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 .
DETAILED ACTION
1. The following is a NON-FINAL Office Action in response to the communication
received on 11/10/25. Claims 1-20 are now pending in this application.
2. A request for continued examination (RCE) 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Office Action has been WITHDRAWN pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 11/10/25 has been entered.
Response to Amendments
3. Applicants Amendment has been acknowledged in that: Claims 1,10, 19 have been amended; claim 21 is cancelled, hence such, claims 1-20 are now pending in this application.
RESPONSE TO ARGUMENTS
Applicant argues#1
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. §101
Claims 1 - 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. §101 as being directed to nonstatutory subject matter. Specifically, the Office Action states that the claims are directed to an
abstract idea, and specifically to certain methods of organizing human activity. See Office Action page 13. The Applicant respectfully disagrees.
Examiner Response
Examiner respectfully disagrees.
The claims are reciting the identified abstract idea, see the section 101 rejection below.
Applicant argues#2
At page 4 of the Final Office Action, the Examiner states that "discarding of
intermediate values after calculating the expected and potential portfolio exposures after the expected and potential exposures are calculated is improving the abstract idea and not a technical improvement." (Emphasis added). The Applicant's representative submits that this conclusion is incorrect based on legal precedent as explained below.
The prior version of the claim recited "discarding, by the risk calculation
application, intermediate values corresponding to the expected portfolio exposure and the potential portfolio exposure after the expected and potential portfolio exposures are calculated" and placed this clause after the storing step. In response to the current Final Office Action, the claims have been amended to instead recite "discarding, by the risk calculation application, one or more intermediate values utilized in calculating the expected portfolio exposure and the potential portfolio exposure" and to place this step before the storing step.
These amendments make clear that discarding is not simply an incidental clean-up operation occurring after storage, but an integral part of the claimed algorithm itself before storage of the expected portfolio exposure and the potential portfolio exposure as claimed. They also clarify that the discarded values are the intermediate values actually utilized in the calculations, which directly tracks the disclosure in paragraphs [0020] and [0034] of the published application.
Examiner Response
Examiner respectfully disagrees.
The fact that the “discarding step (the discarding of the immediate values after calculating the expected and potential portfolio exposures) now comes before the storing step (storing.. the expected portfolio exposure and the potential portfolio exposure in a database) does not take this limitation out of the identified abstract idea.
Paras 20&34 and para 19 of the published PG PUB (20250078155) are reproduced below:
[0019] FIG. 2 is a flowchart of a computer-implemented method 200 for calculating counterparty risk in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. Specifically, method 200 may be executed by a risk calculation application that is executed by a processor of computer system 102 as described above with reference to FIG. 1. Similar to what is described above, the computer system 102 is coupled to a communications network 108. Also coupled to the communications network, or hosted on the computer system 102, is a database 110, as described above. Illustratively, the risk calculation application is implemented in Python using PyTorch. PyTorch is publicly available at pytorch.org and is widely used in the data science field. The PyTorch code is hardware-agnostic and can be executed on various computer system architectures or hardware architectures, such as traditional central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), tensor processing units (TPUs), neural processing units (NPUs) and combinations thereof. The code can be executed on any of these hardware architectures without modifications and is therefore highly portable. Executing the risk calculation application on a CPU-based architecture is serialized and therefore already efficient. It uses all available threads of the CPU and is executed in a vectorized manner. Executing the risk calculation application on a GPU-based, TPU-based, and/or NPU-based architecture leverages the multiple processing units available and accelerates the method more than 250 times. The method then runs truly parallelly and scales up to the memory limit of the corresponding hardware architecture with limited impact on run time. Even when using a large number of market scenarios, such as 10,000,000, the entire method is executed within 0.004 seconds.
[0020] In addition to calculating counterparty risk in parallel instead of sequentially, the method 200 is also more memory-efficient than traditional methods. Current counterparty risk calculation involves calculating changes in market value for each transaction, and then aggregating to the portfolio level to calculate an average and 95% quantile. The method 200 described herein calculates an average market scenario and a high-risk market scenario, exemplarily at the 95% quantile, and then multiplies these scenarios by the beta-adjusted portfolio value to determine the average and potential/high-risk portfolio exposure. This is equivalent to the traditional method but more memory efficient. In addition, the method 200 only saves two output values, and optionally a random seed, to the database 110 and thereby removes the need to save intermediate data. Saving data from memory to a database is time-consuming and therefore responsible for longer processing times.
