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 .
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 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.
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 5/4/2026 has been entered.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 remain pending, and are rejected.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments filed on 5/4/2026 with respect to the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 have been fully considered, but are not persuasive for at least the following rationale:
Applicant’s arguments filed on 5/4/2026 with respect to the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 for claims directed to a judicial exception are not persuasive.
Notably, on pages 12-13 of the Applicant’s Remarks, arguments are made that the claims as amended are patent eligible, citing Desjardins where the specification identified improvements to the technology itself. The Applicant argues the present specification also discloses technical improvements/solutions to technical problems associated with inaccurate data associated with digital content such as online reviews of goods/services, where biased data impacts the reliability of such reviews. On pages 14-16, further arguments are made regarding the technical solution, such as citing specification paragraph [0029] disclosing merchants obtaining association in a matrix the more often a cardholder transacts with the merchant, and paragraph [0082] disclosing reducing an effect of a cardholder bias toward a single merchant by incrementing a counter associated with a merchant pair, and a measure of associations between merchant pairs using a matrix. It is argued that the present claims recite a technical solution to accounting for biased data by implementing counters to track data activity and creating a data structure including a merchant frequency data matrix that assigns values to data within the matrix to normalize the data and reduce an effect of bias.
On pages 16-18, the Applicant argues that the claims do not recite any of the groupings of abstract ideas as the invention is configured to execute technical, computer-based operations, including the formation of a specific data structure. On pages 18-20, it is argued that the claims are drawn to a practical application that applies any alleged abstract idea in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the alleged abstract idea, such as by using a particularized data structure and technical operations that leverage increased data associations within a matrix to account for biased data, improving a digital data output by removing subjective bias. On page 21, the Applicant makes arguments that the claims recite a specific improvement in the field of electronic data analytics and processing, as applied to data of digital review ranking systems. On pages 22-23, arguments are made that the claims recite additional elements that amount to an inventive concept and significantly more than the judicial exception.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. Inaccurate data associated with reviews of goods/services, and the data being biased does not reflect any technical endeavor. The reliability of the reviews is a commercial problem within a sales and marketing activity. The content being digital, and the data being used online merely place the abstract concept within a network environment, but any technology of how electronic data is transmitted or received is not addressed in the claims nor the specification. The cited paragraphs of the Applicant’s specification further describe abstract ideas that merely take place within a network environment, and using mathematical operations, such as matrices, in order to generate values and make calculations within an algorithm. Associating merchants together based on the amount of transactions accountholders have with a merchant is not related to any technical field, and merely represent abstract ideas of item association based on sales data. Reducing effect of bias of an accountholder to a single merchant also merely represents sales activities. The incrementing of a counter and applying matrices are general mathematics that only provide calculations to generate scores for the abstract idea. This is unlike in Desjardins where the specification identified improvements as to how the machine learning model itself operates, including training a machine learning model to learn new tasks while protecting knowledge about previous tasks to overcome the problem of “catastrophic forgetting” encountered in continual learning systems. As discussed above, the present application does not disclose or address such technical features, and are directed to commercial activities.
In view of the above, the present claims are directed to the abstract groupings of certain methods of organizing human activity and mathematical concepts, and are an abstract idea. The formation of any specific data structure is also not recited in the claims. The claims merely recites various matrices and vectors associating aspects of the abstract idea, such as merchant frequency data, preference vectors, ranking vectors, etc. Such elements do not represent a specific data structure, and does not change how a computer stores and retrieves data as it did in the case of Enfish. The matrices and vectors only represent organizing data in a mathematical format to perform calculations. As such, the claims do not provide a practical application as the claims only address abstract concepts, such as subjective bias of product reviews, and merely implement it in a digital environment, and do not provide significantly more than the abstract idea.
In view of the above, the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 has been maintained 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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claims are directed to a judicial exception without significantly more.
Step 1:
Claims 1-7 are directed to a system, which is an apparatus. Claims 8-14 are directed to a method, which is a process. Claims 15-20 are directed to non-transitory computer-readable storage media, which is an article of manufacture. Therefore, claims 1-20 are directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention.
