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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 September 02, 2026, has been entered.
Hence, this Office Action responds to the Information Disclosure Statement filed on September 02, 2026, in response to the Office Action mailed on June 05, 2026.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on September 02, 2026, was filed after the mailing date of the Office Action on June 05, 2026. The submission 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 1–15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., an abstract idea) without reciting additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception.
These claims have been analyzed using the two-part framework set forth by the Supreme Court in Mayo Collaborative Services v. Prometheus Laboratories, Inc., 566 U.S. 66 (2012), and Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), consistent with MPEP §§2103–2106.07 and the 2024 Guidance Update.
USPTO guidance provides that Step 2A comprises two prongs: Prong One determines whether the claim recites a judicial exception, and Prong Two determines whether the exception is integrated into a practical application.
I. Step 1 — Statutory Categories
Independent claim 1 recites a system comprising a computer system and therefore falls within the statutory category of a machine.
Independent claim 6 recites a method and therefore falls within the statutory category of a process.
Independent claim 11 recites a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and therefore falls within the statutory category of a manufacture.
Dependent claims 2–5, 7–10, and 12–15 retain their respective statutory categories.
Accordingly, claims 1–15 satisfy Step 1 and are analyzed under Step 2A.
II. Step 2A, Prong One — Judicial Exception
Independent claims 1, 6, and 11 recite substantially corresponding procurement operations including: receiving a target service level; receiving item-consumption information; receiving procurement policies and models; receiving order quantity and order data; determining inventory on hand; determining orders currently in the pipeline; determining whether inventory position is below safety stock; determining an order to be placed; assessing inventory, orders, and usage; simulating different variable values; determining an optimal state having the lowest cost while achieving the target service level; and generating a report containing the simulation output.
These limitations appear in substantially corresponding system, method, and computer-readable-medium forms.
A. Certain methods of organizing human activity
The claims recite the concept of managing procurement and inventory by determining inventory requirements and selecting orders according to inventory levels, procurement policies, costs, and service requirements.
Procurement is a commercial activity. Determining whether and when goods should be ordered, the quantity of goods to order, procurement costs, vendors, inventory requirements, and service requirements concerns commercial interactions and business relations.
Accordingly, the limitations directed to determining procurement requirements, deciding what orders should be placed, and minimizing procurement costs while satisfying service requirements reasonably fall within certain methods of organizing human activity, particularly commercial interactions/business relations.
The USPTO identifies commercial interactions and business relations within this enumerated abstract-idea grouping. Importantly, however, the Office cautions that not every business-related method is automatically abstract; the claimed activity must fall within an enumerated subgroup.
Here, the procurement/order-management limitations do.
B. Mental processes
The claims additionally recite evaluating information concerning: inventory on hand;
pipeline orders; inventory position; safety stock; usage; and whether an order should be placed.
At the level of generality recited, certain portions of these operations encompass observations, comparisons, evaluations, and judgments that could practically be performed by a person using information concerning inventory and outstanding orders.
For example, a procurement planner can review inventory records, identify pending orders, compare available inventory against a safety-stock requirement, and determine whether additional inventory should be ordered.
Such evaluation and judgment falls within the mental-process grouping. USPTO guidance specifically identifies observations, evaluations, judgments, and opinions, including sufficiently generalized collecting/analyzing information, as examples of mental processes.
C. Mathematical concepts
Claims 1, 6, and 11 further require: “performing a simulation to find a lowest cost associated with the order, while achieving a target service level”; and “simulating over different values of variables to determine an optimal state with the lowest cost.”
To the extent these limitations require mathematical calculation or optimization of numerical variables to determine a minimum-cost state, the limitations additionally implicate the mathematical-concepts grouping, which encompasses mathematical relationships, formulas/equations, and mathematical calculations.
Thus, the claims recite an abstract idea comprising procurement and inventory management through evaluation and mathematical optimization of inventory, order, cost, usage, and service-level information.
Accordingly, claims 1, 6, and 11 recite a judicial exception under Step 2A, Prong One.
III. Step 2A, Prong Two — Practical Application
These claims must next be evaluated as a whole to determine whether the additional elements integrate the identified abstract idea into a practical application.
USPTO guidance emphasizes that this inquiry must consider the additional elements both individually and in combination; an examiner should not merely identify an abstract idea and disregard the remaining claim limitations.
A. Computer system, processors and memory
Claim 1 additionally recites: “a computer system comprising one or more microprocessors, a memory.”
Claim 6 similarly performs the method at a computer system comprising processors and memory, while claim 11 places the instructions on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium.
These limitations provide the computing environment for performing the procurement analysis.
These claims do not require a particular processor architecture, memory architecture, specialized computer, or modification to the manner in which processors or memory operate.
The processors and memory therefore merely provide computer implementation for the underlying procurement and optimization process.
B. Data analytics environment
Claims 1, 6, and 11 recite a data analytics environment operating on the computer system.
The data analytics environment is used to perform the procurement calculations and simulations. The claims do not, however, recite a particular improvement to analytics-engine architecture or computer operation. Rather, the analytics environment is used as a tool for performing the underlying inventory/procurement analysis.
C. Data plane, data warehouse and data pipeline
The independent claims additionally recite: software components operating as a data plane; access to one or more data warehouse instances; a data pipeline process retrieving enterprise data from a tenant enterprise environment; and loading the enterprise data into a tenant-associated data warehouse instance.
These limitations deserve separate consideration because they provide more than merely reciting a processor.
Nevertheless, as presently claimed, the data plane, data warehouse, and data pipeline principally perform data access, retrieval, storage, and loading so that the retrieved information is available for the subsequent procurement analysis.
These claims do not recite a particular improvement to database operation, data-pipeline processing, network throughput, distributed computing, or data-storage technology.