[0034] FIG. 3 is a memory chart for a method for calculating counterparty risk in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. As can be seen in FIG. 3, the process 200 described above mostly uses device, or hardware, RAM, such as GPU memory, TPU memory, and/or NPU memory. Therefore, the process avoids frequent interactions between CPU memory, GPU/TPU/NPU memory, and local storage which avoids time-consuming transfers of data. In addition, the method described herein eliminates interaction with the database 110, except at the input and output stages. While financial regulations typically require all intermediate data to be saved and results to be reproducible, the method 200 satisfies these regulations by using and saving a random seed, as described above with reference to step 220. Having a saved random seed renders the results of the counterparty risk calculation reproducible on any platform by setting the same random seed. In addition, any other intermediate result also may be saved if necessary.
Para 20 of the specification states, “The method 200 described herein calculates an average market scenario and a high-risk market scenario, exemplarily at the 95% quantile, and then multiplies these scenarios by the beta-adjusted portfolio value to determine the average and potential/high-risk portfolio exposure. This is equivalent to the traditional method but more memory efficient. In addition, the method 200 only saves two output values, and optionally a random seed, to the database 110 and thereby removes the need to save intermediate data. Saving data from memory to a database is time-consuming and therefore responsible for longer processing times.”
Para 20 of the specification states that the discarding of the one or more intermediate values is equivalent to traditional methods of calculating counterparty risk calculations.
The discarding of data from a database to free up memory and decreasing processing times is both commonly understood and explained in the spec para cited.
The claimed invention is using the additional elements (the application executing on a computer system, database, memory and non-transitory computer readable recited) at a high level of generality, operating in their ordinary capacity as a tool to implement the steps of the identified abstract idea.
Applicant further argues on page 11 (Conventional financial systems require retention of intermediate values, increasing storage overhead and slowing execution. By contrast the claimed invention deliberately eliminates those values, reducing the memory footprint, decreasing computational overhead, and improving throughput)
Examiner disagrees that by discarding the intermediate values in calculating the expected portfolio exposure and the potential portfolio exposure is reducing the memory footprint, decreasing computational overhead, and improving throughput.
The above cited paras of the specification state that the parallel processing of the GPU based, TPU based and/or NPU based architecture are operating in their ordinary capacity, and are being used as a tool to implement the steps of the identified abstract idea, see MPEP 2106.05(f).
There is no technical improvement, and applicant’s claims do not improve technology, the underlying technology remains unaffected by the claims.
Applicant is addressing a business problem (steps for calculating counterparty risk using risk analysis) with a business solution. Applicant is merely using existing technology (for its intended purpose) to implement the business solution. Any improvements lie in the abstract idea itself, not in underlying technology.
The rejection is maintained.
Applicant argues#3
The Federal Circuit's analysis in Enfish was applied directly to claim 17 of the '604 patent, which recited: A data storage and retrieval system for a computer memory, comprising: means for configuring said memory according to a logical table,
said logical table including: a plurality of logical rows, each said logical row including an
object identification number (OID) to identify each said logical row, each
said logical row corresponding to a record of information;
a plurality of logical columns intersecting said plurality of logical
rows to define a plurality of logical cells, each said logical column
including an OID to identify each said logical column; and
means for indexing data stored in said table.
At first glance, one might argue such a claim could be performed conceptually with pencil and paper. Yet the Federal Circuit held that it was statutory because it was directed to "a specific improvement to the way computers operate, embodied in the self- referential table." See Enfish at 1336.
Accordingly, the present claims are statutory under Step 2A, Prong Two because they are directed to a specific improvement to computer functionality, and under Step 2B because they recite significantly more than any alleged abstract idea by requiring an algorithmic architecture that improves computer operation.
If the Office disagrees, Applicant respectfully requests a clearer explanation as to why the Federal Circuit determined claim 17 of Enfish to be statutory, yet under the Office's present reasoning and analysis that same claim would be deemed non-statutory.
Examiner Response
Examiner disagrees that the claims are analogous to claim 17 of the *604 Patent.
