are fully considered, but are not persuasive. First, it is unclear what specific steps of the claims are believed to amount to “clinical-safety fields” and/or “domain-specific risk mitigation” because these terms or equivalents are not reflected in any of the independent claims as presently drafted. Examiner’s best guess is that Applicant is referring to at least one of the seven fields associated with and displayed for each type of treatment as being “clinical-safety fields” that may be used for the purpose of “domain-specific risk mitigation.” However, Examiner notes that no such steps are presently recited in the claims. Further, the display of certain types of risk information about different treatments (e.g. side effects, contraindications, etc.) and evaluation of such data to make risk mitigation decisions would still fit into the “certain methods of organizing human activity” grouping of abstract idea, because a human actor managing their personal behavior could arrange and view information about different medications and make decisions about appropriate treatments for different patients.
Further, Examiner respectfully disagrees that the claims effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis. Examiner notes that no actual treatment is positively or affirmatively recited as being administered to a patient; rather, information about treatments are arranged into a table format for viewing. Per MPEP 2106.04(d)(2), “in order to qualify as a ‘treatment’ or ‘prophylaxis’ limitation for purposes of this consideration, the claim limitation in question must affirmatively recite an action that effects a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition”; examples of such positively recited treatments can include “e.g., acupuncture, administration of medication, dialysis, organ transplants, phototherapy, physiotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, and the like.” The instant claims’ formatting of treatment information does not positively recite a specific treatment or therapy being administered to the patient for a particular condition and thus does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application under this consideration.
On page 6 Applicant argues that “individually known elements (URL generation, file upload, webpage rendering / medical-data schema) are arranged in a specific, non-arbitrary order thar produces faster, error-resistant data management and web access for healthcare IT: reducing filename collisions, minimizing lookup latency, and enabling cross-system synchronization.” Applicant’s arguments are fully considered, but are not persuasive. Examiner maintains that URL generation and the recited medical data formatting schema are part of the abstract idea itself, and thus they are not considered as additional elements in Step 2B of the eligibility analysis. The additional elements of uploading a file to a server and facilitating viewing and editing of the uploaded file amount to instructions to “apply” the abstract idea with generic computing components. As evidence of the generic nature of the above recited additional elements, Examiner notes that the facilitation of viewing/editing of uploaded files are specifically described in the original claims as occurring in accordance with “the skill of the art” of software programs, indicating that these are well-understood, routine, and conventional processes known to those of skill in the art. Further, receiving or transmitting data over a network (i.e. uploading files to a server), electronic recordkeeping, and storing and retrieving information from memory (i.e. facilitating the viewing and editing of treatment data) are activities recognized as being well-understood, routine, and conventional computer functions, as outlined in MPEP 2106.05(d)(II). Examiner respectfully disagrees that the claims recite additional elements that are arranged in a non-conventional manner to provide the alleged technical improvements, and again notes that such technical improvements are not mentioned in the specification.
On pages 5-6 Applicant argues that the large number of available medicinal substances that could be evaluated by the claimed methods “underscor[es] the non-trivial computational challenged the present art manages and automates, a truly substantial computational task – far beyond mere mental organization, embodying ‘significantly more’ than an abstract idea.” Applicant’s arguments are fully considered, but are not persuasive. Examiner notes that the vast quantity of medicinal substances is not reflected in the claims as presently drafted; claims 1 and 13, for example, merely require “at least two” medicinal treatments, while claim 7 recites “arranging all the medicinal treatments of a person or animal,” which could encompass zero treatments if the person or animal is not currently undergoing any medicinal treatments. Regardless of the low number of treatments currently required by each claim under their broadest reasonable interpretations, Examiner notes that the ability for a computerized system to perform otherwise-abstract processes in a faster and more efficient automated manner such that a larger amount of data is able to be processed does not provide “significantly more” than the abstract idea itself, and rather amounts to mere instructions to “apply” the exception using computer components. See MPEP 2106.05(f)(2): “‘claiming the improved speed or efficiency inherent with applying the abstract idea on a computer’ does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or provide an inventive concept.”
For the reasons outlined above, the 35 USC 101 rejections are upheld for claims 1-4, 7, and 9-10.
