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
This office action is responsive to Request for Continued examination Transmittal filed on 11/24/2025. Claims 1, 19, and 20 are amended. Claims 1-20 are pending examination.
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 1-20 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.
Claim 1 is drawn to method (i.e., a process), claim 20 is drawn to a system (i.e., a machine/manufacture), and claim(s) 19 is drawn to non-transitory computer readable medium (i.e., a machine/manufacture). As such, claims 1, 19, and 20 are drawn to one of the statutory categories of invention.
Step 2A Prong 1, the claims are directed to the abstract idea or evaluating and classifying digital messages as malicious or legitimate based on information analysis. The claims recite, obtaining message content, metadata, and organizational data, analyzing the information using large Language Model and machine learning. Generating confidence scores or classifications’; and perfuming actions based on the classification. These operations include collecting, analyzing, and classifying information to make a decision, which is an abstract idea and similar to mental processes and methods of organizing human activity, even when performed by a computer.
Step 2A Prong 2, although the claims recite the use of a large Language model, embeddings, questions, confidence scoring, and machine learning, these elements are used as generic analytical tools to perform the abstract message evaluation process. The claims do not recite any improvement to the computer functionality, no improvement to network operation message transmission or a specific technical mechanism that changes how data is processed at a system level. The recitation of quarantining or flagging a message only shows the result of the analysis and does not change how the computer or system operates.
Step 2B, the claims do not include an inventive concept enough to transform the abstract idea into patent eligible subject matter. The additional elements, considered individually or in combination amount to well understood, routine and conventional techniques for automated message analysis and fraud detection. The claims do not recite any unconventional technical improvement or specific improvement to the computing system. Accordingly, claims 1-20 are patent ineligible under 35 USC 101.
Response to Argument
Applicant's arguments filed regarding 35 USC § 101 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
The applicant argues that the claims are patent eligible because they:
Perform an innovative set of operations.
Provide new capabilities to a computerized system.
Autonomously protect systems from phishing and malicious messages.
Efficiently block cyber-attacks.
Keep servers malware-free.
Provide capabilities that did not exist before.
In response to
This argument is not persuasive because the court has said that just being new is not enough for patent eligibility under 101. The abstract ideas are not patentable even when the process is new and useful. The court also said that abstract idea on a computer is not enough for patent eligibility. By saying the invention is “innovative” and provides “new capabilities” mixes up patent eligibility under 101 with being new (102) and (103). Something can be both new and abstract at the same time.
This argument is not persuasive because it describes what the system accomplishes and not how it improves computer technology itself. Providing “new capabilities” to achieve a business or security objective does not establish patent eligibility when accomplished using conventional computer components operating in their ordinary capacity. The “new capability” identified is fraud detection, which is a result achieved, not an improvement to computer functionality.
The argument is not persuasive. Because automation does not equal a technological improvement to computer technology. The fact that the system operates “autonomously” (without human intervention) simply means a computer is performing tasks automatically, which is what computers routinely do. The mere recitation of a generic computer cannot transform the abstract idea into patent eligible invention. The current claims use LLM and machine learning in their conventional capacity to automatically evaluate messages. Which is clearly using computers as tools to automate the abstract idea of fraud detection.
The argument is not persuasive because the set of operations that applicant is referring to consists of conventional data processing steps of extracting data, creating indexes, generating queries, receiving responses, calculating scores, and taking actions. These are routine operations performs by computers in their ordinary capacity.
The argument is not persuasive because it describes the problem the invention seeks to solve, and not an improvement to computer technology. The clams use LLMs, machine learning, and databases in their conventional roles to achieve the security objective of blacking malicious messages, which is similar to Content Extraction v, Wells Fargo , where the claims were found abstract even though they served the benefit of recognizing and storing data from documents.
The argument is not persuasive because it conflates patent eligibility (101) with novelty (102). The court has explicitly stated that novelty alone is not enough for patent eligibility.
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/SARGON N NANO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2443