DETAILED ACTION
Acknowledgement
This non-final office action is in response to the request for continued examination (RCE) filed on 05/03/2026.
Status of Claims
Claims 1 and 12 have been amended.
Claims 1-4, 6-12, and 14-20 are pending.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 05/03/2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
The previous 35 U.S.C. 112(a) rejection of claims 1-4, 6-12, and 14-20 is withdrawn in light of claim 1 and 12 amendments.
Applicant's arguments filed on 05/03/2026 regarding the 35 U.S.C. 101 and 103 rejections of claims 1-4, 6-12, and 14-20 have been fully considered. The Applicant argues the following:
(1) As per the 101 rejection, the Applicant argues, in summary, that (i) the claims are not a mental process because it requires a computer system to maintain and compare multiple table of time-stamped event records (including late-arriving events), perform chronological arrangement per group, and update a normalized event table based on differences relative to a prior normalized table state. These operations are rooted in computer data storage and event-stream processing rather than human reasoning; (ii) claim 1 integrates that idea into a practical application by defining a specific way a computer system receives events, orders them over time, and updates stored event data when events arrived out of order; and (iii) the amended claims recite an ordered combination that amounts to significantly more than any alleged abstract idea because the claims specify a non-generic mechanism for handling a distributed-systems condition (e.g. late-arriving, out-of-order events) without requiring a full recomputation of group membership history on each run.
The Examiner respectfully disagrees with all arguments. The Examiner maintains the position that amended claim 1 is directed to the abstract grouping of Mental Processes because the claims describe steps that can be performed mentally and manually with pen and paper. The claims describe a process of receiving, organizing, processing, and updating data (e.g. records/data management), which is abstract. This abstract process is just being performed in a computer environment. Mental processes include concepts performed in the human mind such as observations, evaluations, judgments, and opinions. The performance in a computer environment does not negate the fact that the data processing steps are abstract. Mental Processes include claims directed to collecting information, analyzing it, and displaying certain results of the collection and analysis even if they are claimed as being performed on a computer. Therefore, the claims are directed toward an abstract idea.
The Examiner also maintains the position that the additional elements recited in the claims and listed in Steps 2A(2) and 2B do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application nor provide significantly more (i.e. an inventive concept). The argued improvement by the Applicant is in the organization, processing, and updating of the data that preserves correctness of event history, which is abstract, and does not require technology to perform. The change and/or improvement is in the data and not in the technology itself. These claims do not reflect a direct improvement in the functioning of a computer or an improvement in technology beyond its original capabilities and/or functions. Per MPEP 2106.05, the abstract elements cannot furnish the improvement and/or inventive concept. Therefore, the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection is maintained.
(2) As per the 103 rejections, the Applicant argues that Schlapfer does not teach or suggest the specific amended limitations of claim 1 and MacIntyre does not cure Schlapfer's deficiency.
The Examiner finds the Applicant’s argument persuasive. Therefore, the 103 rejections have been withdrawn.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 05/03/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 1-4, 6-12, and 14-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention, “Computer-Implemented Method for Real-Time Group Membership Tracking and Related System”, is directed to an abstract idea, specifically Mental Processes, without significantly more. The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional elements individually or in combination provide mere instructions to implement the abstract idea on a computer.
Step 1: Claims 1-4, 6-12, and 14-20 are directed to a statutory category, namely a process (claims 1-4 and 6-11) and a machine (claims 12 and 14-20).
