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 .
Status of Claim
This action is in response to communications filed on 15 of September 2025.
The following is a first action on the merits. In response to Examiner's restriction requirement, on 09/04/2025. Applicant elected group II, claims 7-11 and withdrew from consideration groups I and III, claims 1-6 and 12-15. Claims 1-6 and 12-15 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Applicant's election without traverse of the non-elected Claims in the reply filed on 09/04/2025 is acknowledged. Of the pending claims, claims 7-11 are examined and rejected below.
Allowable Subject Matter
None of the cited art documented by the Examiner, taken individually or in combination, discloses or suggests the features in claim 7 nor could a person skilled in the art easily conceive of such features even in the light of common technical knowledge at the time of filing. In particular, “receiving, at a computing device having one or more processors, usage data from each personal mobility cart of a first fleet of personal mobility carts at a first store and each personal mobility cart of a second fleet of personal mobility carts at a second store”. Therefore pending claims 7-11 are therefore distinguished from the prior arts cited by the Examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
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 therefore, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 7-11 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.
When considering subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. 101, it must be determined whether the claim is directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention, i.e., process, machines, article of manufacture, or composition of matter. If the claim does fall within one of the statutory categories, it must then be determined whether the claim is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., law of nature, natural phenomenon, and abstract idea), and if so, it must additionally be determined whether the claim is a patent-eligible application of the exception. If an abstract idea is present in the claim, any element or combination of elements in the claim must be sufficient to ensure that the claim amounts to significantly more than the abstract idea. Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, et al., 573 U.S. ____ (2014). See MPEP 2106.03(II).
The claims are then analyzed to determine if the claims are directed to a judicial exception. MPEP §2106.04(a). In determining, whether the claims are directed to a judicial exception, the claims are analyzed to evaluate whether the claims recite a judicial exception (Prong One of Step 2A), and whether the claims recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application (Prong Two of Step 2A). See 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance (“PEG” 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. 50-57 (Jan. 7, 2019)).
With respect to 2A Prong 1, claim 7 recites “receiving, at a computing device having one or more processors, usage data from each personal mobility cart of a first fleet of personal mobility carts at a first store and each personal mobility cart of a second fleet of personal mobility carts at a second store; categorizing, at the computing device, first usage data representative of the first fleet and second usage data representative of the second fleet; comparing, at the computing device, the first usage data and the second usage data; determining, at the computing device, based on the comparing whether one of the first and second fleet is overutilized as compared to the other of the first and second fleet; recommending, at the computing device, a reallocation of at least one personal mobility cart from the other of the first and second fleet to the overutilized fleet”, and therefore recites an abstract idea.
More specifically, claim 7 is directed to “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” in particular “commercial or legal interactions (including agreements in the form of contracts; legal obligations; advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations)” and “Mental Processes” in particular “concepts performed in the human mind (including an observation, evaluation, judgment, opinion)” as discussed in MPEP §2106.04(a)(2), and in the 2019-01-08 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Dependent claims 8-11 further recite abstract idea(s) contained within the independent claims, and do not contribute to significant more or enable practical application. Thus, the dependent claims are rejected under 101 based on the same rationale as the independent claims.
Under Prong Two of Step 2A of the Alice/Mayo test, the examiner acknowledges that Claim 7 recites additional elements yet the additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. In order for the judicial exception to be “integrated into a practical application”, an additional element or a combination of additional elements in the claim “will apply, rely on, or use the judicial exception in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception, such that the claim is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the judicial exception.” PEG, 84 Fed. Reg. 54 (Jan. 7, 2019). The courts have identified examples in which a judicial exception has not been integrated into a practical application when “an additional element does no more than generally link the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use.” PEG, 84 Fed. Reg. 55 (Jan. 7, 2019); MPEP § 2106.05(h). The claims are directed to an abstract idea.
In particular, claim 7 recites additional elements boldened and underlined above. These are generic computer components recited as performing generic computer functions that are mere instructions to apply an exception, because it does no more than merely invoke computers or machinery as a tool to perform an existing process. Further, the remaining additional element directed at receiving data (italicized above) reflects insignificant extra solution activities to the judicial exception. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
With respect to step 2B, claim 7 does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements when considered both individually and as an ordered combination do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. The claim recites the additional elements described above. These are generic computer components recited as performing generic computer functions that are mere instructions to apply an exception, because it does no more than merely invoke computers or machinery as a tool to perform an existing process, as evidenced by at least ¶29-30 the terms “computer” and “controller” as generally used herein refer to any data processor and can include servers, distributed computing systems, cloud computing, Internet appliances, and handheld devices, including palm-top computers, wearable computers, cellular or mobile phones, multi-processor systems, processor-based or programmable consumer electronics, network computers, mini computers, and the like. Information handled by these computer systems and computers and controllers can be presented at any suitable display medium, including a liquid crystal display (LCD). Instructions for executing electronic, or computer, or controller-executable tasks can be stored in or on any suitable computer-readable medium, including hardware, firmware, or a combination of hardware and firmware. Instructions can be contained in any suitable memory device, including, for example, a flash drive, USB device, and/or other suitable mediums. With initial reference to FIGS. 1 – 4, a mobility cart fleet management platform according to various examples of the present disclosure is shown and generally identified at reference numeral 10. The mobility cart fleet management platform 10 generally includes a computing system 20 having various computing devices 60 that are configured to communicate with a fleet of mobility carts, collectively identified at reference numeral 30, and individually identified at reference numerals 30A, 30B, 30C and 30D. It is appreciated that while the fleet 30 is represented as four mobility carts 30A, 30B, 30C and 30D, the fleet 30 can generally comprise any number of mobility carts”.
Claims 8-11 do not disclose additional elements, further narrowing the abstract ideas of the independent claims and thus not practically integrated under prong 2A as part of a practical application or under 2B not significantly more for the same reasons and rationale as above.
After considering all claim elements, both individually and in combination, Examiner has determined that the claims are directed to the above abstract ideas and do not amount to significantly more. See Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, No. 13–298.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
R. Gupte, S. Rege, S. Hawa, Y. S. Rao and R. Sawant, "Automated Shopping Cart Using RFID with a Collaborative Clustering Driven Recommendation System," 2020 Second International Conference on Inventive Research in Computing Applications (ICIRCA), Coimbatore, India, 2020, pp. 400-404, doi: 10.1109/ICIRCA48905.2020.9183100.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MATHEUS R STIVALETTI whose telephone number is (571)272-5758. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8:30-5:30.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rutao Wu can be reached on (571)272-6045. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-1822.
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/MATHEUS RIBEIRO STIVALETTI/Examiner, Art Unit 3623 9/25/2025