DETAILED ACTION
Status of Claims
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
This action is in reply to the remarks/arguments for Application 18/428,777 filed on 14 July 2025.
Claims 1, 5, and 8 have been amended.
Claims 2, 4, 6-7, 9-10, 12-20 are canceled.
Claims 21-23 have been added.
Applicant’s remarks/arguments/amendments regarding claims 1, 3, 5, 8, 11 are sufficient to overcome the rejections of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101, and § 103 set forth in the previous Office Action. Accordingly, the rejections of claims 1, 3, 5, 8, 11 under 35 U.S.C. § 101, and § 103, are withdrawn.
Applicant’s remarks/arguments regarding claims 21-23 are sufficient to overcome the rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103 set forth in the previous Office Action. Accordingly, the rejection of claims 21-23 under 35 U.S.C. § 103, is withdrawn.
Claims 1, 3, 5, 8, 11, and 21-23 are currently pending and have been examined.
Potentially Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 3, 5, 8, 11, and 21-23 would be potentially allowable over the prior art(s) of record if the independent claims were rewritten to include limitation features distinctly and/or separately found in each of the independent claims, and if the rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101 raised can be addressed and overcome, before allowable subject matter can be considered.
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 21-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
In the instant case, method claim 21 is directed towards facilitating multi-categorization
labeling and hierarchical categorization for a transaction being processed for payment by a financial institution during a transaction of a customer with a merchant. Claim 21 is directed to the abstract idea of following rules and instructions in order to perform a commercial/economic practice comprising the steps of collecting (“receiving a transaction string”), calculating (“cleansing and normalizing”), evaluating and sorting (“labeling”, “assigning categories”) data/information associated with a financial transaction (“commercial and/or business interaction”) in an organized manner, which is grouped under the certain methods of organizing human activity – fundamental economic principles, practices or concepts; sales activity; following set of instructions; commercial or legal interactions (marketing; sales activities or behaviors; business relations); managing personal behavior of relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teachings, following rules or instructions) grouping, in prong one of step 2A.
Claim 21 recites:
“receiving, by at least one processor, a transaction string associated with payment processing for a transaction by a financial institution (FI);
cleansing and normalizing, by the at least one processor, the transaction string as normalized data, wherein cleansing includes embedding semantic data within the normalized data;
labeling, by the at least one processor, entities identified in the normalized data using a first machine-learning model to produce an entity-labeled normalized string;
assigning, by the at least one processor, categories to each labeled entity based on a hierarchy associated with each labeled entity using a second machine-learning model trained on hierarchies to produce a multi-entity labeled and multi-categorized string for the transaction, wherein the second machine-learning model produces multiple category labels for the transaction with independent category probabilities; and
providing the multi-entity labeled and multi-categorized string to a system associated with the FI for subsequent analytics”.
Based on the underlined elements above, abstract ideas and/or concepts are identified.
Performing multi-categorization labeling and hierarchical categorization for the purpose of organizing and analyzing data/information associated with a financial and/or commercial-related transaction corresponds to a fundamental economic practice and/or concept. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea. Hence, claim 21 is not patent eligible.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because, when analyzed under prong two of step 2A, the additional elements of the claim such as an “cleansing” “normalizing”, “processor”, “machine learning model”, represent the use of a computer/computer-related device as a tool to perform an abstract idea and/or does no more than generally apply the abstract idea to a particular field of use. Therefore, the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application as they do no more than implement the acts of following rules and instructions in order to perform a commercial/economic practice comprising the steps of collecting (“receiving a transaction string”), calculating (“cleansing and normalizing”), evaluating and sorting (“labeling”, “assigning categories”) data/information associated with a financial transaction (“commercial and/or business interaction”) in an organized manner which is a fundamental economic activity and which falls under the grouping of commercial or legal interaction in the form of marketing, sales activities or business relations.
When analyzed under step 2B, the claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception itself. Viewed as a whole, the combination of elements recited in the claims merely describe the abstract concept of following rules and instructions in order to perform a commercial/economic practice comprising the steps of collecting (“receiving a transaction string”), calculating (“cleansing and normalizing”), evaluating and sorting (“labeling”, “assigning categories”) data/information associated with a financial transaction (“commercial and/or business interaction”) in an organized manner using computer computer-related technology and/or devices that merely perform as designed to function. Therefore, the use of these additional elements does no more than employ a computer as a tool to automate and/or implement the abstract idea, which cannot provide significantly more than the abstract idea itself (MPEP 2106.05(I)(A)(f) & (h)). Hence, claim 21 is not patent eligible.
Dependent claims 22-23 add further details and contain limitations that narrow the s-cope of the invention. However, these details do not result in significantly more than the abstract idea itself. As explained in the December 16, 2014 Interim Eligibility Guidance from the USPTO (in reference to the BuySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc. decision), further narrowing the details of an abstract idea does not change the § 101 analysis since a more narrow abstract idea does not make it any less abstract.
Viewed individually and in combination, these additional elements do not provide meaningful limitations to transform the abstract idea such that the claims amount to significantly more than the abstraction itself.
Accordingly, the present pending claims are not patent eligible and are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Conclusion
The prior art(s) made of record and not relied upon is/are considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Raghavan et al. (US 2025/0104045 A1) discloses automatic categorization of transactions. In aspects of automatic multi-categorization of transactions, an electronic device detects a transaction event in a transaction application linked to a payment application in an application ecosystem. The electronic device determines that a request for a transfer of digital payment of the transaction event is authorized at the payment application. The electronic device records a total value of the digital payment and a transaction identifier to the transaction event. The electronic device receives, from the transaction application via the data communication network of the application ecosystem, line-item details of the transaction event. The electronic device assigns, from a plurality of categories, a category to each item purchased in the transaction event based on analysis of the line-item details.
Rodriguez et al. (US 2019/0205993 A1) discloses a transaction data categorizer system and method. Various embodiments are directed to the centralization processing of transaction and payment data to categorize transaction data across different accounts and systems. Embodiments disclose a transaction categorizer to tag an incoming transaction with metadata, perform a user rule match, perform a vendor match, and/or an estimated (probabilistic) score match on the incoming transaction. By applying these various matching processes to the incoming transaction, the transaction categorizer can determine which metadata tags to remove, apply, and/or modify to accurately categorize the
transaction. Accurate categorization of transactions can result to valuable data for users in personal resource management, as well as for vendors and service providers.
Claims 1, 3, 5, 8, 11, and 21-23 are rejected.
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Clifford Madamba whose telephone number is 571-270-1239. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Thu 7:30-5:00 EST Alternate Fridays.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ryan Donlon, can be reached at 571-272-3602. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/CLIFFORD B MADAMBA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3692