DETAILED ACTION
This is in reference to communication received 24 September 2025. Claims 1 – 20 are pending for examination. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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 claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Independent claim 8, representative of claims 1 and 15, in part is directed toward a statutory category of invention, the claim appears to be directed toward a judicial exception namely an abstract idea. Claim 8 recites invention directed to a business-entity which engages in selling products in their brick-and-mortar stores, brick-and-mortar club-stores and online over the internet. Said business-entity stores transaction data and access data on a storage medium. Stored data for a range of time is obtained. To generate a usable and reliable report, duplicate records and deemed fraudulent activities are filtered out obtained data. Filtered data is associated with member-ID (e.g., identifying information of customers of the business-entity who are members at their brick-and-mortar club-stores or subscribing-members) and attributing each of their purchase as direct-attribution, complementary-attribution or brand-attribution, subsequent to which a report is generated and presented to a user.
These limitations describe marketing/sales/advertising activities. Obtaining historical data, deduplicating the obtained data, filtering out the fraudulent activities (e.g., bot generated activities), mapping the purchase data with the member-ID and attributing their purchases to direct-attribution, complementary-attribution or brand-attribution categories, generating a attribution report and presenting the generated report to user. Causing presentation of the attribution report to a user would be the marketing team (or person) providing, such as a visual presentation, the valuation information to the marketing team’s management.
In addition, the additional elements of using a machine-learning model to identify online activities associated with non-human entities (e.g. bots) is recited at a high level of generality. These additional elements fail to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
Represented claims 1 and 15, which do recite statutory categories (machine, product of manufacture, for example), the same analysis as above applies to these claims since the method steps are the same. However, the judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. These claims add the generic computer components (additional elements) of a system comprising one or more hardware processors and a memory (claim 1), and a non-transitory machine-readable medium comprising instructions that when executed by a processor of a machine cause the machine to perform the method addressed above (claim 15).
The processor, memory, and non-transitory machine-readable medium are recited at a high-level of generality such that they amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claims are directed to an abstract idea.
The claims do not include additional elements 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 element of the processor, memory, and non-transitory machine-readable medium amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. The claims are not patent eligible.
When taken as an ordered combination, nothing is added that is not already present when the elements are taken individually. When viewed as a whole, the marketing activities amount to instructions applied using generic computer components.
As for dependent claims 2 – 7, 9 – 14 and 16 – 20 dependent on the aforementioned independent claims, and include all the limitations contained therein. These claims do not recite any additional technical elements, and simply disclose additional limitations that further limit the abstract idea with details regarding descriptions of various data, utilization of the ML model. Thus, the dependent claims merely provide additional non-structural (and predominantly non-functional) details that fail to meaningfully limit the claims or the abstract idea(s).
Therefore, claims 1 – 20 are not drawn to eligible subject matter, as they are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Loves-Data YouTube video “What is Attribution in Google Analytics? Learn about Attribution models in Google Analytics” which teaches the users can get attribution reports of their marketing campaigns by obtaining data collected by Google.
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Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Naresh Vig whose telephone number is (571)272-6810. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 06:30a - 04:00p.
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/NARESH VIG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3622
March 4, 2026