Claim Interpretation
Claims 1, 7, and 13 each recite wherein information relevant to the appropriateness, safety, effectiveness, risks and benefits of the combination of medicinal treatments is added to the webpage according to fields of information arranged as columns corresponding to medicinal treatments arranged as rows, wherein said columns consist of:
1. the name of the medicine or supplement, its strength, and any prescription number;
2. the date it was prescribed or first started, as well as the prescriber if applicable;
3. the manufacturer, shape, color and any markings on the dosage form;
4. the indication of the treatment or why it was prescribed or what it is used for;
5. monitoring parameters and special considerations, including contraindications;
6. the intended result the treatment produces or should produce or treatment goals;
7. possible side effects.
Examiner notes that the arrangement of the data into rows and columns as well as the content of data in the columns do not change or affect the structure or functioning of the claimed invention in any meaningful way because they merely represent the organization of information types that are included on a webpage, such that they are interpreted as nonfunctional descriptive language. The descriptors of the data as including attributes like name, strength, date, manufacturer, etc. are not further utilized in any particular analysis method unique to these types of data, and thus the handled data could include any type of medication-related information and the structure and functioning of the claimed invention (e.g. adding data to a webpage about a combination of medications) would remain unchanged. Accordingly, the row and column formatting as well as the contents of the columns listed in 1.-7. are nonfunctional descriptive language and are not patentably limiting in this case (see MPEP 2111.05).
Claims 1 and 13 each recite uploading the aforementioned file to said server, whereby it can be found, viewed and edited. Per MPEP 2111.04(I): “Claim scope is note limited by claim language that suggests or makes optional but does not require steps to be performed, or by claim language that does not limit a claim to a particular structure.” In the instant case, the language “whereby it can be found, viewed and edited” merely suggests functions that are possible as a result of the positively recited step of uploading the file to the server, but does not require such functions are actually achieved as part of the method. Accordingly, the ‘whereby’ limitation cited is not patentably limiting under the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim.
Claim 23 recites wherein the abbreviation logic is selected to minimize total URL character length across the population of all combination file names in the system, reducing average network-transfer size per HTTP request by at least 10% compared to fixed-length naming, whereby average webpage-load performance is improved in high-latency or low-bandwidth connections. The limitation “reducing average network-transfer size per HTTP request by at least 10% compared to fixed-length naming, whereby average webpage-load performance is improved in high-latency or low-bandwidth connections” amounts to an intended use or result of the abbreviation logic rather than positively recited method steps because it merely suggests intended results of the URL minimization/abbreviation logic. Accordingly, this limitation is not patentably limiting under the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim because it does not positively require a particular step to be performed or limit the invention to a particular structure.
Claim 24 recites wherein each treatment comprising a medicine or supplement is described by its full generic name, and wherein each treatment comprising a plant or living organism is described by its full Latin name. The descriptors of the treatments as including formats like generic name and Latin name are merely invoked as descriptors of data representations of the treatments without altering the structure or functioning of the claimed invention (e.g. allowing entry of medication names and presenting corresponding information in a webpage). Accordingly, these descriptors are nonfunctional descriptive language and are not patentably limiting in this case (see MPEP 2111.05).
Claim Objections
Claims 3 and 9 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claims 3 and 9 each recite “wherein at least one medicinal treatment is preceded by the of indication for the medicinal treatment” which is grammatically confusing. Examiner presumes that the word “of” is extraneous and will interpret each of these claims as reciting “wherein at least one medicinal treatment is preceded by the indication for the medicinal treatment.”
Appropriate correction is required.
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 15, 20-21, and 23 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.
Claim 15 recites “the abbreviation formed by selecting a minimum prefix in the natural reading order of the respective language of the word.” Applicant’s original specification does not provide sufficient written support for forming an abbreviation of a medicinal treatment name specifically by selecting a minimum prefix of a word. At most, paras. [0007] & [0012] broadly discuss producing a URL with abbreviated or shortened treatment names, while original claim 6 recites that “each word in the name of a medicinal treatment is abbreviated to the fewest letters of each word in its name that would be necessary to form a distinct abbreviation for the medicinal treatment among all medicinal treatments.” However, there is no mention of specifically forming the abbreviation by selecting a minimum prefix of each word. Because this subject matter was not present in the original disclosure as filed, it constitutes new matter and is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a).