Step 2A (Prong 1):
Taking claim 1 as representative, claim 1 sets forth the following limitations reciting the abstract idea of recommending merchants to a user based on transaction information of a plurality of users:
receive data including electronic payment transaction information for a plurality of electronic payment transactions involving a plurality of accountholders including a candidate accountholder and a plurality of merchants;
instantiate one or more counters configured to monitor activity of at least a subset of the plurality of accountholders at each of the plurality of merchants, the subset of the plurality of accountholders including the candidate accountholder;
create a data structure including a merchant frequency data matrix, wherein the data structure stores the electronic payment transaction information associated with the subset of the plurality of accountholders;
apply the electronic payment transaction information to the merchant frequency data matrix such that the merchant frequency data matrix indicates the activity of the subset of the plurality of accountholders including a number of transactions associated with at least one pair of merchants of the plurality of merchants;
track, via respective counter of the one or more counters associated with the at least one pair of merchants, activity of the candidate accountholder at the at least one pair of merchants over a period of time to generate frequency data for the candidate accountholder;
apply the frequency data to the merchant frequency data matrix by incrementing one or more values in one or more blocks of the merchant frequency data matrix corresponding to the at least one pair of merchants, thereby increasing an amount of data associations for the at least one pair of merchants within the merchant frequency data matrix;
normalize a candidate accountholder preference vector of the candidate accountholder, based on the incremented one or more values to create a candidate accountholder merchant ranking vector, the candidate accountholder merchant ranking vector representing a scaled candidate accountholder preference vector that reflects the frequency data for the candidate accountholder;
determine a merchant score vector based on a difference between the candidate accountholder merchant ranking vector and a general merchant ranking vector, wherein the merchant score vector includes a merchant score associated with each merchant of the plurality of merchants, the merchant score representing bias-adjusted data for the candidate accountholder for each respective merchant of the plurality of merchants for the candidate accountholder, the bias-adjusted data derived by adjusting biases data of the other accountholders of the subset of the plurality of accountholders via at least the increased data associations in the merchant frequency data matrix;;
generate, for output, recommendation data corresponding to the merchant scores;
cause content based on the recommendation data to be displayed.
The recited limitations above set forth the process for recommending merchants to a user based on transaction information of a plurality of users. These limitations amount to certain methods of organizing human activity, including commercial or legal transactions (e.g. agreements in the form of contracts, advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors, etc.). The claims are directed to using transaction data to identify accountholders and merchants to score the merchants for ranking and recommendation (see specification [0002] disclosing the invention for recommending merchants to a transaction payment cardholder based on past transaction history and merchant preferences; [0005] disclosing the problem of websites that are not objective and friending numerous merchants is time-consuming), which is an advertising and marketing activity. The limitations also amount to mathematical concepts, including mathematical formulas and calculation. The claims are directed to forming vectors and calculating a difference between them, which are mathematical calculations.
Such concepts have been identified by the courts as abstract ideas (see: MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)).
Step 2A (Prong 2):
Examiner acknowledges that representative claim 1 recites additional elements, such as:
a memory device for storing data;
at least one processor;
a payment network;
electronic data;
an application executing on a user device;
digital content;
Taken individually and as a whole, representative claim 1 does not integrate the recited judicial exception into a practical application of the exception. The additional elements do no more than generally link the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use.
Furthermore, this is also because the claim fails to (i) reflect an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field, (ii) implement a judicial exception with a particular machine, (iii) effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing, or (iv) apply the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment.
While the claims recite a memory device and at least one processor, these elements are recited with a very high level of generality, and are only recited in passing as executing the steps of the abstract idea. Specification paragraph [0067] discloses the processor as including one or more processing units with no further description. Specification paragraph [0071] discloses the memory as including, but not limited to, RAM, DRAM, SRAM, ROM, EPROM, etc. Specification paragraphs [0109-0110] provide a similar definition for processors and memory. As such, it is evident that the processor and memory are any generic computer components that only serve to provide a general link to a computing environment. The payment network is defined in specification paragraphs [0041] and [0043], which describe the payment network as MasterCard interchange network to communicated financial transaction data. How the payment network functions is not disclosed in the specification. It is evident that the payment network is merely applied to the claims to communicate transaction data between entities, but are not directed to any technical functionality or construction of a network. The application and user device are also not disclosed with any particularity. The application is disclosed as being stored on a cardholder computing device, and is any software for implementing the abstract idea in a computing environment. The user device can be any device, such as a smartphone, installed with the application (specification: [0030]). It is evident that the additional elements are generic components that are only applied to the abstract idea to implement that idea in a computing network, but the claims are directed to the abstract idea of recommending merchants for a user.
