DETAILED ACTION
Status of the Claims
1. This action is in response to Applicant’s Request for Reconsideration dated June 11, 2026.
2. Claims 1-19 and 21 are pending and have been examined.
3. Claims 1, 4, 10, 12 and 19 have been amended.
4. Claim 20 has been canceled.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
5. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Terminal Disclaimer
6. Applicant filed a Terminal Disclaimer on June 11, 2026 disclaiming the terminal portion of the statutory term of any patent granted on the instant application which would extend beyond the expiration date of the full statutory term of US Patent 12/260,381. This terminal disclaimer has been approved.
This has resolved part of the pending double patenting rejection, and this part of the rejection has been accordingly withdrawn.
Double Patenting
7. Claims 1-19 and 21 of this application is patentably indistinct from claims 1-3, 8-11, 15-18 and 21 of copending Application No. 18/503,799. Pursuant to 37 CFR 1.78(f), when two or more applications filed by the same applicant or assignee contain patentably indistinct claims, elimination of such claims from all but one application may be required in the absence of good and sufficient reason for their retention during pendency in more than one application. Applicant is required to either cancel the patentably indistinct claims from all but one application or maintain a clear line of demarcation between the applications. See MPEP § 822.
The nonstatutory double patenting rejection is based on a judicially created doctrine grounded in public policy (a policy reflected in the statute) so as to prevent the unjustified or improper timewise extension of the “right to exclude” granted by a patent and to prevent possible harassment by multiple assignees. A nonstatutory double patenting rejection is appropriate where the conflicting claims are not identical, but at least one examined application claim is not patentably distinct from the reference claim(s) because the examined application claim is either anticipated by, or would have been obvious over, the reference claim(s). See, e.g., In re Berg, 140 F.3d 1428, 46 USPQ2d 1226 (Fed. Cir. 1998); In re Goodman, 11 F.3d 1046, 29 USPQ2d 2010 (Fed. Cir. 1993); In re Longi, 759 F.2d 887, 225 USPQ 645 (Fed. Cir. 1985); In re Van Ornum, 686 F.2d 937, 214 USPQ 761 (CCPA 1982); In re Vogel, 422 F.2d 438, 164 USPQ 619 (CCPA 1970); In re Thorington, 418 F.2d 528, 163 USPQ 644 (CCPA 1969).
A timely filed terminal disclaimer in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(c) or 1.321(d) may be used to overcome an actual or provisional rejection based on nonstatutory double patenting provided the reference application or patent either is shown to be commonly owned with the examined application, or claims an invention made as a result of activities undertaken within the scope of a joint research agreement. See MPEP § 717.02 for applications subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA as explained in MPEP § 2159. See MPEP § 2146 et seq. for applications not subject to examination under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . A terminal disclaimer must be signed in compliance with 37 CFR 1.321(b).
The filing of a terminal disclaimer by itself is not a complete reply to a nonstatutory double patenting (NSDP) rejection. A complete reply requires that the terminal disclaimer be accompanied by a reply requesting reconsideration of the prior Office action. Even where the NSDP rejection is provisional the reply must be complete. See MPEP § 804, subsection I.B.1. For a reply to a non-final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.111(a). For a reply to final Office action, see 37 CFR 1.113(c). A request for reconsideration while not provided for in 37 CFR 1.113(c) may be filed after final for consideration. See MPEP §§ 706.07(e) and 714.13.
The USPTO Internet website contains terminal disclaimer forms which may be used. Please visit www.uspto.gov/patent/patents-forms. The actual filing date of the application in which the form is filed determines what form (e.g., PTO/SB/25, PTO/SB/26, PTO/AIA /25, or PTO/AIA /26) should be used. A web-based eTerminal Disclaimer may be filled out completely online using web-screens. An eTerminal Disclaimer that meets all requirements is auto-processed and approved immediately upon submission. For more information about eTerminal Disclaimers, refer to www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/applying-online/eterminal-disclaimer.
Claims 1-19 and 21 are provisionally rejected on the ground of nonstatutory double patenting as being unpatentable over claim 1-3, 8-11, 15-18 and 21 of copending Application No. 18/503,799. Although the claims at issue are not identical, they are not patentably distinct from each other because the claims are drawn to processes for activating a camera to capture a live stream of financial instrument or documents that are formed into a plurality of byte arrays that comprises a financial instrument or document.
This is a provisional nonstatutory double patenting rejection because the patentably indistinct claims have not in fact been patented.