Claim 20 recites “wherein each indication is abbreviated according to a corresponding abbreviation in use, wherein an abbreviation comprising the fewest characters is selected among more than one for the same exact indication.” Applicant’s original specification does not provide sufficient written support for forming an abbreviation of an indication in any manner. At most, paras. [0007] & [0012] broadly discuss producing a URL with abbreviated or shortened treatment names, while [0016] discloses that indications can be included in the created URL. However, there is no mention of specifically abbreviating indications, nor of doing so specifically by selecting an abbreviation with the fewest characters among more than one for the same exact indication. Because this subject matter was not present in the original disclosure as filed, it constitutes new matter and is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a).
Claim 21 recites “wherein each word in an indication name is abbreviated to the fewest characters necessary to uniquely distinguish that indication among all known indications, the abbreviation formed by selecting a minimum prefix in the natural reading order of the respective language of the name.” Applicant’s original specification does not provide sufficient written support for forming an abbreviation of an indication name in any manner, nor of doing no specifically by selecting a minimum prefix of the indication name. At most, paras. [0007] & [0012] broadly discuss producing a URL with abbreviated or shortened treatment names, while original claim 6 recites that “each word in the name of a medicinal treatment is abbreviated to the fewest letters of each word in its name that would be necessary to form a distinct abbreviation for the medicinal treatment among all medicinal treatments” and [0016] discloses that indications can be included in a created URL. However, there is no mention of specifically abbreviating indication names, nor of doing so specifically by selecting a minimum prefix of each word. Because this subject matter was not present in the original disclosure as filed, it constitutes new matter and is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a).
Claim 23 recites “wherein the abbreviation logic is selected to minimize total URL character length across the population of all combination file names in the system, reducing average network-transfer size per HTTP request by at least 10% compared to fixed-length naming, whereby average webpage-load performance is improved in high-latency or low-bandwidth connections.” Applicant’s original specification does not provide sufficient written support for the abbreviation of a total URL character length resulting in reduced average network-transfer size per HTTP request by at least 10% compared to fixed-length naming, nor resulting in average webpage-load performance improvements in high-latency or low-bandwidth connection. At most, paras. [0007] & [0012] broadly discuss producing a URL with abbreviated or shortened treatment names, but there is no mention of reduced average network-transfer size, HTTP requests, a specific reduction of at least 10% compared to fixed-length naming, average webpage-load performance, high-latency connections, or low-bandwidth connections. Because this subject matter was not present in the original disclosure as filed, it constitutes new matter and is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a).
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 14-15, 17-21 and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 14 recites “wherein each medicinal treatment is abbreviated according to a corresponding medicinal treatment abbreviation in use.” It is unclear what the metes and bounds of the phrase “in use” are, because there is no explanation of what entity or entities might be designating “use” of an abbreviation, how it is determined if an abbreviation is “in use,” etc., rendering the claim indefinite. For purposes of examination, an abbreviation will be considered to be “in use” if it exists at any point in time, including a newly-generated abbreviation.
Claim 15 recites “wherein each word in the name of a medicinal treatment is abbreviated to the fewest characters necessary to uniquely distinguish that treatment among all known medicinal treatments, the abbreviation formed by selecting a minimum prefix in the natural reading order of the respective language of the word.” The phrases “fewest characters necessary to uniquely distinguish that treatment among all known medicinal treatments” and “minimum prefix” are not defined by the claims, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. There is no description of how a minimum prefix for each word is determined, how it is determined if an abbreviation successfully distinguishes among “all known” treatments, what pool of treatments is actually considered “all known” treatments, etc., rendering the claim indefinite. For purposes of examination, this claim will be interpreted as being met when a medicinal treatment name is abbreviated to a prefix of any length.
Claims 17, 18, and 19 each recite “the arranged file name.” There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in each claim, because there is no previously introduced “arranged file name” in parent claim 13, rendering each claim indefinite. For purposes of examination, Examiner will interpret “the arranged file name” as “an arranged file name” newly introduced by each claim.
