DETAILED ACTION
The following is a FINAL office action upon examination of the application number 18/389976.
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
Claims 1, 8, 9, 11, 18, and 20 have been amended.
Claims 1-20 are pending in the application and have been examined on the merits discussed below.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 3/30/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
(Step 1) Claims 1-10 are directed to a method; thus these claims are directed to a process, which is one of the statutory categories of invention. Claims 11-20 are directed to a system comprising computer; thus the system comprises a device or set of devices, and therefore, is directed to a machine which is a statutory category of invention.
(Step 2A) The claims recite an abstract idea instructing how to aggregate data over custom polygons to evaluate demand gap, which is described by claim limitations reciting:
ingesting demographic, business, and service data…;
receiving an input from a user specifying an area of interest;
generating a list of regular geographic polygons falling within the area of interest;
and for each regular geographic polygon, generating a respective custom geographic polygon as a trade area for the regular geographic polygon, the custom geographic polygon generated from the centroid of the regular geographic polygon and extending beyond the area of the regular geographic polygon;
aggregating the demographic, business, and service data to the custom geographic polygons and associating with each regular geographic polygon the aggregated data for the respective custom geographic polygon;
training a demand and service level model with use of the aggregated data;
determining a demand gap for each regular geographic polygon with use of the trained model and the aggregated data associated with the regular geographic polygon; and
presenting the demand gap to the user…
The identified limitations in the claims describing aggregating data over custom polygons to evaluate demand gap (i.e., the abstract idea) fall within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas, which covers fundamental economic practices or, alternatively, the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas since the identified limitations can be performed by a human, mentally or with pen and paper. Dependent claims 2-10 and 12-20 recite limitations that further narrow the abstract idea (i.e., aggregating data over custom polygons to evaluate demand gap); therefore, these claims are also found to recite an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because additional elements such as the computer system in claim 1, and the computer system in claim 11, do not add a meaningful limitation to the abstract idea since these elements are only broadly applied to the abstract ideas at a high level of generality; thus, none of recited hardware offers a meaningful limitation beyond generally linking the abstract idea to a particular technological environment, in this case, implementation via a computer.
Additional elements such as ingesting … data into the computer system and presenting … via a display device of the computer system do not yield an improvement in the functioning of the computer itself, nor do they yield improvements to a technical field or technology; further, these limitations only add insignificant extra-solution activities (data gathering/display). Accordingly, these additional element do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea.
(Step 2B) The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because as discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the hardware additional elements amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component (see Spec. [0079]). Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. Additional elements such as ingesting … data into the computer system and presenting … via a display device of the computer system do not yield an improvement in the functioning of the computer itself, nor do they yield improvements to a technical field or technology; further, these limitations only add insignificant extra-solution activities (data gathering/display). With respect to data gathering limitations, the courts have recognized the use of computers to receive and transmit data as a well-understood, routine, and conventional, OIP Techs., Inc., v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1363, 115 USPQ2d 1090, 1093 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (sending messages over a network); buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1355, 112 USPQ2d 1093, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (computer receives and sends information over a network). With respect to data display limitations, the courts have found the presentation of data to be a well-understood, routine, conventional activity, OIP Techs., 788 F.3d at 1362-63, 115 USPQ2d at 1092-93 (see MPEP 2106.05(d)). In addition, when taken as an ordered combination, the ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present as when the elements are taken individually. There is no indication that the combination of elements improves the functioning of a computer or improves any other technology.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 3/30/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
With respect to the rejection under 35 USC 101, Applicant argues that the claims are not directed to a Mental Process and do not fall within the Certain Methods of Organizing Human activities grouping of abstract ideas.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Examiner maintains that the limitations describing aggregating data over custom polygons to evaluate demand gap fall within “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas since the identified limitations can be performed by a human, mentally or with pen and paper. Specifically, a person would be capable of generate a list of polygons…; generate custom geographic polygons…; aggregat[e] demographic, business, and service data; and train a demand and service model…
The courts do not distinguish between mental processes that are performed entirely in the human mind and mental processes that require a human to use a physical aid (e.g., pen and paper or a slide rule) to perform the claim limitation. See, e.g., Benson, 409 U.S. at 67, 65, 175 USPQ at 674-75, 674 (noting that the claimed "conversion of [binary-coded decimal] numerals to pure binary numerals can be done mentally," i.e., "as a person would do it by head and hand."); Synopsys, Inc. v. Mentor Graphics Corp., 839 F.3d 1138, 1139, 120 USPQ2d 1473, 1474 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (holding that claims to a mental process of "translating a functional description of a logic circuit into a hardware component description of the logic circuit" are directed to an abstract idea, because the claims "read on an individual performing the claimed steps mentally or with pencil and paper"). The use of a physical aid (e.g., pencil and paper or a slide rule) to help perform a mental step (e.g., a mathematical calculation) does not negate the mental nature of the limitation, but simply accounts for variations in memory capacity from one person to another. For instance, in CyberSource, the court determined that the step of "constructing a map of credit card numbers" was a limitation that was able to be performed "by writing down a list of credit card transactions made from a particular IP address." The court concluded that this step was able to be performed mentally with a pen and paper, and therefore, it qualified as a mental process. 654 F.3d at 1372-73, 99 USPQ2d at 1695. See also Flook, 437 U.S. at 586, 198 USPQ at 196 (claimed "computations can be made by pencil and paper calculations"). Additionally, with respect to the training step, Examiner notes that the claims do not specify or require a machine learning model. Therefore, given the broadest reasonable interpretation, the claimed models cover basic mathematical models that can be trained on paper (e.g. linear regression).