Claim Interpretation – Broadest Reasonable Interpretation
8. In determining patentability of an invention over the prior art, all claim limitations have been considered and interpreted using the “broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification during the examination of a patent application since the applicant may then amend his claims.” See In re Prater and Wei, 162 USPQ 541, 550 (CCPA 1969); MPEP § 2111. Applicant always has the opportunity to amend the claims during prosecution, and broad interpretation by the examiner reduces the possibility that the claim, once issued, will be interpreted more broadly than is justified. See In re Prater, 162 USPQ 541, 550-51 (CCPA 1969); MPEP § 2111. Although the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, limitations from the specification are not read into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993). See also MPEP 2173.05(q) All claim limitations have been considered. Additionally, all words in the claims have been considered in judging the patentability of the claims against the prior art. See MPEP 2143.03.
Claim limitations that contain statement(s) such as “if, may, might, can, could”, are treated as containing optional language. As matter of linguistic precision, optional claim elements do not narrow claim limitations, since they can always be omitted.
Claim limitations that contain statement(s) such as “wherein, whereby”, that fail to further define the steps or acts to be performed in method claims or the discrete physical structure required of system claims.
Similarly, a method step exercised or triggered upon the satisfaction of a condition, where there remains the possibility that the condition was not satisfied under the broadest reasonable interpretation, is an optional claim limitation. see MPEP § 2103(I)(C); In re Johnson, 77 USPQ2d 1788 (Fed Cir 2006). As the Applicant does not address what happens should the optional claim limitations fail, Examiner assumes that nothing happens (i.e. the method stops). An alternate interpretation is that merely the claim limitations based upon the condition are not triggered or performed.
The subject matter of a properly construed claim is defined by the terms that limit its scope. It is this subject matter that must be examined.
As a general matter, grammar and the plain meaning of terms as understood by one having ordinary skill in the art used in a claim will dictate whether, and to what extent, the language limits the claim scope. see MPEP §2013(I)(C). Language that suggests or makes a feature or step optional but does not require that feature or step does not limit the scope of a claim under the broadest reasonable claim interpretation. see MPEP §2013(I)(C).
Claim scope is not limited by claim language that suggests or makes optional but does not require steps to be performed, or by claim language that does not limit a claim to a particular structure. In addition, when a claim requires selection of an element from a list of alternatives, the prior art teaches the element if one of the alternatives is taught by the prior art. See, e.g., Fresenius USA, Inc. v. Baxter Int’l, Inc., 582 F.3d 1288, 1298 (Fed. Cir. 2009). See MPEP 2111.04, 2143.03.
Language in a method or system claim that states only the intended use or intended result, but does not result in a manipulative difference in the steps of the method claim nor a structural difference between the system claim and the prior art, fails to distinguish the claims from the prior art. In other words, if the prior art structure is capable of performing the intended use, then it meets the claim.
The following types of claim language may raise a question as to its limiting effect (this list is not exhaustive):
Statements of intended use or field of use, including statements of purpose or intended use in the preamble (MPEP 2111.02);
Clauses such as “adapted to”, “adapted for”, “wherein”, and “whereby” (MPEP 2111.04)
Contingent limitations (MPEP 2111.04)
Printed matter (MPEP 2111.05) and
Functional language associated with a claim term (MPEP 2181)
Examiner notes that during examination, “claims … are to be given their broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification, and … claim language should be read in light of the specification as it would be interpreted by one of ordinary skill in the art.” See In re Bond, 15 USPQ 1566, 1568 (Fed. Cir. 1990), citing In re Sneed, 218 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1983). However, "in examining the specification for proper context, [the examiner] will not at any time import limitations from the specification into the claims". See CollegeNet, Inc. v. ApplyYourself, Inc., 75 USPQ2d 1733, 1738 (Fed. Cir. 2005). Construing claims broadly during prosecution is not unfair to the applicant, because the applicant has the opportunity to amend the claims to obtain more precise claim coverage. See In re Yamamoto, 222 USPQ 934, 936 (Fed. Cir. 1984), citing In re Prater, 162 USPQ 541, 550 (CCPA 1969).
As such, while all claim limitations have been considered and all words in the claims have been considered in judging the patentability of the claimed invention, the following italicized language is interpreted as not further limiting the scope of the claimed invention.