Claim 20 recites “wherein each indication is abbreviated according to a corresponding indication abbreviation in use.” It is unclear what the metes and bounds of the phrase “in use” are, because there is no explanation of what entity or entities might be designating “use” of an abbreviation, how it is determined if an abbreviation is “in use,” etc., rendering the claim indefinite. For purposes of examination, an abbreviation will be considered to be “in use” if it exists at any point in time, including a newly-generated abbreviation.
Claim 21 recites “wherein each word in an indication name is abbreviated to the fewest characters necessary to uniquely distinguish that indication among all known indications, the abbreviation formed by selecting a minimum prefix in the natural reading order of the respective language of the name.” The phrases “fewest characters necessary to uniquely distinguish that indication among all known indications” and “minimum prefix” are not defined by the claims, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. There is no description of how a minimum prefix for each word is determined, how it is determined if an abbreviation successfully distinguishes among “all known” indications, what pool of indications is actually considered “all known” indications, etc., rendering the claim indefinite. For purposes of examination, this claim will be interpreted as being met when an indication name is abbreviated to a prefix of any length.
Claim 23 recites “the abbreviation logic” and “the system.” There is insufficient antecedent basis for these limitations in the claim, rendering the claim indefinite. For purposes of examination, Examiner will interpret these limitations as “an abbreviation logic” and “a system” newly introduced by the claim.
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 1-4, 7, 9-10, and 13-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1
In the instant case, claims 1-4, 7, 9-10, and 13-24 are directed to methods (i.e. processes), such that each of the claims falls within one of the four statutory categories. Nevertheless, the claims fall within the judicial exception of an abstract idea.
Step 2A – Prong 1
Independent claims 1, 7, and 13 recite steps that, under their broadest reasonable interpretations, cover certain methods of organizing human activity, e.g. managing personal behavior, relationships, or interactions between people. Specifically, claim 1 recites:
A method of organizing medicinal treatment combinations, wherein each combination becomes an electronic file, comprising the steps of:
a. arranging in sequence at least two complete names of a medicinal treatment in accordance with their administration time, wherein treatments are arranged from earliest times in a 24 hour period to latest times, wherein a prescription medicine or supplement is described by its full generic name, and wherein a plant or living organism is described by its full Latin name, wherein the first letter of the first word of said name when said name comprises more than one word receives alphabetical priority, wherein a medicinal treatment comprising more than one word has each word joined together through the use of a dash character, and wherein the at least two complete names are separated by a dash;
b. entering and saving the arrangement of names as a file name, wherein said file name comprises a URL for directing to a webpage hosted on a server;
c. uploading the aforementioned file to said server, whereby it can be found, viewed and edited, wherein information relevant to the appropriateness, safety, effectiveness, risks and benefits of the combination of medicinal treatments is added to the webpage according to fields of information arranged as columns corresponding to medicinal treatments arranged as rows, wherein said columns consist of:
1. the name of the medicine or supplement, its strength, and any prescription number;
2. the date it was prescribed or first started, as well as the prescriber if applicable;
3. the manufacturer, shape, color and any markings on the dosage form;
4. the indication of the treatment or why it was prescribed or what it is used for;
5. monitoring parameters and special considerations, including contraindications;
6. the intended result the treatment produces or should produce or treatment goals;
7. possible side effects.
Similarly, claim 7 recites:
A method of organizing medicinal treatment combinations, wherein each combination becomes an electronic file, comprising the steps of:
a. arranging all the medicinal treatments of a person or animal into groups based on their administration time during a specific time of day, wherein the hour of day is accorded a numerical value between 1 and 24, wherein the value for the hour is followed by the letter M and said M is followed by a number between 1 and 60 to correspond with one of the 60 minutes in an hour whenever an administration time does not begin on the hour, wherein the value for the minute is followed by the letter S, and said S is followed by a number between 1 and 60 to correspond with one of the 60 seconds in a minute when an administration time does not begin on the minute;
b. arranging alphabetically all the medicinal treatments of a person or animal administered at a time corresponding to one of said groups, wherein each treatment is described by its full generic name in the case of a prescription medicines or over-the-counter substance, or its full Latin name when said substance is derived from a plant or other living organism, and wherein each word of a medicinal treatment is separated by a dash character;
c. placing the numeric value corresponding to an administration time before the corresponding alphabetically-arranged group;
d. combining, entering and saving the arrangement of administration times and names as a file name, wherein said file name comprises a URL for directing to a webpage hosted on a server;
e. uploading the aforementioned file to said server, wherein information relevant to the appropriateness, safety and effectiveness, risks and benefits of the specific combination of medicinal treatments is added to the webpage according to fields of information arranged as columns corresponding to medicinal treatments arranged as rows, wherein said columns consist of:
i. the name of the medicine or supplement, its strength, and any prescription number;
ii. the date it was prescribed or first started, as well as the prescriber if applicable;
iii. the manufacturer, shape, color and any markings on the dosage form;
iv. the indication of the treatment or why it was prescribed or what it is used for;
v. monitoring parameters and special considerations, including contraindications;
vi. the intended result the treatment produces or should produce or treatment goals;
vii. possible side effects.