Examiner points to the MPEP, where the Enfish decision is referenced as it relates to improvements to the functioning of a computer or to any other technology or technical field:
MPEP 2106.05(a) Improvements to the Functioning of a Computer or To Any Other Technology or Technical Field [R-07.2022]
I. IMPROVEMENTS TO COMPUTER FUNCTIONALITY
In computer-related technologies, the examiner should determine whether the claim purports to improve computer capabilities or, instead, invokes computers merely as a tool. Enfish, LLC v. Microsoft Corp., 822 F.3d 1327, 1336, 118 USPQ2d 1684, 1689 (Fed. Cir. 2016). In Enfish, the court evaluated the patent eligibility of claims related to a self-referential database. Id. The court concluded the claims were not directed to an abstract idea, but rather an improvement to computer functionality. Id. It was the specification’s discussion of the prior art and how the invention improved the way the computer stores and retrieves data in memory in combination with the specific data structure recited in the claims that demonstrated eligibility. 822 F.3d at 1339, 118 USPQ2d at 1691. The claim was not simply the addition of general purpose computers added post-hoc to an abstract idea, but a specific implementation of a solution to a problem in the software arts. 822 F.3d at 1339, 118 USPQ2d at 1691.
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The claims of the instant invention are no improving computer functionality, see the Response to Applicant argues#2-3.
On page 18 the Enfish decision, the court stated, “In sum, the self-referential table recited in the claims on appeal is a specific type of data structure designed to improve the way a computer stores and retrieves data in memory. The specification’s disparagement of conventional data structures, combined with language describing the “present invention” as including the features that make up a self-referential table, confirm that our characterization of the “invention” for purposes of the § 101 analysis has not been deceived by the “draftsman’s art.” Cf. Alice, 134 S. Ct. at 2360. In other words, we are not faced with a situation where general-purpose computer components are added post-hoc to a fundamental economic practice or mathematical equation. Rather, the claims are directed to a specific implementation of a solution to a problem in the software arts. Accordingly, we find the claims at issue are not directed to an abstract idea.”
Furthermore, in the decision, the Federal circuit on page 16, pointed to column 2: lines 53-65 of the patent (US Patent 6,151,604) describing the self-referential table:
The table of the present invention comprises a plurality of rows and columns. Each row has an object identification number (OID) and each column also has an OID. A row corresponds to a record and a column corresponds to an attribute such that the intersection of a row and a column comprises a cell that may contain data for a particular record related to a particular attribute. A cell may also point to another record. To enhance searching and to provide for synchronization between columns, columns are entered as rows in the table and the record corresponding to a column contains various information about the column. This renders the table self referential and provides numerous advantages, as will be discussed in this Specification.
Whereas the specification of the instant invention is not describing an improvement to computer functionality, see the Response to Applicant argues#2-3 above.
The additional elements in the claim outside of the abstract idea (the application executing on a computer system, database, memory and non-transitory computer readable medium are recited at a high level of generality and are being used in their ordinary capacity and are being used as a tool for implementing the steps of the identified abstract idea, see MPEP 2106.05(f), where applying a computer or using a computer as a tool to perform the abstract idea is not indicative of a practical application.
The claimed invention is not solving a technological problem and is not improving computer operation with the algorithmic architecture.
There are no additional elements in the claim that amount to significantly more than the identified abstract idea.
As was stated above (with respect to the additional elements not indicative of integration into a practical application), the additional elements are recited at a high level of generality, operating in their ordinary capacity, and are being used as tool to implement the steps of the identified abstract idea, see MPEP 2106.05(f).
The rejection is maintained.
Claim Rejections- 35 U.S.C § 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.
1. Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Claims 1, 10,19 are directed to a method, system and computer readable medium which are statutory categories of invention. (Step 1: YES).
Claim 1 recites the limitations of:
A computer-implemented method for calculating counterparty risk using a risk calculation application executing on a computer system, the method comprising:
receiving, by the risk calculation application, a plurality of transactions in a portfolio, each one of the transactions including a market value and a beta value;
generating, by the risk calculation application and in parallel, a plurality of market scenarios based on a log-normal distribution;
calculating, by the risk calculation application and in parallel, an average market scenario and a high-risk market scenario based on the plurality of market scenarios;
calculating, by the risk calculation application and in parallel, a beta-adjusted portfolio value based on the plurality of market values and the plurality of beta values;
calculating, by the risk calculation application, an expected portfolio exposure based on the beta-adjusted portfolio value and the average market scenario, wherein the expected portfolio exposure indicates an average counterparty risk;
calculating, by the risk calculation application, a potential portfolio exposure based on the beta-adjusted portfolio value and the high-risk market scenario, wherein the potential portfolio exposure indicates a worst-case counterparty risk; and
discarding, by the risk calculation application, one or more intermediate values utilized in calculating the expected portfolio exposure and the potential portfolio exposure; and
storing, by the risk calculation application, the expected portfolio exposure and the potential portfolio exposure in a database
wherein the average counterparty risk and the worst-case counterparty risk provide indications regarding a risk associated with the portfolio with the plurality of transactions.
