DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to the amendment/remarks filed 09 June 2026.
Claims 1 and 21 have been amended.
Claims 1-16 and 21-24 are currently pending.
Claims 1-16 and 21-24 are rejected.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Amendment/Remarks
Regarding the prior Claim Interpretation, the indicated limitations have been removed from the claims and thus the Claim Interpretation is withdrawn.
Regarding 35 USC § 101, Examiner has fully considered Applicant’s remarks but does not find them persuasive. Applicant argues that “the amended claims are not fairly characterized as advertising analysis in the abstract. They recite a defined data-processing arrangement in which hash-transformed identifiers serve as the operative keys for the core pipeline’s matching process.” Remarks at 9. While the claims to have a step wherein identifiers are hashed, the claims are not directed to this concept alone. The claims are directed toward gathering and analyzing impression data. Impressions, according to the specification (and general knowledge in the art), are “advertisement (“ad”) impressions.” Specification at [0029]. Obscuring information to protect privacy can be a useful step in many processes, but these processes are not all directed to data privacy merely because they involve a step wherein data is hashed. The present claims are directed to advertising activities. Thus, the claims do fall into the certain methods of organizing human activity grouping, which includes advertising activities. Applicant’s argument is not persuasive.
Applicant argues that the “present claims reflect the disclosed improvement. The specification describes processing impression data that includes device-identifying information and explains that device identifiers may be hashed so that only hashed device identifiers are provided to the attribute systems.” Remarks at 9. It is unclear what the technical problem is and what the technical solution/improvement is. Hashing data is not inherently technical, nor does it solve a problem that is inherently technical. Additional information is needed to come to a conclusion that the hashing steps found in the claims represent a technical solution to a technical problem. Applicant’s argument is not persuasive.
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.
11. Claims 1-16 and 21-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Step 1
12. Claims 1-16 recite a series of steps and, therefore, is a process. Claims 21-24 recite a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium which is considered a machine or manufacture.
Step 2A-Prong One
13. Independent claims 1 and 21 recite, in part, a method and computer-readable medium for performing the steps of generating an alert to indicate that impression data is available for processing using a core pipeline, wherein the core pipeline comprises: a server API, a user profile, and a place service, and wherein the core pipeline is operable to: receive a web service query comprising report configuration parameters; and based upon the report configuration parameters, retrieving the receiving impression data associated with consumption of media relating to a campaign presented on a plurality of mobile devices, the impression data including unique identifiers associated with a first set of users who consumed the media relating to the campaign, wherein the unique identifiers associated with the first set of users are transformed using a hash to create a first set of hashed unique identifiers, wherein the unique identifiers are transformed before being provided to the core pipeline such that the core pipeline receives the hashed unique identifiers; comparing the hashed unique identifiers associated with the first set of users against a second set of users to identify a set of users who are among both the first set of users and the second set of users as impression users; identifying a subset of the second set of users who are not among the first set of users as baseline users; determining, based on one or more analyses of the impression data associated with the impression users and impression data associated with the baseline users, whether the consumption of the media influenced the impression users to visit a target place during a window of time; and causing a user interface to display the results of the one or more analyses. This concept of gathering impression information and visit information and performing analyses on the data to assess whether the impressions had any impact on changing visit behavior is an abstract idea that falls into the certain methods of organizing human activity grouping (including advertising activities).
15. The mere nominal recitation of a generic computer component does not take the claim limitations out of the certain methods of organizing human activity grouping. Thus, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Step 2A-Prong Two
16. This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claims recite the additional element of a computer (claims 1-16) or a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium (claims 21-24) and includes no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using such generic computer components. The computer or storage medium does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea.
Step 2B
18. The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed previously with respect to Step 2A-Prong Two, the additional element in the claim amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. The same analysis applies here in Step 2B, i.e., mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot integrate a judicial exception into a practical application at Step 2A or provide an inventive concept in Step 2B. See MPEP 2106.05(f). The claims do not provide an inventive concept (significantly more than the abstract idea). The claims are ineligible.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MEREDITH A LONG whose telephone number is (571)272-3196. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Fri 9:30 - 6.
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/MEREDITH A LONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3622
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