Similarly, claim 13 recites:
A method of organizing medicinal treatment combinations, wherein each combination becomes an electronic file, comprising the steps of:
a. entering into a software program at least two complete names of medicinal treatments, wherein said treatments comprise a file as a URL for directing to a webpage hosted on a server;
b. uploading the aforementioned file to said server, whereby it can be found, viewed and edited, wherein information relevant to the appropriateness, safety, effectiveness, risks and benefits of the combination of medicinal treatments is added to the webpage according to fields of information arranged as columns corresponding to medicinal treatments arranged as rows, wherein said columns consist of:
i. the name of the medicine or supplement, its strength, and any prescription number;
ii. the date it was prescribed or first started, as well as the prescriber if applicable;
iii. the manufacturer, shape, color and any markings on the dosage form;
iv. the indication of the treatment or why it was prescribed or what it is used for;
v. monitoring parameters and special considerations, including contraindications;
vi. the intended result the treatment produces or should produce or treatment goals;
vii. possible side effects.
But for the recitation of generic computer components like an electronic file, a software program, and uploading/hosting of a webpage file to/on a server, the italicized functions, when considered as a whole, describe a treatment data organization/management operation that could be achieved by a human actor managing their personal behavior and/or interactions with others. For example, a person is capable of arranging, grouping, and organizing medical treatments by a variety of criteria like administration time, alphabetically, and through the use of formal and generic names separated by dash characters. A person is also capable of entering and saving the arranged names as a file name (e.g. in a paper filing system) representing a URL for a webpage hosted by a server. A person could also make a file, table, or other record available for colleagues or members of the public to access and edit (e.g. in paper form), and include each of listed data types 1-7 in the file organized as a table with rows and columns. Thus, the steps recited in claims 1, 7, and 13 describe various steps that a human actor may follow to manage their personal behavior and/or interactions with others, and accordingly each of these claims are found to recite an abstract idea in the form of a certain method of organizing human activity.
Dependent claims 2-6 and 8-12 inherit the limitations that recite an abstract idea from their dependence on claim 1, and thus these claims also recite an abstract idea under the Step 2A – Prong 1 analysis. In addition, claims 2-4, 9-10, and 14-24 recite additional limitations that further describe the abstract idea identified in the independent claims. Specifically, claims 2 and 16-19 recite additional rules for arranging the treatment names in a sequence according to various organization principles, each of which are rules that a human actor could follow to organize or arrange treatments within a file name. Claims 3-4, 9-10, 14-15, 17-18, and 20-24 further describe how the medicinal treatment names and indications are represented with written characters, each of which are formats that a human actor would be capable of arranging by following the described syntax and abbreviation rules.
However, recitation of an abstract idea is not the end of the analysis. Each of the claims must be analyzed for additional elements that indicate the abstract idea is integrated into a practical application to determine whether the claim is considered to be “directed to” an abstract idea.
