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 action is in response to the amendment filed 10/2/2025. Applicant has amended claim 1, cancelled claim 20 and added new claims 21 and 22. Non-elected claims 9-12 and 14-19 are withdrawn. Accordingly, claims 1-8, 21 and 22 are pending for examination. New grounds of rejections necessitate by applicant’s amendments have been established as set forth in detail below.
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 1-8, 21 and 22 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 recites the abstract idea of “determining likelihood of fraud using models and approve attempted transaction”, which is grouped under “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” such as “fundamental economic principles or practices”- mitigating risk, “commercial or legal interactions”- sales activities or behaviors and “Mathematical Concepts”- model). (MPEP 2016.04(a)).
Specifically, claim 1 recites “receive…personally identifiable information associated with a first user”, “responsive to receiving the personally identifiable information, authenticate the first user”, “responsive to authenticating the first user… a temporary account number”, “associate the temporary account number with a primary account associated with the first user”, “….associated with the temporary account number”, “receive … an attempted transaction associated with the …”, “identify a plurality of previously …each associated with a respective temporary account number generated responsive to authenticating a respective associated user”, “determine, using one or more … models… a likelihood of fraud associated with the attempted transaction, wherein the one or more…to determine whether the attempted transaction fraudulent based on one or more attempted transaction associated with the identified plurality of previously …. and one or more similarly authenticated users and similarly previously….”, “determine whether the likelihood of fraud exceeds a threshold”, “responsive to determining the likelihood of fraud does not exceed the threshold, approve the attempted transaction”. Accordingly, claim 12 recites an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because, when analyzed under prong two of step 2A (MPEP 2106.04II), the additional elements of claim 1 such as “one or more processors”, “a memory in communication with the one or more processors and storing instructions”, “via an automated teller machine (ATM)”, “via a merchant point of sale (POS) terminal” does no more than serve as a tool to implement the abstract idea and/or provide a particular technological environment. With respect to “generating… temporary account number/physical payment cards)”, “dispense… a physical payment card”, “determining, using one or more machine learning models (MFL)”, “MLMs are trained”, the claims lack detail regarding what “generating”, “dispense”, “determining” and “trained” comprise (MPEP 2106.05(f)(1)). Therefore, as Applicant has neither placed a restriction on how generating, dispensing, determining and training are performed nor describe how the functions are accomplished the limitations do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application as they are no more than “apply it” (MPEP 2106.05(f)(1)).
When analyzed under step 2B (MPEP 2106.04II), because the additional elements do no more than represent the use of a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea and/or does no more than generally link the abstract idea to a particular field of use, they do not provide an improvement to computer functionality, or an improvement to another technology or technical field and, therefore, do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception itself (MPEP 2106.05(I)(A)(f)&(h)).
Hence, claim 1 is not patent eligible.
Depending claims 2-8 and 21-22 further recite “wherein the personally identifiable information comprise a phone number, a social security number, an account number, or combinations thereof (claim 2)”, “responsive to receiving the personally identifiable information: transmit a request for the first user to provide additional authentication information and receive…the additional authentication information, wherein generating the temporary account number is further responsive to receiving the additional authentication information (claim 3)”, “wherein the additional authentication information comprises a biometric input, a code, a personally identification number (PIN), an answer to a security question, or combination thereof (claim 4)”, “responsive to determining the likelihood of fraud exceeds the threshold, conduct one or more fraud prevention actions (claim 5)”, “the one or more …comprise a first … and a second …; the first … is associated with a first weighting factor; the second … is associated with a second weighing factor and determining the likelihood of fraud is based on the first and second weighting factors (claim 6)”, “the first … to determine the likelihood of fraud associated with the attempted transaction based on historical transaction data and the second … to determine the likelihood of fraud associated with the attempted transaction based on the one or more attempted transactions associated with the identified plurality of previously … (claim 7)” and “wherein the second weighting factor is higher than the first weighting factor (claim 8)”, “wherein the temporary account number is associated with the primary account such that the primary account … to financially lack the temporary account number (claim 21)”, and “….temporary account number (claim 22)”which is grouped under “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” such as “fundamental economic principles or practices”- mitigating risk, “commercial or legal interactions”- sales activities or behaviors and “Mathematical Concepts”- model). (MPEP 2016.04(a)).
