Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . This office action is in response to applicant's communication of December 16, 2025. The rejections are stated below. Claims 1-3, 8-10, and 15-17 are pending and have been examined.
Response to Arguments/Amendment
2. Applicant’s arguments concerning 35 U.S.C. 101 have been considered but are not persuasive. Applicant has amended claims 1, 8, and 15. The amended claims are directed to the abstract idea of determining credit eligibility and presenting approved offers, a fundamental economic practice. The claim recites steps of receiving financial information, generating a profile, making a decision, communicating that decision, and presenting formatted results which a method of organizing human activity. The “event-streaming computing architecture” provides a technological environment in which this abstract idea is performed. The focus of the claims is the financial and business concept of pre-approving and disqualifying customers for credit products based on collected data, not a specific improvement to computer technology.
3. Applicant argues the claims are directed to a “specific improvement in computer functionality.” However, the specification does not describe any development or unconventional arrangement of the recited computer components. The components recited of the “attribute and income platform,” “customer decisioning platform,” “event streaming platform,” “transaction decisioning platform,” and “list building engine” are described in functional terms for performing the abstract idea. As described in the specification, their interaction involves receiving data, processing it through decision logic, sending messages, maintaining a list, and retrieving that list for display. Spec. at [0041]-[0042], [0080]-[0081], [0095]-[0097]. The claim’s performance characteristic of returning results “within approximately 300 milliseconds” is merely a desired outcome of using data processing and streaming techniques. The specification lacks details showing a technical solution to a technical problem beyond the general desire for speed. See Spec. at [0032]. The final claim steps of “updating… an account state… to a disqualified state” and “automatically preventing… the customer from conducting a credit purchase by rejecting authorization requests” articulates the outcome of a disqualification decision using standard account control mechanisms. This is the basic application of the abstract idea and not a further inventive concept.
4. Even if the abstract idea is viewed as integrated into a practical application (i.e., a computerized credit processing system), the claims lack an “inventive concept.” The claims merely instruct the practitioner to implement the abstract idea using the additional elements as tools. Organizing systems to publish and subscribe to data streams is a standard practice in data processing.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
5. 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.
6. Claims 1-3, 8-10, and 15-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea of providing continuously updated decisioning without significantly more.
7. Claims 1-3, 8-10, and 15-17 are directed to a method which is one of the four statutory categories of invention (Step 1: YES).
8. Claim 1 recites “a method comprising:
receiving, at an …, demand deposit account information associated with a demand deposit account on a recurring basis;
receiving, at the …, financial information of a customer associated with the demand deposit account;
generating, by the …, a financial profile for the customer; the financial profile comprising data collected and aggregated by … based on the financial information;
generating, by a …, a customer pre-approval of a credit product for the customer, wherein the customer pre-approval is based on the financial profile for the customer, and account state information from a …, wherein the customer pre-approval includes a customer’s total finance amount based on the credit product for the customer;
determining, by the …, that a purchase of the demand deposit account exceeds the customer’s total finance amount;
providing, by an …, a customer pre-approval topic and a customer disqualification topic;
providing, by the …, an account state topic;
streaming, by the …, the account state information to the account state topic;
subscribing, by the …, to the account state topic;
disqualifying, by the …, the customer based on an eligibility and publishing the disqualifying to the customer disqualification topic, the eligibility being determined iteratively on a time interval;
subscribing, by a … , to the customer disqualification topic to prevent the customer from conducting a credit purchase;
building, by …, an eligible transaction list by subscribing to the eligible transaction topic and to the customer disqualification topic, the eligible transaction list being continually updated based on … data received from the eligible transaction topic and to the customer disqualification topic;
retrieving, by a …, the eligible transaction list …;
matching each eligible transaction to a corresponding transaction in a
transaction history list, and formatting only the matched transactions as eligible for display and interaction, wherein the … retrieval and formatting of the eligible transaction list returns results within approximately 300 milliseconds;
publishing, by the …, an invalidation of an eligible transaction to the invalidated transaction topic when a time limit applied to a loan offer is exceeded, when an update indicates the customer is disqualified, or when the customer's total finance amount is insufficient;
responsive to receiving a disqualifying publication from the …, updating, by the …, an account state in the … to a disqualified state; and
… preventing, by the …, the customer from conducting a credit purchase by rejecting authorization requests for the credit product based on the disqualified state”.
9. These limitations describe an abstract idea of continuously updated decisioning and corresponds to Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity (managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people) (Step 2A: Prong 1: YES).
10. This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. Claim 1 also recites “attribute and income platform executed by one or more processors, customer decisioning platform executed by one or more processors, event streaming platform executed by one or more processors, transaction decisioning platform executed by one or more processors, list building engine, streaming, digital channel at runtime, application programming interface (API), automatically” which do not apply or use the judicial exception in a meaningful way beyond linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment nor is there an improvement to technology. Therefore, claim 1 is directed to an abstract idea without a practical application (Step 2A - Prong 2: NO).
11. Further, as the additional elements of claim 1 do no more than serve as a tool to implement the abstract idea and/or provide a particular technological environment, they do not improve computer functionality or improve another technology or technical field. Thus, claim 1 is not patent eligible (Step 2B: NO).
12. Claim 2 recites “receiving, at the attribute and income platform, a risk score” which further defines the abstract idea.
13. Claim 3 recites “wherein the risk score is based on the financial profile” which further defines the abstract idea.
14. Claim 8 also recites the abstract idea of providing continuously updated decisioning and corresponds to Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity (managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people). Claim 8 includes the additional elements of “a system comprising at least one computer including a processor, wherein the at least one computer is configured, an attribute and income platform executed by one or more processors, customer decisioning platform executed by one or more processors, event streaming platform executed by one or more processors, stream, by the credit account platform, list building engine, streaming, digital channel at runtime, application programming interface (API), automatically”. The additional elements of claims 8 do no more than serve as a tool to implement the abstract idea and/or provide a particular technological environment. There is no improvement to the functioning of a computer, or to any other technology or technical field (MPEP 2106.05(a).
15. Claim 9 recites “receiving, at the attribute and income platform, a risk score” which further defines the abstract idea.
16. Claim 10 recites “wherein the risk score is based on the financial profile” which further defines the abstract idea.
17. Claim 15 also recites the abstract idea of providing continuously updated decisioning and corresponds to Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity (managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people). Claim 15 includes the additional elements of “a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, including instructions stored thereon, which instructions, when read and executed by one or more computer processors, cause the one or more computer processors to perform steps comprising…, an attribute and income platform executed by one or more processors, customer decisioning platform executed by one or more processors, event streaming platform executed by one or more processors, streaming, by the credit account platform, list building engine, streaming, digital channel at runtime, application programming interface (API), automatically”. The additional elements of claims 15 do no more than serve as a tool to implement the abstract idea and/or provide a particular technological environment. There is no improvement to the functioning of a computer, or to any other technology or technical field (MPEP 2106.05(a).
18. Claim 16 recites “receiving, at the attribute and income platform, a risk score” which further defines the abstract idea.
19. Claim 17 recites “wherein the risk score is based on the financial profile” which further defines the abstract idea.
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 KEVIN T POE whose telephone number is (571)272-9789. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 9:30am through 6pm EST.
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/K.T.P/Examiner, Art Unit 3692 /KEVIN T POE/
/RYAN D DONLON/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3692 April 13, 2026
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