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 Claims
This action is in response to filings received 11/26/2025.
Claims 1, 39, 13, 15 & 20 have been amended and claim 7 canceled.
Claims 1, 13 & 20 being independent and claims 2-6, 8-12 and 14-19 being dependent.
Claims 1-6 & 8-20 are currently pending and have been examined.
Response to Arguments
The Examiner has considered Applicant’s arguments filed 11/26/2025, but disagrees that the claims are directed to patent-eligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. When the claims are analyzed as a whole, their focus remains on facilitating and coordinating electronic payment transactions between parties, including discovering a counterparty, authenticating participants, and initiating a transfer, which constitutes a fundamental economic practice and commercial interaction. The recited steps of requesting, transmitting, verifying, and using identifiers or tokens to enable a payment are methods of organizing and performing a financial transaction, which is a recognized abstract idea. Applicant’s reliance on Ex Parte Desjardins and CosmoKey Solutions v. Duo Security is not persuasive because the present claims do not recite a specific improvement to computer or network technology itself, but instead use known technological components as tools to carry out a payment workflow.
Applicant’s argument that the claims address challenges associated with transient or one-off transactions, such as farmers markets or bill splitting, is likewise unpersuasive. While these scenarios may describe a business context in which the claims are useful, they do not transform the nature of the claims into a technological improvement. Reducing inconvenience, improving user experience, or eliminating the need to share contact information are business or usability objectives, not improvements to the functioning of a computer, mobile device, or network. The claims do not modify how short-range wireless communication operates, how authentication is performed at a technical level, or how security mechanisms function internally. Instead, they recite using existing technologies to streamline a transaction process.
Applicant asserts that the transaction coordination system, proxy identifiers, aliases, and discovery packets provide a technological solution. However, these elements are recited at a high level of generality and functionally describe the exchange and use of identifiers to represent users during a transaction. The claims do not disclose a new protocol, encoding technique, cryptographic mechanism, or networking method that improves short-range wireless communications or transaction security. Rather, the claimed systems perform their ordinary functions of transmitting, receiving, and verifying data, which amounts to generic computer implementation of an abstract idea.
The use of a short-range wireless network, such as NFC or Bluetooth, to broadcast a discovery packet does not render the claims non-abstract. Limiting communication to a short physical range or making the broadcast time-limited is a routine and conventional use of short-range wireless technology and does not constitute a technical improvement to that technology. The distinction between a short-range wireless network and a separate communication network likewise reflects a common and well-understood architectural choice in mobile systems, not an unconventional or inventive arrangement. These limitations merely specify the environment in which the abstract idea is carried out.
Applicant’s reliance on CosmoKey to argue that the claims improve security is not persuasive. In CosmoKey, the claims recited a specific authentication technique that departed from prior approaches. Here, the claims broadly recite the use of tokens, verification, and aliases without specifying any technical mechanism that improves authentication or security performance at the system level. Any alleged security benefit arises from the abstract idea of limiting who can see transaction information and masking user identity, rather than from a specific improvement to computer or network technology.
Accordingly, the claims are directed to an abstract idea under Step 2A and do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. Under Step 2B, the claims do not recite significantly more than the abstract idea, as the additional elements consist of generic mobile devices, servers, networks, and short-range wireless communication performing their conventional functions. Considered individually and as an ordered combination, these elements amount to no more than applying the abstract idea using known technology. Therefore, the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 101 is maintained.
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 1-6 & 8-20 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without practical application or significantly more. The claims fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because independent claim 1 is directed to a process, claim 13 is directed to a machine and claim 20 is directed to a non-transitory computer-readable medium or media; Step 1-yes.
Under Step 2A, Prong 1, representative claim 1 recites a series of steps for receiving verification of a signed transaction; i.e. business relation, and thus grouped as a certain method of organizing human activity. As such, the claim as a whole and the limitations in combination recite an abstract idea(s). Specifically, the limitations of representative claim 1, stripped of all additional elements, recite the abstract idea as follows:
receiving an invocation of a short-range data process;
transmitting a request for a transaction coordinator authentication token;
receiving a signed transaction coordinator authentication token including a user transaction identifier associated with a user account;
transmitting the signed transaction coordinator authentication token;
receiving verification of the signed transaction coordinator token, the received verification comprising initialization data including a proxy user discovery identifier associated with the user transaction identifier and an alias identifier for a downstream short-range transfer among proximally located devices; and
communicating a discovery packet, the discovery packet including the proxy user discovery identifier and a data flag indicating that the discovery packet includes discovery data for the downstream short-range transfer.
The claimed limitations, identified above, recite a system that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of a commercial or legal interaction and managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people, but for the recitation of generic computer components. There is nothing in the claim element which takes the steps out of the methods of organizing human activity abstract idea groupings. Thus, claim 1 recites an abstract idea.
Under step 2A, Prong 2, this judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claim only recites using generic, commercially available, off-the-shelf computing devices, i.e. processors suitable programmed communicating of a generic network, to perform the steps of receiving, transmitting and communicating data. The computer components are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e. as generic processors with memory suitably programmed communication information over a generic network, see at least paragraphs [0071]-[0074], [0241], [0247]-[0254] & [0259]-[0278] of the specifications) such that it amounts no more than adding the words “apply it” (the abstract idea or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or mere instructions to implement an abstract idea across generic computing technology, or merely uses computer as a tool to perform the abstract idea, see MPEP 2106.05(f) and generally linking the use of the judicial exception to particular technological environment or field of use, see MPEP 2106.05(h). Accordingly, the additional elements claimed do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Claims 1, 13 & 20 are directed to an abstract idea.
Under step 2B, the claim does not include additional elements, i.e. “account server”, “transaction coordinator system”, and “short-range network” that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements of using generic computer processors with memory suitably programmed communicating over a generic network to perform the limitation steps amounts no more than adding the words “apply it” (or an equivalent) with the judicial exception, or mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform the abstract idea, see MPEP 2106.05(f) and generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use, see MPEP 2106.05(h). Mere instructions to apply an exception using generic computer components interacting in a conventional manner cannot provide an inventive concept. Claims 1, 13 & 20 are not patent eligible.
Applicant has leveraged generic computing elements to perform the abstract idea of without significantly more. The dependent claims 2-6, 8-12 and 14-19 when analyzed as a whole an in an ordered combination are held to be patent ineligible under 35 USC 101 because the additional recited limitations fail to establish that the claims are not directed to an abstract idea. The additional recited limitations in the dependent claims only refine the abstract idea. Further refinement of an abstract idea does not convert an abstract idea into something concrete. The at least other device of claims 3 & 15 is also generically recited as are the user interface and transaction layer of claims 6, 9, 17 & 18.
The claims merely amount to the application or instructions to apply the abstract idea (i.e. series of steps for receiving verification of a signed transaction) on one or more computers, and are considered to amount to nothing more than requiring a generic computer system (e.g. processors suitably programmed and communicating over a network) to merely carry out the abstract idea itself. As such, the claims, when considered as a whole, are nothing more than the instruction to implement the abstract idea (i.e. series of steps for receiving verification of a signed transaction) in a particular, albeit well-understood, routine and conventional technological environment.
Accordingly, the Examiner concludes that there are no meaningful limitations in the claims that transform
the judicial exception into a patent eligible application such that the claims amount to significantly more than the
judicial exception itself or integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
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.
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/T.P.K./Examiner, Art Unit 3696
/MATTHEW S GART/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3696