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 .
This Office Action is in response to Request for Continued Examination filed on July 23, 2026.
Claims 1-19 are pending.
Claims 1, 4, 9, 15-19 have been amended.
Response to Amendment
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 9-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter.
Claim 9-15 are directed to a system. However, the recited components of the system are software, which is none of a “process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter” and thus non-statutory under § 101. Claim 9 states that the system comprises “a software” and “a repository”. The “repository” does not appear to be tied to or encompass any hardware. Therefore, these claim limitations are construed as a computer program per se. The claims are directed to functional descriptive material per se, and hence non-statutory.
Claims 10-15 depend on the rejected claim 9 and do not resolve the deficiencies and thus, are rejected for at least the same reasons.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-8 and 16-19 allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
The closest prior art of record, Munoz teaches a method that comprises executing an application defining a feature flag, the execution of the application being associated with a user identifier. The method further comprises determining if version data associated with the feature flag and user identifier is stored in a local data store. In response determining that the version data associated with the feature flag and user identifier is stored in the local data store an evaluation request is generated that includes the version data and the user identifier. The evaluation request is then communicated to a feature flag evaluation service.
Zhang teaches an access control system. The access control system comprises a client application operable to provide a user interface for allowing a user to dynamically configure rules and associated parameters for controlling access to an entity; a rules engine proxy operable to receive said rules and associated parameters from the client application, the rules engine proxy further operable to dynamically compile and execute said rules; and a controller coupled to the rules engine proxy operable to receive input and further operable to trigger the rules engine proxy to execute one or more of said rules in response to the received input.
De Schrijver teaches a distributed object storage system that includes several performance optimizations with respect to efficiently storing data objects when coping with a desired concurrent failure tolerance of concurrent failures of storage elements which is greater than two and with respect to optimizing encoding/decoding overhead and the number of input and output operations at the level of the storage elements.
Neither Munoz, Zhang nor De Schrijver, anticipate or render obvious the combination set forth in independent claims 1 and 16 recited as “wherein the set of rules are locally stored at the client system, and evaluation using the latest version of the set of rules occurs at the client system with the response data cached at the client system to avoid subsequent communications with the feature flag service, wherein the evaluation using the latest version of the set of rules will either enable or disable the feature of the software, and wherein the set of rules distinguishes between static inputs and dynamic inputs such that static inputs are at least partially evaluated and cached at a policy update time rather than evaluated at runtime” and “wherein the feature flag corresponds to a conditional feature flag that enables the feature flag for a first user while being disabled for a second user, such that the first user is provided with a first version of the software having the feature enabled while the second user is provided with a second version of the software having the feature disabled, and the conditional feature flag is used for progressive rollouts of the software where enabling the feature occurs for a first percentage of users and then increasing to a second increased percentage of users at a later point in time, and where the feature flag is disabled to roll back a problem with rollout of the software having a problematic feature.” That is, the claims require a set of rules that are locally stored at a client system, and evaluation using a latest version of the set of rules occurs at the client system with a response data cached at the client system to avoid subsequent communications with the feature flag service. Further, the evaluation using the latest version of the set of rules will either enable or disable a feature of the software, and the set of rules distinguishes between static inputs and dynamic inputs such that static inputs are at least partially evaluated and cached at a policy update time rather than evaluated at runtime. Further still, the feature flag corresponds to a conditional feature flag that enables the feature flag for a first user while being disabled for a second user, such that the first user is provided with a first version of the software having the feature enabled while the second user is provided with a second version of the software having the feature disabled, and the conditional feature flag is used for progressive rollouts of the software where enabling the feature occurs for a first percentage of users and then increasing to a second increased percentage of users at a later point in time, and where the feature flag is disabled to roll back a problem with rollout of the software having a problematic feature.
The aforementioned limitations and reasons are in conjunction with all other claim limitations and the structure and environment which are not specifically recited in the quotes or expounded upon in the reasons. The Notice of Allowability is based on the totality of the claims. Thus, for at least the foregoing reasons, the prior art of record neither anticipates nor rendered obvious the present invention as set forth in the claims.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see Page 11, filed July 23, 2026, with respect to the objection of claims 1-19, §112 rejection of claim 4 and §101 rejection of claims 1-19 for being directed to an abstract idea have been fully considered and are persuasive. The objection of claims 1-19, §112 rejection of claim 4 and §101 rejection of claims 1-19 for being directed to an abstract idea have been withdrawn.
Examiner’s Remarks:
The Examiner would like to note that in the Final Office Action dated March 23, 2026, the Examiner rejected claims 9-15 under 35 USC §101 for being directed to non-statutory subject matter. The Applicant’s arguments/remarks submitted on July 23, 2026 do not appear to address this rejection. Therefore, this rejection is being maintained as there are no amendments to claim 9 that address this rejection. Phone calls and voicemail were left for Peter Mei (Reg. No. 39,768) but no reply was received.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LANNY N UNG whose telephone number is (571)270-7708. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Thurs 6:30am-3:30pm.
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/LANNY N UNG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2197
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