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 .
Status of Claims
This action is in reply to application 18/664,256 filed 5/14/2024. Claims 1-19 are pending. This action is non-final.
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 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claims do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because they are directed to software per se. In other words, the claim merely describes software without any device or processor to execute the software or a tangible memory to store the software. Products that do not have a physical or tangible form, such as information (often referred to as "data per se") or a computer program per se (often referred to as "software per se"), when claimed as a product without any structural recitations, are not directed to any of the four statutory categories of invention (i.e., a machine, a method, an article of manufacture, or a composition of matter). (Examiner’s Note: For the sake or compact prosecution, claims 17-19 will be examined using the Alice/Mayo framework as if they fall within the category of an “article of manufacture.”)
Claims 1-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1: Claims 1, 9, and 17 each recite a method, a system, and an article of manufacture, respectively, used for retrieving data from data sources, the data including customer interactions with a business, a profile of the business, inventory data of the business, sales data of the business, and content from social media websites of customers of the business; determining trending-product pairs that increase engagement of the customers with products recorded in the inventory data of the business based on the retrieved data; using a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to generate one or more of a caption, a hashtag, and a promotional image that are personalized to each of the customers in response to receiving prompts that contain information about the customers, information about trending-product pairs, and social media platforms of the customers; and sending one or more of the captions, the hashtags, and the promotional images that are personalized to the customers to social media platforms of the customers. Therefore, claims 1, 9, and 17 are each directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention: a method, a machine, and an article of manufacture, respectively.
Step 2A – Prong One: The limitations retrieving data from data sources, the data including customer interactions with a business, a profile of the business, inventory data of the business, sales data of the business, and content from social media websites of customers of the business; determining trending-product pairs that increase engagement of the customers with products recorded in the inventory data of the business based on the retrieved data ... generate one or more of a caption, a hashtag, and a promotional image that are personalized to each of the customers in response to receiving prompts that contain information about the customers, information about trending-product pairs, and social media platforms of the customers; and sending one or more of the captions, the hashtags, and the promotional images that are personalized to the customers to ... the customers, as drafted, is a method that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, only covers concepts of “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” (e.g., commercial interactions – business relations). That is, nothing in the claim elements disclose anything outside the groupings of “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” (e.g., commercial interactions – business relations). Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
Step 2A – Prong Two: The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. Claims 1, 9, and 17 merely describe how to generally “apply” the concept of the aforementioned abstract idea using generic computer components. The additional elements of claims 1, 9, and 17, a computer (claims 1, 9, and 17), a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model (claims 1, 9, and 17), social media websites (claims 1, 9, and 17), social media platforms (claims 1, 9, and 17), a processing system (claim 9), one or more memories (claim 9), one or more processors (claim 9), a computer-implemented artificial intelligence (AI) agent (claim 17), a retrieve data engine (claim 17), a trending-product pairs engine (claim 17), a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model engine (claim 17), and a send engine (claim 17), are recited at a high level of generality and are merely invoked as generic computer tools to perform the aforementioned abstract idea. Simply implementing the abstract idea on a generic computerized system is not a practical application of the abstract idea. Accordingly, alone and in combination, the additional elements of claims 1, 9, and 17 do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. The claims are directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B: The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above, the claims as a whole merely describe the abstract idea generally “applied” to a generic computer environment. The additional elements of claims 1, 9, and 17, a computer (described in spec. para. [0051]), a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model (described in spec. para. [0025]), social media websites (described in spec. para. [0030]), social media platforms (described in spec. para. [0030]), a processing system (described in spec. para. [0054]), one or more memories (described in spec. para. [0056]), one or more processors (described in spec. para. [0056]), a computer-implemented artificial intelligence (AI) agent (described in spec. para. [0052]), a retrieve data engine (described in spec. para. [0052]), a trending-product pairs engine (described in spec. para. [0052]), a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model engine (described in spec. para. [0052]), and a send engine (described in spec. para. [0052]), are recited at a high level of generality and are merely invoked as generic computer components upon which the abstract idea is “applied.” The high level of generality in which this additional element is described indicates that the additional element is sufficiently known such that the specification does not need to describe the particulars of the additional element to satisfy the statutory disclosure requirements. Thus, even when viewed as a whole, nothing in the claims add significantly more to the abstract idea. Therefore, the claims are not patent eligible.