The courts have used the phrases "fundamental economic practices" or "fundamental economic principles" to describe concepts relating to the economy and commerce. The term "fundamental" is not used in the sense of necessarily being "old" or "well-known." See, e.g., OIP Techs., Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1364, 115 U.S.P.Q.2d 1090, 1092 (Fed Cir. 2015) (a new method of price optimization was found to be a fundamental economic concept). Examiner maintains that the present claims describing aggregating data over custom polygons to evaluate demand gap (i.e., the abstract idea) fall within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas, which covers fundamental economic practices since the evaluation demand gap to aid in identification of business locations ([0001]) is a concept related to commerce. Additionally, The Supreme Court has held that a claim may not preempt abstract ideas, laws of nature, or natural phenomena, even if the judicial exception is narrow (e.g., a particular mathematical formula such as the Arrhenius equation). See, e.g., Mayo, 566 U.S. at 79-80, 86-87, 101 USPQ2d at 1968-69, 1971 (claims directed to "narrow laws that may have limited applications" held ineligible); Flook, 437 U.S. at 589-90, 198 USPQ at 197 (claims that did not "wholly preempt the mathematical formula" held ineligible).
With respect to the rejection under 35 USC 101, Applicant argues that the claims are integrated into a practical application.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. The present claims do not provide a technical improvement. An improvement in the abstract idea itself (e.g. a recited fundamental economic concept) is not an improvement in technology. For example, in Trading Technologies Int’l v. IBG, 921 F.3d 1084, 1093-94, 2019 USPQ2d 138290 (Fed. Cir. 2019), the court determined that the claimed user interface simply provided a trader with more information to facilitate market trades, which improved the business process of market trading but did not improve computers or technology. Similarly, the use of custom polygons extending beyond hexbins for aggregation of data, at best improves a business process but does not improve the performance of the computer itself or a technology.
With respect to the rejection under 35 USC 101, Applicant argues that the claims recite significantly more than an abstract idea.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Examiner maintains that the hardware additional elements (computer system) amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component (see Spec. [0079]). Additional elements such as ingesting … data into the computer system and presenting … via a display device of the computer system do not yield an improvement in the functioning of the computer itself, nor do they yield improvements to a technical field or technology; further, these limitations only add insignificant extra-solution activities (data gathering/display), when taken as an ordered combination, the ordered combination adds nothing that is not already present as when the elements are taken individually.
Although the claims recite certain specific steps related to generation of custom polygons and aggregation to custom polygons, these limitations further narrow the abstract idea but do not make it any less abstract. The Supreme Court has explained that the judicial exceptions reflect the Court’s view that abstract ideas, laws of nature, and natural phenomena are "the basic tools of scientific and technological work", and are thus excluded from patentability because "monopolization of those tools through the grant of a patent might tend to impede innovation more than it would tend to promote it." Alice Corp., 573 U.S. at 216, 110 USPQ2d at 1980 (quoting Myriad, 569 U.S. at 589, 106 USPQ2d at 1978 and Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs. Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 71, 101 USPQ2d 1961, 1965 (2012)). The Supreme Court’s concern that drives this "exclusionary principle" is pre-emption. Alice Corp., 573 U.S. at 216, 110 USPQ2d at 1980. The Court has held that a claim may not preempt abstract ideas, laws of nature, or natural phenomena, even if the judicial exception is narrow (e.g., a particular mathematical formula such as the Arrhenius equation).
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 ALAN TORRICO-LOPEZ whose telephone number is (571)272-3247. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10AM-5PM.
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/ALAN TORRICO-LOPEZ/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3625
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