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because, when analyzed under prong two of step 2A (MPEP 2106.04II), the additional elements of claims 2-8 and 21-22, such as “via the ATM (claim 3)”, “MLMs (claim 6)” represent the use of a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea and/or does no more than generally link the abstract idea to a particular technological environment or field of use. With respect to “MLM is trained… generated physical payment cards (claim 8)”, “account is configured to… (claim 21), “ATM is configured to print… on the physical payment card prior to dispensing the physical payment card (claim 22)”, “the claims lack detail regarding what “generated”, “trained” and “is configured to” comprise (MPEP 2106.05(f)(1)). Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea.
When analyzed under step 2B (MPEP 2106.04II), because the additional elements do no more than represent the use of a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea and/or does no more than generally link the abstract idea to a particular field of use, they do not provide an improvement to computer functionality, or an improvement to another technology or technical field and, therefore, do not amount to significantly more than the judicial exception itself (MPEP 2106.05(I)(A)(f)&(h)).
Hence, depending claims 2-8 and 21-22 are not patent eligible.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-8 and 21-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The terms “similarly” and “similar” in independent claim 1 are relative terms which render the claim indefinite. The terms “similarly” and “similar” are not defined by the claim, the specification does not provide a standard for ascertaining the requisite degree, and one of ordinary skill in the art would not be reasonably apprised of the scope of the invention. More specifically, what one regards as “similar(ly)” might not be the same as what another regards as “similar(ly)”. This raises questions as to the intended metes and bounds of the claimed invention.
All claims dependent from claim 1 inherit the same rejections under 35 U.S.C. 112, 2nd paragraph.
The claimed invention, considered as a whole including the newly added limitation, is not taught by the prior arts found in Examiner’s search. Therefore no 102/103 rejection is provided.
Related But Not Relied Upon
Relevant prior art cited but not applied: Koren et al. US 2022/0327504 A1 directed to training models and analyzing transaction of similar users.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 10/2/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argued that the claims are statutory under 35 U.S.C. 101 because 1) the claims are not directed to abstract idea 2) the claims recite technological improvement in authentication process that enhanced security and prevent unauthorized access 3) the combination of limitations are not well-understood, routine, conventional activities. The Examiner disagrees. The claims recite the abstract idea of “determining likelihood of fraud using models and approve attempted transaction”, which is grouped under “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” such as “fundamental economic principles or practices”- mitigating risk, “commercial or legal interactions”- sales activities or behaviors and “Mathematical Concepts”- model). (MPEP 2016.04(a)). In response to applicant’s argument that the claims recite technological improvement, it is noted that the additional elements such as “one or more processors”, “a memory in communication with the one or more processors and storing instructions”, “via an automated teller machine (ATM)”, “via a merchant point of sale (POS) terminal” does no more than serve as a tool to implement the abstract idea and/or provide a particular technological environment. With respect to “generating… temporary account number/physical payment cards)”, “dispense… a physical payment card”, “determining, using one or more machine learning models (MFL)”, “MLMs are trained”, the claims lack detail regarding what “generating”, “dispense”, “determining” and “trained” comprise (MPEP 2106.05(f)(1). Therefore, as Applicant has neither placed a restriction on how generating, dispensing, determining and training are performed nor describe how the functions are accomplished the limitations do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application as they are no more than “apply it” (MPEP 2106.05(f)(1)). In response to applicant’s argument the claims are not well-understood, routine or conventional, applicant is reminded that if an examiner had previously concluded under Step 2A that an additional element was insignificant extra-solution activity they should reevaluate such conclusion in Step B (please see at least MPEP 2106.05 (g)) and if such reevaluation indicates that the element is unconventional or otherwise more than what is well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field, this finding may indicate that an inventive concept is present. In this case, since the examiner has not concluded under Step 2A that any element is “insignificant extra-solution activity”, no reevaluation of whether the elements are “routine and conventional” is needed. Therefore, applicant’s arguments are not persuasive.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/CHIA-YI LIU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3692