Step 2A (1): Independent claims 1 and 12 are directed to an abstract idea of Mental Processes, based on the following claim limitations: “receiving, in any chronological order, the new records for membership change events, wherein the membership change events comprise additions and removals; wherein each new record includes (a) an event timestamp and (b) an ingestion time indicating when the new record is received; and determining that a late-arriving event is present when a newly received new record has an event timestamp that precedes an event timestamp of at least one historic record for a same group defined by profile ID and Segment ID; adding the new records to a…table according to a time-based partitioning scheme compatible with a database protocol for grouping new records by profile ID and Segment ID, wherein the time-based partitioning scheme enables quick and efficient record ingestion by updating only a relatively small number of files versus over the whole dataset for where the data should be written; preprocessing,…, the new records and historic records to create a normalized data table, wherein the preprocessing comprises: reading, from a historic table, all historic records for the memberships present in new records, wherein the historic records comprise multiple records per group including potentially invalid records; chronologically arranging the historic records and new records together per group; determining… the invalid records, in each group, as:(i) each removed change event that is not preceded by an added change event; and (ii) each added change event if preceded by an unclosed added change event; creating a new condensed table of normalized records by filtering out the invalid records from the…table, and wherein the normalized records have varying time stamps per group ranging from old time stamps to current time stamps; and comparing the new condensed table to a previous normalized data table for differences; wherein, in response to determining that the late-arriving event is present, the comparing identifies one or more differences that include (i) the newly received new record and (ii) at least one historic record that was previously excluded as invalid and becomes valid due to the newly received new record's position in the chronologically arranged sequence; updating the previous normalized data table to form the normalized data table based on the differences from the comparing step, wherein the normalized data table applies a time-based partitioning scheme serving to increase the speed to update since only the files corresponding to a time window are updated; updating the history table by writing all the new records to the history table, wherein the new records and historical records are partitioned in the history table based on clustering such that the entire history table may be efficiently searched by searching only the groups associated with the new records during the reading step; sending the updated normalized data table…; receiving a user selection…; and computing,…, at least one metric for the collection based on the user selection and the updated normalized data table;.” (claim 1); “…new membership change events are received and recorded to a raw event table according to a time-based partitioning scheme compatible with a database protocol for grouping new records by profile ID and Segment ID, wherein the time-based partitioning scheme enables quick and efficient record ingestion by updating only a relatively small number of files versus over the whole dataset for where the data should be written;… the new membership change events and existing membership change events are saved in a historical event table; read, from the historical event table, all historic records for the memberships present in new records; associate with each new membership change event record (a) an event timestamp and (b) an ingestion time indicating when the new record is received; determine that a late-arriving event is present when a newly received new membership change event record has an event timestamp that precedes an event timestamp of at least one historic record for a same group defined by profile ID and Segment ID; chronologically arrange the historic records and new records together per group; determine invalid records in each group as:(i) each removed change event that is not preceded by an added change event; and (ii) each added change event if preceded by an unclosed added change event; create a condensed event table by filtering out invalid membership change events from the historical event table; compare the condensed event table to a previous normalized event table for differences; wherein, in response to determining that the late-arriving event is present, the comparing identifies one or more differences that include (i) the newly received new membership change event record and (ii) at least one historic record that was previously excluded as invalid and becomes valid due to the newly received new record's position in the chronologically arranged sequence; and update the previous normalized event table based on the differences from the comparing step; …recording the updated normalized event table; … compute at least one metric based on the updated normalized event table …; (claim 12).
These claims describe a process of managing membership change events via receiving, preprocessing, and storing membership change event records in order to compute at least one metric. Dependent claims 2-4, 6-11 and 14-20 further describe the change events, preprocessing of records, and the computation of metrics. Receiving new records in chronological order, determining a late arriving event, adding records in a table format, preprocessing new and historic records to create a normalized data table, reading historic records, chronologically arranging all records, determining invalid records, creating a condensed table of normalized records by filtering out the invalid records, comparing data tables for differences, updating files and normalized/history data tables, and computing at least one metric (e.g. size, population, revenue, etc.) based on the normalized data table can practically be performed mentally with pen and paper. Therefore, these limitations, under the broadest reasonable interpretation, fall within the abstract groupings of Mental Processes which include concepts performed in the human mind such as observations, evaluations, judgments, and opinions. Mental Processes include claims directed to collecting information, analyzing it, and displaying certain results of the collection and analysis even if they are claimed as being performed on a computer. The courts have found claims requiring a generic computer or nominally reciting a generic computer may still recite a mental process even though the claim limitations are not performed entirely in the human mind. Therefore, claims 1-4, 6-12, and 14-20 are directed to an abstract idea and are not patent eligible.