As in Claim 1:
activating, by a banking application operating on the client device, as part of a remote financial document deposit process, a camera on the client device to generate a live stream of image data of a field of view of the camera, wherein the live stream includes pixel data representing a physical financial document;
accumulating, at the client device, the OCR extracted data fields until a first subset of the OCR extracted data fields has been accumulated, wherein the first subset includes a first portion of data fields from the physical financial document usable in an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) transaction;
As in Claim 10:
activate, by a banking application operating on a client device, as part of a remote financial document deposit process, a camera on the client device to generate a live stream of image data of a field of view of the camera, wherein the live stream includes pixel data representing a physical financial document;
accumulate the OCR extracted data fields until a first subset of the OCR extracted data fields has been accumulated, wherein the first subset includes a first portion of data fields from the physical financial document usable in an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) transaction;
As in Claim 19:
activating, by the banking application, a camera on the client device to generate a live stream of image data of a field of view of the camera, wherein the live stream includes pixel data representing a physical financial document;
accumulating the OCR extracted data fields until a first subset of the OCR extracted data fields has been accumulated, wherein the first subset includes a first portion of data fields from the physical financial document usable in an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) transaction;
Relevant Prior Art of Record Not Currently Applied
Voutour et al. (US 10,380,683) (“Voutour”) – discloses apparatuses, methods and systems for a video remote deposit capture platform provides a platform for remote deposit by obtaining images of a check from streaming video captured by video camera, wherein the RDC-Video transforms captured check images and/or entered check deposit information inputs via RDC-Video components into deposit confirmation outputs. (See Voutour Abstract)
Medina et al. (US Patent 11,232,517) – discloses apparatuses, methods, and systems for remote deposit capture with enhanced image detection. (See Medina Abstract)
Franklin et al. (US PG Pub. 2025/0272666) (“Franklin”) – discloses a computer implemented method, system and non-transitory computer-readable device for a remote deposit environment activating, on a client device, a financial application, wherein the financial application is configured to instantiate a customer interface (UI) on the client device. (See Franklin Abstract) Upon receiving a customer request, based on interactions with the UI, the method implements an electronic deposit of a financial instrument by generating a live stream of image data of a field of view of at least one camera, wherein the live stream of image data includes imagery of at least a portion of the financial instrument, determining, based on the live stream of image data and a machine learning model (ML), and an impermissibility score of a financial instrument. (See Franklin Abstract)
Franklin et al. (US PG Pub. 2025/0156835) (“Franklin”) – discloses a system, apparatus, device, method and/or computer program product embodiments for providing a mid-stream deposit availability schedule to a customer electronically depositing a check. (See Franklin Abstract) The deposit availability schedule is generated by activating a mobile financial application, receiving a customer request to deposit a financial instrument, and based on the customer request, activating a camera on the client mobile device to access a field of view of at least one camera and capture one or more images of a financial instrument, store, in a computer memory on the client mobile device, the one or more images. (See Franklin Abstract) An optical character recognition, resident on the client mobile device, extracts in real-time, one or more data fields from one or more portions of the financial instrument, communicates the one or more data fields to remote deposit server and receives a deposit availability schedule, before acceptance of the remote deposit. (See Franklin Abstract)
Franklin et al. (US PG. Pub. 2025/0117762) (“Franklin”) – discloses a computer implemented method, system and non-transitory computer-readable device for a remote deposit environment. (See Franklin Abstract) Upon receiving a user request, based on interactions with the UI, the method implements an electronic deposit of a financial instrument by activating a camera on the client device to generate a live stream of image data of a field of view of at least a portion of the financial instrument. (See Franklin Abstract) The method continues by extracting in real-time, based on the formation of byte array objects from the live stream of image data, data fields from a ranked sequence of imager to be processed by an optical character recognition program resident on the client device. (See Franklin Abstract)
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed June 11, 2026 have been fully considered as further described below.
As to the 112(a) Rejections:
Based on the arguments and amendments made, this rejection is resolved. (See Applicant Arguments dated 06/11/2026, pages 8-12)
As to the Double Patenting Rejections:
As noted above, Applicant filed a terminal disclaimer related to US Patent 12,260,381 which resolved part of the pending double patenting rejections. (Id. at page 12) As noted above, this part of the rejection was withdrawn. As to the provisional non-statutory double patenting rejections over US Application 18/503,799, Applicant has requested the rejection be held in abeyance until issuance or allowance of the claims in either ‘’799 or the instant application. (Id. at page 12) The rejection has accordingly been maintained.
As to the Claim Interpretation:
Applicant notes that they do not concede to the Office’s interpretation. (Id. at page 13)
As to the 101 Rejections:
There is no 101 rejection being applied at this time.
As to the Prior Art Rejections:
There is no prior art being applied at this time.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AMBREEN A. ALLADIN whose telephone number is (571)270-3533. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 9-5.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Abhishek Vyas can be reached at 571-270-1836. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/AMBREEN A. ALLADIN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3691 September 3, 2026
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