In view of the above, under Step 2A (Prong 2), representative claim 1 does not integrate the recited exception into a practical application (see: MPEP 2106.04(d)).
Step 2B:
Returning to representative claim 1, taken individually or as a whole, the additional elements of claim 1 do not provide an inventive concept (i.e. whether the additional elements amount to significantly more than the exception itself). As noted above, the additional elements recited in claim 1 are recited in a generic manner with a high level of generality and only serve to implement the abstract idea on a generic computing device. The claims result only in an improved abstract idea itself and do not reflect improvements to the functioning of a computer or another technology or technical field. As discussed above with respect to the integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements used to perform the claimed process ultimately amount to no more than the mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer and/or no more than a general link to a technological environment.
Even when considered as an ordered combination, the additional elements of claim 1 do not add anything further than when they are considered individually.
In view of the above, claim 1 does not provide an inventive concept under step 2B, and is ineligible for patenting.
Regarding Claim 8 (method): Claim 8 recites at least substantially similar concepts and elements as recited in claim 1 such that similar analysis of the claims would be readily apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art. As such, claims 8 is rejected under at least similar rationale as provided above regarding claim 1.
Regarding Claim 15 (non-transitory computer-readable storage media): Claim 15 recites at least substantially similar concepts and elements as recited in claim 1 such that similar analysis of the claims would be readily apparent to one of ordinary skill in the art. As such, claims 15 is rejected under at least similar rationale as provided above regarding claim 1.
Dependent claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 recite further complexity to the judicial exception (abstract idea) of claim 1, such as by further defining the algorithm of recommending merchants to a user based on transaction information of a plurality of users, and do not recite any further additional elements. Thus, each of claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 are held to recite a judicial exception under Step 2A (Prong 1) for at least similar reasons as discussed above.
Under prong 2 of step 2A, the additional elements of dependent claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 also do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, considered both individually or as a whole. More specifically, dependent claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 rely on at least similar elements as recited in claim 1. Further additional elements are also acknowledged; however, the additional elements of claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 are recited only at a high level of generality (i.e. as generic computing hardware) such that they amount to nothing more than the mere instructions to implement or apply the abstract idea on generic computing hardware (or, merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea). Further, the additional elements do no more than generally link the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use (such as the Internet or computing networks).
Secondly, this is also because the claims fails to (i) reflect an improvement in the functioning of a computer, or an improvement to other technology or technical field, (ii) implement the judicial exception with, or use the judicial exception in conjunction with, a particular machine or manufacture that is integral to the claim, (iii) effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing, or (iv) applies or uses the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment.
Taken individually and as a whole, dependent claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 do not integrate the recited judicial exception into a practical application of the exception under step 2A (prong 2).
Lastly, under step 2B, claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 also fail to result in “significantly more” than the abstract idea under step 2B. The dependent claims recite additional functions that describe the abstract idea and use the computing device to implement the abstract idea, while failing to provide an improvement to the functioning of a computer, another technology, or technical field. The dependent claims fail to confer eligibility under step 2B because the claims merely apply the exception on generic computing hardware and generally link the exception to a technological environment.
Even when viewed as an ordered combination (as a whole), the additional elements of the dependent claims do not add anything further than when they are considered individually.
Taken individually or as an ordered combination, the dependent claims simply convey the abstract idea itself applied on a generic computer and are held to be ineligible under Steps 2B for at least similar rationale as discussed above regarding claim 1. Thus, dependent claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 do not add “significantly more” to the abstract idea.
Subject Matter Free of the Prior Art
The claims are free of the prior art for the reasons as indicated in the previous Office Action mailed on 2/4/2026.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TIMOTHY J KANG whose telephone number is (571)272-8069. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday: 7:30 - 5:00.
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/T.J.K./Examiner, Art Unit 3689
/VICTORIA E. FRUNZI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3689 7/10/2026
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