Step 2A (2): The claims as a whole do not integrate this abstract idea into a practical application. In particular, claims 1, 4, 12, and 14-20 recite additional elements of “a computer-implemented method; improving the processing speed of an analytics processing database; landing table; a database; a server; a user input device (claims 1 and 12); email channel (claim 4); a system for improving the speed of a database management system; a new change event data repository; a historical change event data repository; a processor, programmed and operable to; a normalized change event data repository (claim 12); a computing device programmed and operable with the database management system (claim 15); wherein the computing device is a portable computing device selected from the group consisting of a tablet and mobile phone (claim 16); a segmentation engine programmed and operable (claims 17 and 18)”. These additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because the claims do not recite (a) an improvement to another technology or technical field and (b) an improvement to the functioning of the computer itself and (c) implementing the abstract idea with or by use of a particular machine, (d) effecting a particular transformation or reduction of an article, or (e) applying the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of an abstract idea to a particular technological environment. These additional elements evaluated individually and in combination are viewed as computing and display devices that are used to perform the abstract process described in Step 2A (prong2). Limitations that recite mere instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer or merely uses a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea are not indicative of integration into a practical application (see MPEP 2106.05(f)). The Examiner finds that improving the processing speed of an analytics processing database via preprocessing, filtering, condensing, and/or organizing data chronologically thereby reducing the amount of data to process is not a direct technological improvement of the database itself. The repository/database’s capabilities or functionality has not changed as a result of implementing this process. Per MPEP 2106.04(a), mere automation of manual processes or increasing the speed of a process where these purported improvements come solely from the capabilities of a general-purpose computer are not sufficient to show an improvement in computer-functionality. Therefore, claims 1-4, 6-12, and 14-20 as a whole do not include individual or a combination of additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application and thus are not patent eligible.
Step 2B: The claims as a whole do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. Claims 1, 4, 12, and 14-20 recite additional elements of “a computer-implemented method; improving the processing speed of an analytics processing database; landing table; a database; a server; a user input device (claims 1 and 12); email channel (claim 4); a system for improving the speed of a database management system; a new change event data repository; a historical change event data repository; a processor, programmed and operable to; a normalized change event data repository (claim 12); a computing device programmed and operable with the database management system (claim 15); wherein the computing device is a portable computing device selected from the group consisting of a tablet and mobile phone (claim 16); a segmentation engine programmed and operable (claims 17 and 18)”. These additional elements evaluated individually and in combination are viewed as mere instructions to apply or implement the abstract idea on a computer. Applying an abstract idea on a computer does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or provide an inventive concept (see MPEP 2106.05(f)). Therefore, claims 1-4, 6-12, and 14-20 as a whole do not include individual or a combination of additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception and thus are not patent eligible.
Conclusion
The closest prior art(s) to the claimed invention include Schlapfer et al. (US 2017/0048323 A1) “Automatic Updating of Case Team Assignments in Electronic Health Records System…”, MacIntyre et al. (US 2008/0208910 A1) “System, Method, and Computer Program Product for Processing and Visualization of Information”, Starosta et al. (US 12,216,527 B1) “System and Method for Data Ingestion, Anomaly and Root Cause Detection”, Saxena et al. (US 11,256,719 B1) “Ingestion Partition Auto-Scaling In a Time-Series Database”, and Landa et al. (US 2013/0198376 A1) “Hybrid Internet Traffic Measurement Using Site-Centric and Panel Data”,. However, none of the prior art(s) alone or in combination teach the claimed invention as detailed in independent claims 1 and 12.
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure include FOR: Zuo, Deng-peng (CN 116126620 A) “Database Log Processing Method, Database Changing Query Method And Related Device” and NPL: H. Roth, J. Schiefer, H. Obweger and S. Rozsnyai, "Event data warehousing for Complex Event Processing," 2010 Fourth International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS), Nice, France, 2010, pp. 203-212, doi: 10.1109/RCIS.2010.5507380.
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/A.M./Examiner, Art Unit 3624
/Jerry O'Connor/Supervisory Patent Examiner,Group Art Unit 3624
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