Step 2A – Prong 2
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, independent claims 1, 7, and 13 do not include additional elements that integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. The additional elements of claims 1, 7, and 13 include entering and saving electronic file names specifically into a software program and uploading the aforementioned file to said server to facilitate viewing and editing of the uploaded file. These additional elements, when considered in the context of each claim as a whole, merely serve to automate personal behavior or interactions that could otherwise be achieved by or between human actors (as described above), and thus amount to instructions to “apply” the abstract idea with generic computer components (see MPEP 2106.05(f)). For example, a human actor is capable of arranging/organizing medicinal treatments into a file name representing a URL for a webpage that can be entered and saved (e.g. into a paper filing system), and specifying that the arranged file names are entered and saved into a software program merely digitizes/automates this otherwise-abstract function such that it occurs in an electronic environment. Similarly, a human actor is capable of publishing or sharing data about medicinal treatments in tabular form with colleagues or members of the public, and specifying that the data sharing occurs via uploading a file to a server to allow viewing and editing of the file again merely digitizes/automates this otherwise-abstract function such that it occurs in an electronic environment. Accordingly, independent claims 1, 7, and 13 as a whole are each found to be directed to an abstract idea without integration into a practical application.
The judicial exception recited in dependent claims 2-4, 9-10, and 14-24 is also not integrated into a practical application under a similar analysis as above. Claims 2-4, 9-10, 14-22, and 24 merely further describe the abstract idea identified in the independent claims without introducing any new additional elements of their own, and accordingly do not provide integration into a practical application. Claim 23 specifies that average network-transfer size per HTTP request is reduced by at least 10% compared to fixed-length naming and that average webpage-load performance is improved in high-latency or low-bandwidth connections. However, Examiner notes that these are merely intended results of the abstract file naming conventions and do not represent a positively recited arrangement of hardware or other technology-based additional elements that provide a technical improvement to a computer or other technical field.
Accordingly, the additional elements of claims 1-4, 7, 9-10, and 13-24do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Claims 1-4, 7, 9-10, and 13-24 are directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of entering and saving electronic file names specifically into a software program and uploading the aforementioned file to said server to facilitate viewing and editing of the uploaded file amount to instructions to “apply” the abstract idea with generic computing components. As evidence of the generic nature of the above recited additional elements, Examiner notes that the entering and saving of file names into a software program and facilitation of viewing/editing of uploaded files are specifically described in the original claims and paras. [0010], [0012], [0015] of the specification as occurring in accordance with the standards or skill of the art of software programs, indicating that these are well-understood, routine, and conventional processes known to those of skill in the art. Further, receiving or transmitting data over a network (i.e. uploading files to a server) is an activity that is recognized as being a well-understood, routine, and conventional computer function, as outlined in MPEP 2106.05(d)(II).
Analyzing these additional elements as an ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present when considering the elements individually; the overall effect of the electronic file, software, and server capabilities in combination is to digitize and/or automate a medicinal treatment data organization/ management operation that could otherwise be achieved as a certain method of organizing human activity. Thus, when considered as a whole and in combination, claims 1-4, 7, 9-10, and 13-24 are not patent eligible.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 13 and 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rubsamen (US 20160154946 A1) in view of Moore (US 20180086132 A1).
Claim 13
Note: the row and column formatting as well as the contents of the columns listed in 1.-7. are nonfunctional descriptive language and are thus not patentably limiting, as explained in the Claim Interpretation section above. However, these limitations are addressed with prior art below in the interest of compact prosecution.
Rubsamen teaches a method of organizing medicinal treatment combinations, wherein each combination becomes an electronic file (Rubsamen [0008], noting a list of patient medications are uploaded to a server to return relevant results to a user, considered equivalent to organizing combinations of patient medications such that they become an electronic file), comprising the steps of:
a. entering into a software program at least two complete names of medicinal treatments, wherein said treatments comprise a file as a URL for directing to a webpage hosted on a server (Rubsamen [0008]-[0009], [0028]-[0035], noting a user manually enters each medication that they are taking into a web browser (i.e. software program) which is uploaded to a server and returns various results pages relevant to the entered list; see also [0053], noting data processing over the internet via a client-server model utilizes URLs for accessing data. Taken together, these disclosures are considered equivalent to the treatments comprising a file with a URL for directing to a result webpage hosted on a server);
b. uploading the aforementioned file to said server, whereby it can be found, viewed and edited, wherein information relevant to the appropriateness, safety, effectiveness, risks and benefits of the combination of medicinal treatments is added to the webpage (Rubsamen [0008]-[0009], [0031]-[0035], noting the entered medication list is uploaded to a server and returns various results pages relevant to the entered list, including information regarding appropriateness, safety, effectiveness, risks and benefits of the combination of medications), wherein
1. the name of the medicine or supplement, its strength, and any prescription number (Rubsamen [0018], [0057], noting drug name and dosage (i.e. strength));
2.