Rather, the limitations obtain and organize the enterprise information upon which the abstract procurement process operates. Thus, the limitations constitute data-gathering/storage infrastructure associated with carrying out the underlying procurement analysis rather than a technological improvement.
D. Tenant-specific customer schema
The independent claims further require each tenant to be: “associated with a customer schema that supplements data within their data warehouse instance.”
This limitation associates tenant-specific data organization with the corresponding warehouse instance. However, the claims do not recite a particular improved database schema, new data structure, improved memory arrangement, or mechanism by which the schema improves database/computer performance. Instead, the customer schema organizes or supplements the business information used in the procurement process.
Therefore, the tenant/customer-schema limitation does not, on the presently claimed record, transform the underlying procurement process into an improvement to database technology.
E. Inventory, demand, procurement, and order components
The recited: inventory planning component; demand planning component;
procurement planning component; and order procurement component are defined principally according to the procurement information they receive or process.
For example, the inventory component receives a target service level, the demand component receives item-consumption information, the procurement component receives procurement policies/models, and the order component receives order quantity/data.
These components therefore organize the computer implementation according to the underlying business functions of inventory planning, demand planning, procurement planning, and ordering.
They do not, as presently claimed, establish an improvement to the operation of the computer itself or another technical field.
F. User-interface report
The independent claims conclude by: “generating, for display at a user interface a report providing an output of the simulation.”
The report communicates the result of the underlying analysis. These claims do not recite a particular improved graphical-user-interface technology or a specific manner of displaying information that improves computer operation.
Accordingly, displaying the simulation result does not meaningfully integrate the abstract procurement analysis into a technological practical application.
Prong Two conclusion
Considering the additional elements individually and as an ordered combination, claims 1, 6, and 11 use computer, database, analytics, data-pipeline, and user-interface technology to collect enterprise information, perform the claimed procurement analysis/optimization, and present the resulting procurement information.
These claims do not presently recite a technological mechanism improving processor operation, database operation, data-pipeline technology, computer networking, simulation technology, or another technical field.
Accordingly, the judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application, and claims 1, 6, and 11 are directed to an abstract idea under Step 2A.
This conclusion is consistent with the 2024 Guidance's emphasis that a claim may be eligible where the claimed invention provides an improvement to computer functionality or another technology/technical field, but merely using computer technology to perform the underlying abstract activity does not by itself establish such an improvement.
IV. Dependent Claims 2–5, 7–10 and 12–15
The dependent claims do not alter the conclusion under Step 2A.
Claims 2, 7 and 12 further characterize the process as a “supply chain command center for intelligent procurement assistance” based upon inventory trends, demand, and other procurement/inventory inputs. These limitations further specify the commercial procurement/inventory-management environment and information considered and do not recite a technological improvement.
Claims 3, 8 and 13 further require: creating time-series forecasts of leaf-level independent variables; performing simulation within boundary conditions of historical or expected distributions; and determining optimal timing, quantity, location and/or vendor for orders.
These limitations reinforce the mathematical-analysis aspect of the exception. The resulting optimization remains directed toward commercial procurement decisions—when to purchase, how much to purchase, from where, and from which vendor.
No particular forecasting algorithm, simulation architecture, mathematical technique improving computer functionality, or technical implementation is recited.
Claims 4, 9 and 14 specify that the method is performed by one or more components of the data analytics environment.
These limitations merely assign performance of the abstract process to the previously recited computing environment.
Claims 5, 10 and 15 additionally receive inventory and supplier information into the data analytics environment and display procurement recommendations through a user interface.
Receiving the information supplies data for the abstract procurement analysis, while displaying procurement recommendations communicates the result of that analysis. Neither limitation recites an improvement to the underlying computing technology.
Accordingly, claims 2–5, 7–10 and 12–15 likewise fail to integrate the judicial exception into a practical application.
V. Step 2B — Significantly More / Inventive Concept
Because claims 1–15 are directed to the identified abstract idea under Step 2A, the claims are evaluated under Step 2B to determine whether the additional elements, individually or as an ordered combination, provide an inventive concept sufficient to amount to significantly more than the exception.
The additional elements include: processors and memory; data analytics environment;
software/data plane; data pipeline; data warehouse instances; tenant/customer schemas; inventory, demand, procurement, and ordering components; computer-readable storage; user interface; and generation/display of reports.
These claims use these elements to retrieve, store, organize, analyze, simulate, optimize, and display procurement-related information. Nothing in the claim language itself requires a specialized processor, unconventional memory, improved database engine, new data-pipeline protocol, new user-interface technology, or other particular technological mechanism separate from the underlying procurement analysis.
Likewise, the ordered combination essentially follows the sequence: obtain enterprise/inventory information to organize the information to determine inventory status to determine procurement need to simulate alternatives to minimize cost subject to service level to report the result.
That ordered combination describes computerized implementation of the underlying procurement-planning and optimization activity rather than a technological solution distinct from the abstract idea.
However, an important Step 2B evidentiary distinction should be maintained in the Office Action. A conclusion that an additional element is well-understood, routine, and conventional (WURC) must be supported by the factual determination required under USPTO guidance; an examiner should not simply assert that the claimed data warehouse, data pipeline, tenant schema, or analytics environment is conventional. USPTO guidance expressly requires written factual support when a Step 2B rejection depends on a WURC finding.
Accordingly, assuming the record contains the requisite WURC support, the additional elements do not provide significantly more than the identified abstract idea.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-15 are allowable over prior art. As allowable subject matter has been indicated, applicant's reply must either comply with all formal requirements or specifically traverse each requirement not complied with. See 37 CFR 1.111(b) and MPEP § 707.07(a).
Conclusion
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/ROKIB MASUD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3627