These limitations, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, cover performance of the limitation as certain methods of organizing human activity.
The claim recites elements that are in bold above, which covers performance of the limitation as a commercial interaction, steps for calculating counterparty risk using risk analysis (e.g., receiving, a plurality of transactions in a portfolio, each one of the transactions including a market value and a beta value; generating, in parallel a plurality of market scenarios based on a log-normal distribution; calculating, in parallel, an average market scenario and a high-risk market scenario based on the plurality of market scenarios; calculating, in parallel, a beta-adjusted portfolio value based on the plurality of market values and the plurality of beta values; calculating, an expected portfolio exposure based on the beta-adjusted portfolio value and the average market scenario, wherein the expected portfolio exposure indicates an average counterparty risk; calculating, a potential portfolio exposure based on the beta-adjusted portfolio value and the high-risk market scenario, wherein the potential portfolio exposure indicates a worst-case counterparty risk;
discarding, one or more intermediate values utilized in calculating the expected portfolio exposure and the potential portfolio exposure and storing, the expected portfolio exposure and the potential portfolio exposure; wherein the average counterparty risk and the worst-case counterparty risk provide indications regarding a risk associated with the portfolio with the plurality of transactions)
If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation as a Commercial Interaction, then it falls within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas.
Claims 10,19 are abstract for similar reasons.
(Step 2A-Prong 1: YES. The claims are abstract).
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. Limitations that are not indicative of integration into a practical application include: (1) Adding the words “apply it” (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea (MPEP 2106.05.f), (2) Adding insignificant extra solution activity to the judicial exception (MPEP 2106.05.g), (3) Generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use (MPEP 2106.05.h).
Claims 1, 10, 19 includes the following additional elements:
-An application executing on a computer system
-A database
-A processor
-A memory
- A non-transitory computer readable medium
Accordingly, these additional elements, when considered separately and as an ordered combination, do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea
Therefore claims 1, 10, 19 are directed to an abstract idea without a practical application. (Step 2A-Prong 2: NO. The additional claimed elements are not integrated into a practical application)
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because, when considered separately and as an ordered combination, they do not add significantly more (also known as an “inventive concept”) to the exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, there are no additional elements recited in the claim beyond the judicial exception.
Mere instructions to implement an abstract idea, on or with the use of generic computer components, or even without any computer components, cannot provide an inventive concept - rendering the claim patent ineligible. Thus claims 1, 10, 19 are not patent eligible. (Step 2B: NO. The claims do not provide significantly more)
Dependent claims 2-9, 11-18, 20 further define the abstract idea that is present in their respective independent claims 1, 10, 19 and thus correspond to Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity and hence are abstract for the reasons presented above.
Claims 2,11 further defines the identified abstract idea as recited in claims 1, 10. The additional element of (plurality of computer system architectures) are recited a high level of generality, operating in their ordinary capacity, and are being used as a tool to implement the steps of the identified abstract idea, see MPEP 2106.05(f)
Claims 3, 12,20 further defines the identified abstract idea recited in claims 1, 10, 19. The additional elements of (wherein the plurality of computer system architectures including a central processing unit-based architecture, a graphical processing unit-based architecture, and a tensor processing unit-based architecture) are recited at a high level of generality, operating in their ordinary capacity and are being used as a tool to implement the steps of the identified abstract idea.
Claims 4, 13 further defines the identified abstract idea as recited in claims 1&10. The additional element of (a random number generator) is recited at a high level of generality, operating in their ordinary capacity and are being used as a tool to implement the steps of the identified abstract idea.
Therefore, the dependent claims do not include any additional elements that integrate the abstract idea into a practical application or are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception when considered both individually and as an ordered combination. Therefore, the dependent claims (2-9, 11-18, 20) are directed to an abstract idea. Thus, the claims 1-20 are not patent-eligible.
CONCLUSION
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MOHAMMAD Z SHAIKH whose telephone number is (571)270-3444. The examiner can normally be reached M-T, 9-600; Fri, 8-11, 3-5.
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, BENNETT SIGMOND can be reached at 303-297-4411. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MOHAMMAD Z SHAIKH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3694 1/15/2026