3. the manufacturer, (Rubsamen [0018], noting display of brand name, packaging and dosage form);
4. the indication of the treatment or why it was prescribed or what it is used for (Rubsamen [0035], noting information about what the drug is generally used for treating);
5. monitoring parameters and special considerations, including contraindications (Rubsamen [0032], [0035], noting warnings or interactions);
6.
7. possible side effects (Rubsamen [0032], [0034], noting interactions and adverse responses reported by other patients, considered equivalent to possible side effects).
In summary, Rubsamen teaches entry of a combination of patient medications and web-based return of results related to the combination of medications, including medication-specific information like name, dosage, packaging, dosage form, treatment indications, interactions, adverse events, etc. However, this reference fails to explicitly disclose that the returned medication-specific information is arranged as columns corresponding to medication treatments arranged as rows and includes all seven of the column types listed by the claim. However, Moore teaches display of medication-specific information for multiple medications in a row- and column-based tabular arrangement with columns corresponding to all seven types of medication information recited in the claim (Moore Fig. 31, [0011]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the presentation of medication-specific data for a user as in Rubsamen to include a tabular arrangement with the seven types of data represented as columns as in Moore in order to further assist a user in readily identifying important characteristics of their medicine in an easily-understood tabular format, thereby increasing compliance as well as the safe and effective use of medicines (as suggested by Moore [0011]-[0012]).
Claim 22
Rubsamen in view of Moore teaches the method of claim 13, and the combination further teaches wherein each treatment name is separated by at least one character (Rubsamen [0008]-[0009], [0028]-[0029], noting a user manually enters each medication that they are taking into a web browser which is uploaded to a server and returns various results pages relevant to the entered list. Because the system can distinguish between multiple medications in the list (as noted in at least [0032], where the system determines potential adverse interactions between two or more drugs being taken by the patient), the manual medication entry process is considered to include separation of the treatment names by at least one character, e.g. one commonly used to separate words or concepts, such as commas, semicolons, spaces, line breaks, etc.).
Claims 14-15 and 21are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rubsamen and Moore as applied to claim 13 above, and further in view of Lewis (US 8489430 B1).
Claim 14
Rubsamen in view of Moore teaches the method of claim 13, but the present combination fails to explicitly disclose wherein each medicinal treatment is abbreviated according to a corresponding medicinal treatment abbreviation in use, wherein an abbreviation comprising the fewest characters is selected among more than one abbreviation for the same exact treatment. However, Lewis teaches that medicinal treatments may be abbreviated according to a shortened string of characters from within the treatment name, and that any given abbreviation for a treatment (including one that has the fewest characters) may be selected over others (Lewis Col1 L40-47, Col2 L36 – Col3 L16, Col3 L56 – Col4 L47). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the treatment names of the combination such that they are abbreviated as in Lewis in order to simplify the naming and display of information about prescription drugs to enable easier identification for patients and/or their caregivers (as suggested by Lewis Col1 L6-30).
Claim 15
Rubsamen in view of Moore teaches the method of claim 13, but the present combination fails to explicitly disclose wherein each word in the name of a medicinal treatment is abbreviated to the fewest characters necessary to uniquely distinguish that treatment among all known medicinal treatments, the abbreviation formed by selecting a minimum prefix in the natural reading order of the respective language of the word. However, Lewis teaches that medicinal treatments may be abbreviated according to a shortened string of characters from within the treatment name (e.g. a prefix) to uniquely distinguish it from other medications (Lewis Col1 L40-47, Col2 L36 – Col3 L16, Col3 L56 – Col4 L47). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the treatment names of the combination such that they are abbreviated as in Lewis in order to simplify the naming and display of information about prescription drugs to enable easier identification for patients and/or their caregivers (as suggested by Lewis Col1 L6-30).
