DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is in reply to correspondence filed 2 February 2026 in regard to application no. 18/670,699. Claims 1-13 (using the Examiner’s renumbering; see below) are pending and are considered below.
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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 2 February 2026 has been entered.
Claim Objections
The numbering of claims is not in accordance with 37 CFR 1.126 which requires the original numbering of the claims to be preserved throughout the prosecution. When claims are canceled, the remaining claims must not be renumbered. When new claims are presented, they must be numbered consecutively beginning with the number next following the highest numbered claims previously presented (whether entered or not).
Misnumbered claims 13-14 have been renumbered 12-13.
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 1-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. Claim 13, being the narrower independent claim, will be considered in this analysis. The claim(s) recite(s) several data gathering steps: scanning a tray, imaging an image, scanning a tray again, imaging another image, and acquiring the various data. Beyond that, the claim recites measuring a depth, calculating a volume, generating ingestion information by subtracting two numbers, and providing output to a user who then makes use of the output.
This recites human mental activity. In the absence of computers, a human dietitian could look at a tray before and after a person had eaten a meal from it, determine the quantity eaten using the height and area of the food, tell someone else (e.g. the diner) of this, and compute a volume based on linear measurements; none of this presents any practical difficulty, and none requires any technology at all. What a human does with the computer's output is entirely outside the scope of the "operating method of a meal service management system" and will not be further considered.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because aside from the bare inclusion of a generic computer, discussed below, nothing is done beyond what was set forth above, which does not go beyond using a generic computer as a tool to implement the abstract idea. See MPEP § 2106.05(f).
As the claims only manipulate data about a food tray and the food on the tray, they do not improve the "functioning of a computer" or of "any other technology or technical field". See MPEP § 2106.05(a). They do not apply the abstract idea "with, or by use of a particular machine", MPEP § 2106.05(b), as the below-cited Guidance is clear that a generic computer is not the particular machine envisioned.
They do not effect a "transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing", MPEP § 2106.05(c). First, such data, being intangible, are not a particular article at all. Second, the claimed manipulation is neither transformative nor reductive; as the courts have pointed out, in the end, data are still data.
The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional claim limitations, considered individually and as an ordered combination, are insufficient to elevate an otherwise-ineligible claim.
The claim includes the use of a "management server" and information acquired by a "scanner". These elements are recited at a high degree of generality and the specification does not meaningfully limit them, such that a generic computer will suffice. It only performs generic computer functions of nondescriptly manipulating information and sharing information with persons and/or other devices. Generic computers performing generic computer functions, without an inventive concept, do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
Scanners that could detect depth were well-understood, routine and conventional before the filing of the claimed invention. First, a human pair of eyes reads on a sensor that can detect depth, so this limitation does not take it outside of human mental work. Second, even limiting it to a depth sensor in the data-processing sense, Rhoads et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2014/0304122) disclosed at that early date that a “conventional camera” could become “effectively a depth sensing imager”, [0064] such that even in the context of computers, it was well-understood, routine and conventional at the relevant time.
The type of information being manipulated does not impose meaningful limitations or render the idea less abstract. The claim elements when considered as an ordered combination - a generic computer performing a chronological sequence of abstract steps - do nothing more than when they are analyzed individually.
The dependent claims further do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. Claim 2 recites machine learning, but the only specific use has to do with the type of data used to train a model and the type of data resulting which, in light of Recentive (cited previously), is not sufficient to elevate an otherwise-ineligible claim to patent eligibility. Claims 3 and 6 are simply further descriptive of the type of information being manipulated.
Claims 4 and 5 simply recite generic computer components which play no role in the claimed method. Claims 7 and 9-11 simply recite output. Claim 8 purports to limit activity of a user quite outside the method performed by the meal service management system, and claim 12 simply adds the component already discussed above in regard to claim 13.
The claims are not patent eligible. For further guidance please see MPEP § 2106.03 – 2106.07(c) (formerly referred to as the “2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance”, 84 Fed. Reg. 50, 55 (7 January 2019)).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 2 February 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. As explained above, the use of electronics that have the capability of detecting depth was well-understood, routine and conventional before the filing of the present invention. The use of multiple computers to collectively perform tasks requires nothing more than the Internet.
There is no dispute as to step 1 of the required analysis; unarguably a method is a process, one of the four statutory categories, and the claims are each directed to a method. In regard to prong one of step 2A, the applicant’s only argument is that because computer components are recited, the “claims cannot be considered mental activity”, but that does not comport with the case law.
See MPEP § 2106.04(a)(2)(III), explaining that courts do not “distinguish between claims that recite mental processes performed by humans and claims that recite mental processes performed on a computer”.
In regard to prong two of step 2A, the applicant appears to misapprehend how the Office uses the term “practical application”. It is insufficient that the “claims generate and produce a tangible result”, as the computer program at issue in Alice, at least arguably, did the same. The Examiner fails to see, and the applicant does not persuasively argue, how a computer with sensors is supposed to be a particular machine, nor how any technology is improved, nor how the invention transforms matter, nor how the link between the technology and the abstraction is anything more than general.
In regard to step 2B, this step analyzes whether the “additional elements”, that is, the non-abstract elements, taken individually and as an ordered combination, are sufficient to amount to “significantly more” than the abstract idea. The applicant’s recitation of abstract steps here is unavailing, and the only non-abstract claim elements are a few generic computers, two of which are equipped with a camera.
The claims are not patent eligible and the rejection is maintained.
Conclusion
No rejection is made herein under 35 U.S.C. § 102 or 103, and an analysis of the state of the art at the relevant time was set forth in a previous Office action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SCOTT C ANDERSON whose telephone number is (571)270-7442. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00 to 5:30.
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/SCOTT C ANDERSON/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3694