Claims 2-8, 10-16, and 18-19 have been given the full two-part analysis including analyzing the limitations both individually and in combination. Claims 2-8, 10-16, and 18-19 when analyzed individually, and in combination, are also held to be patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101. The recited limitations of the dependent claims fail to establish that the claims do not recite an abstract idea because the recited limitations of the dependent claims merely further narrow the abstract idea.
Step 2A – Prong Two: The limitations of the dependent claims fail to integrate an abstract idea into a practical application because the claims as a whole merely describe how to generally “apply” a method of the aforementioned abstract idea. Although claims 2 and 11 recite the additional element a social media application programming interface (API), claims 3 recites the additional element website scraper, claims 5 and 13 recite the additional elements APIs and website scraping, claims 5, 13, and 18 recite the additional elements an embedding model, claims 6, 14, and 19 recite the additional element a natural language processing (NLP) model, and a classification model, claims 8 and 16 recite the additional element a regression model, claim 10 recites the additional element a web scraping application programming interface (API), claim 11 recites the additional element social media APIs, claim 18 recites the additional element a clustering engine, and claim 19 recites the additional element a transformer model, the claims as a whole merely describe how to generally “apply” the aforementioned abstract idea in a generic computer environment. Thus, even when viewed as a whole, nothing in the claims integrates the abstract idea into a practical application.
Step 2B: Performing the further narrowed abstract ideas of the dependent claims on the additional elements of the independent claim, individually or in combination, does not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract ideas and amount to merely using a computer, in its ordinary capacity, as a tool to perform the abstract idea. Similarly, the recited limitations of the dependent claims fail to establish that the claims provide an inventive concept because claims that merely use a computer, in its ordinary capacity, as a tool to perform the abstract idea cannot provide an inventive concept. Although claims 2 and 11 recite the additional element a social media application programming interface (API) (described in spec. para. [0030]), claims 3 recites the additional element website scraper (described in spec. para. [0030]), claims 5 and 13 recite the additional elements APIs (described in spec. para. [0077]) and website scraping (described in spec. para. [0077]), claims 5, 13, and 18 recite the additional elements an embedding model (described in spec. para. [0035]), claims 6, 14, and 19 recite the additional element a natural language processing (NLP) model (described in spec. para. [0039]), and a classification model (described in spec. para. [0039]), claims 8 and 16 recite the additional element a regression model (described in spec. para. [0047]), claim 10 recites the additional element a web scraping application programming interface (API) (described in spec. para. [0077]), claim 18 recites the additional element a clustering engine (described in spec. para. [0083]), and claim 19 recites the additional element a transformer model (described in spec. para. [0039]), they are recited at a high level of generality and are merely invoked as generic computer components upon which the abstract idea is “applied.” The high level of generality in which the additional elements are described indicates that the additional elements are sufficiently known such that the specification does not need to describe the particulars of the additional elements to satisfy the statutory disclosure requirements. Thus, even when viewed as a whole, nothing in the claims add significantly more to the abstract idea. Therefore, the claims are not patent eligible.
Reasons for Novelty
Claims -1-19 are considered novel over the prior art. Examiner has determined that the combination of claim elements is unanticipated by prior art and that it would not have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the time of filing to have arrived at the claimed invention. Examiner considers the following references the closest prior art to the claimed invention: Sanjay (U.S. Pub. No. 2016/0379251), Rosenfeld (U.S. Pub. No. 2022/0277357), Goodsitt (U.S. Pub. No. 2021/0312502), Varley (U.S. Pub. No. 2019/0073697), and Bao Xinli (KR 20230031750 A). Other relevant prior art includes: Holtz (U.S. Pub. No. 2019/0014390), and Morin (U.S. Pub. No. 2021/0342927). Examiner has determined that it would not have been obvious to combine these references and further prior art in order to arrive at the claimed invention. Specifically, Examiner finds the claim limitations following combination of limitations to recite a narrow inventive concept: retrieving data from data sources, the data including customer interactions with a business, a profile of the business, inventory data of the business, sales data of the business, and (emphasis added) content from social media websites of customers of the business; determining trending-product pairs that increase engagement of the customers with products recorded in the inventory data of the business based on the retrieved data; using a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model to generate one or more of a caption, a hashtag, and a promotional image that are personalized to each of the customers in response to receiving prompts that contain information about the customers, information about trending-product pairs, and (emphasis added) social media platforms of the customers. Therefore, the independent and dependent claims are all considered novel over the prior art.
Conclusion
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/CHRISTOPHER GOMEZ/
Examiner, Art Unit 3628