Claim 21
Rubsamen in view of Moore teaches the method of claim 13, but the present combination fails to explicitly disclose wherein each word in an indication name is abbreviated to the fewest characters necessary to uniquely distinguish that indication among all known indications, the abbreviation formed by selecting a minimum prefix in the natural reading order of the respective language of the name. However, Lewis teaches that confusing clinical terms may be abbreviated according to a shortened string of characters from within the treatment name (e.g. a prefix) to uniquely distinguish it from other concepts (Lewis Col1 L40-47, Col2 L36 – Col3 L16, Col3 L56 – Col4 L47). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify clinical indications of the combination such that they are abbreviated as in Lewis in order to simplify the naming and display of information about potentially confusing clinical concepts to enable easier identification for patients and/or their caregivers (as suggested by Lewis Col1 L6-30).
Claim 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rubsamen and Moore as applied to claim 13 above, and further in view of Abbo (US 20160110507 A1).
Claim 16
Rubsamen in view of Moore teaches the method of claim 13, showing that medication names may be manually entered by a user. However, the present combination does not specify the order of entry of the user’s medication list, and thus fails to explicitly disclose wherein said names of medicinal treatments are entered alphabetically, wherein the first letter of the first word of said name when said name comprises more than one word receives alphabetical priority, whereby medicinal treatments beginning with a letter closer to the start of an alphabet precede treatments beginning with a letter subsequent in said alphabet. However, Abbo teaches that a list of medication names may be alphabetized (Abbo [0073]). It therefore would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the arbitrary order of medication name entry as in the combination such that they are alphabetized as in Abbo in order to organize the medications alphabetically, which is a helpful sorting criteria known to one of ordinary skill in the art (as suggested by Abbo [0073]).
Claim 23 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rubsamen, Moore, and Lewis as applied to claim 15 above, and further in view of Feldbau (US 20230262079 A1).
Claim 23
Rubsamen in view of Moore and Lewis teaches the method of claim 15, showing web-based service that includes use of URLs for navigation (Rubsamen [0053]). However, the present combination fails to explicitly disclose wherein the abbreviation logic is selected to minimize total URL character length across the population of all combination file names in the system, reducing average network-transfer size per HTTP request by at least 10% compared to fixed-length naming, whereby average webpage-load performance is improved in high-latency or low-bandwidth connections. However, Feldbau teaches that it is common in the URL-based web services art to utilize URL shortening services for various purposes, such as reducing container messages size (Feldbau [0014]-[0018], [0067]-[0068]). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the URL-based navigation of the combination to include abbreviation logic to minimize total URL character length as in Feldbau in order to reduce overall container messages size across URL traffic and/or for convenience, as is common in the art (as suggested by Feldbau [0014]-[0018] & [0067]-[0068]).
Claim 24 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rubsamen and Moore as applied to claim 13 above, and further in view of Chen (WO 2005036444).
Claim 24
Note: the descriptors of the treatments are nonfunctional descriptive language and are thus not patentably limiting, as explained in the Claim Interpretation section above. However, these limitations are addressed with prior art below in the interest of compact prosecution.
Rubsamen in view of Moore teaches the method of claim 13, and the combination further teaches wherein each treatment comprising a medicine or supplement is described by its full generic name, and wherein each treatment comprising a plant or living organism is described by its (Rubsamen [0018]-[0019], noting treatments can be described by their generic name, and that supplements like nutraceuticals, herbal remedies, vitamins, etc. are also included in the system). Though the present combination contemplates both generic and brand names for medicines, supplements, and other nutraceuticals, it fails to explicitly disclose describing plant or living organism treatments by their full Latin names. However, Chen teaches that foodstuff, herbal or botanical products may be described with common names, Latin names, brand names, or other relevant names for the purpose of providing safety information (Chen Pg15 L8-29, Pg24 L28 – Pg25 L5). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the naming conventions of medicinal treatments as in the combination to include describing plants or living organism-based treatments via their full Latin names as in Chen in order to include a more comprehensive description of interchangeable names of each treatment, as well as for convenience (as suggested by Chen Pg15 L25-29 & Pg25 L1-3).
Subject Matter Free from Prior Art
An updated search of the prior art failed to return any references that expressly teach or suggest, either alone or in combination, each and every feature of claims 1, 7, and 17-19 (particularly the recited file naming conventions), such that they and the claims depending therefrom are considered free from prior art, as explained in more detail in paras. 31-32 of the non-final rejection mailed 5/2/2025.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/KAREN A HRANEK/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3684