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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed with respect to the newly added limitations and the rejections made under §§ 101 & 103 have been fully considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection.
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 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter (a judicial exception without significantly more). Claims are eligible for patent protection under § 101 if they are in one of the four statutory categories and not directed to a judicial exception to patentability. Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014). Claims 1-4, each considered as a whole and as an ordered combination, are directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Claim 1 recites a system.
Step 2A, prong 1: Claim 1, taken as representative, recites the abstract idea of conducting a reverse auction. This idea is described by the following steps:
providing users the option to bid on at least one auction;
wherein the at least one auction is a sealed bid reverse auction;
allowing to accept bids from bidding users until the at least one auction closes by naming a winning bidder;
connecting the winning bidder to the seller for payment and transfer of a subject of the at least one auction;
retrieving historical performance data associated with each bidder, the historical performance data comprising at least one of bid accuracy relative to actual delivery, fulfillment performance, past price competitiveness, quality ratings, or compliance history;
evaluating incoming bids using the historical performance data in combination with auction-specific parameters to compute, for each bid, best-value score; and
prior to closing the sealed-bid auction, identifying bids that satisfy system-defined best-value criteria;
analyzing buyer preferences and historical buyer decision patterns captured by the platform; and
generating bidder-facing guidance data based on the buyer analysis to assist bidders in preparing best-value submissions, without disclosing competing bid values or bidder identities; and
connecting the winning bidder to the seller for payment and transfer of a subject of the at least one auction.
The above limitations, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, fall within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activity” grouping of abstract ideas, enumerated in MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)(II), in that they recite bidding, assisting bidders in preparing best-value submissions, i.e., commercial interactions.
Additionally, the limitations of “compute, for each bid, best-value score”, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, fall within the “Mathematical Concepts” grouping of abstract ideas, enumerated in MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)(I), in that they recite mathematical relationships and/or mathematical calculations.
Step 2A, prong 2: Claim 1 recites additional elements that fail to integrate the abstract idea into practical application.
Claim 1 recite one or more processors; recommendation engine; server computer and one or more non-transitory, computer-readable media storing instructions that are executable by the one or more processors to cause the computing system to perform operations. These additional elements are described at a high level in Applicant’s specification without any meaningful detail about their structure or configuration. The additional computer-related elements merely invoke such additional elements as tools to perform the abstract idea. See MPEP 2106.05(f).
Further, the recitation of these additional elements in the claim generally links the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment or field of use, i.e., a computerized environment. MPEP 2106.05(h).
As such, when considered both individually and as a whole, the limitations of claim 1 are not indicative of integration into a practical application. MPEP 2106.04(d)
Step 2B: Claim 1 fails to recite additional elements that amount to an inventive concept.
For the reasons identified with respect to Step 2A, prong 2, claim 1 fails to recite additional elements that amount to an inventive concept. For example, use of a computer or other machinery in its ordinary capacity for economic or other tasks (e.g., to receive, store, or transmit data) or simply adding a general-purpose computer or computer components after the fact to an abstract idea (e.g., a fundamental economic practice or mathematical equation) does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or provide significantly more (see MPEP 2106.05(g)).
Even when considered as an ordered combination, the additional elements of claim 1 do not add anything that is not already present when they are considered individually. Therefore, under Step 2B, there are no meaningful limitations in claim 1 that transform the judicial exception into a patent eligible application such that the claim amounts to significantly more than the judicial exception itself. See MPEP 2106.05.
Dependent Claims Step 2A:
The limitations of the dependent claims merely set forth further refinements of the abstract idea identified at step 2A—Prong One, without changing the analysis already presented. Additionally, for the same reasons as above, the limitations fail to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they use the same general technological environment and instructions to implement the abstract idea as the independent claims identified at step 2A—Prong Two.
Dependent Claims Step 2B:
The dependent claims merely use the same general technological environment and instructions to implement the abstract idea. These do not amount to significantly more for the same reasons they fail to integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. Moreover, the Specification also indicates this is the routine use of known components for the same reasons presented with respect to the elements in the independent claims above.
Thus, when considering the combination of elements and the claimed invention as a whole, the claims are not patent eligible.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gladis et al. (US 20140279163) in view of Barry et al. (US 2006/0136322).
Claim 1. Gladis et al. (Gladis) teaches a system for profiling auction assets and/or participants to predict auction outcome, the system comprising:
at least one computer disposed in communication with at least one server computer over at least one network [0035];
a platform, said platform hosted by the at least one server computer, said platform accessible via the at least one computer [0110];
the platform providing users the option to bid on at least one auction [0040];
wherein the platform is configured to accept bids from bidding users until the at least one auction closes by naming a winning bidder [0072]; and
the platform connecting the winning bidder to the seller for payment and transfer of a subject of the at least one auction [0072];
a bidder-side recommendation engine executed by the server computer, the bidder side recommendation engine being configured to [0035]:
retrieve historical performance data associated with each bidder, the historical performance data comprising at least one of bid accuracy relative to actual delivery, fulfillment performance, past price competitiveness, quality ratings, or compliance history [0071], [0076];
evaluate incoming bids using the historical performance data in combination with auction-specific parameters to compute, for each bid, a machine generated best-value score [0099]; and
generate, prior to closing the sealed-bid auction, guidance signals to the platform identifying bids that satisfy system-defined best-value criteria [0058], [0086];
a buyer-side recommendation engine configured to:
analyze buyer preferences and historical buyer decision patterns captured by the platform [0071]; and
generate bidder-facing guidance data based on the buyer analysis to assist bidders in preparing best-value submissions, without disclosing competing bid values or bidder identities [0043], [0062], [0086]; and
wherein the platform connects the winning bidder to the seller for payment and transfer of a subject of the at least one auction [0041].
Gladis does not teach that said auction includes a sealed bid reverse auction.
Barry et al. (Barry) teaches a system for conducting a reverse auction wherein the customer is asked if they would like to receive "sealed bid" proposals from these vendors. If the customer elects to proceed to the sealed bid stage [0151], [0256].
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Smullen to include that said reversed auction includes a sealed bid reversed auction, because it would advantageously allow the bidders to submit a single, confidential price for a project or service without knowing competitors' prices, which is then opened and evaluated simultaneously to ensure fairness.
Claim 2. Gladis teaches said system, wherein the bidder-side recommendation engine applies a weighted model that dynamically updates weights for said historical performance data based on auction category or buyer priority vectors [0092].
Claim 3. Gladis teaches said system, wherein the best-value score incorporates a latency penalty derived from historical fulfillment cycle-time variance [0099].
Claim 4. Gladis teaches said system, wherein the recommendation engines utilize a feature store maintained by the platform comprising anonymized cross-auction metrics for bidders [0092].
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.
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/MILA AIRAPETIAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3688
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