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 .
Claims 1-3 are currently pending and have been rejected in this Non-Final 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 1-3 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
The claims do not provide significantly more than the judicial exception under the subject matter eligibility two-part statutory analysis, as provided below.
Regarding Step 1,
Step 1 addresses whether the claims are directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention, i.e., process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter according to MPEP §2106.03. Claims 1-3 all fall within one of the four statutory categories.
Regarding Step 2A [prong 1],
The claimed invention recites an abstract idea according to MPEP §2106.04. Independent claims 1-3 having the same abstract features are underlined below which recite the following claim limitations, as an abstract idea.
Claims 1-3: A method for selectively logging external activities internally within a customer relationship management (CRM) comprising:
establishing a communicative coupling to both a communications client and also a CRM over communications;
extracting a document comprising an message from the communications client;
extracting from the message, a set of associated parties comprising each of a sender of the message and one or more specified recipients of the message;
transmitting a query to the communicatively coupled CRM with the set of associated parties in order to determine if a customer record of the CRM matches one of the associated parties of the e-mail message;
receiving in response to the transmitted query from the CRM, an identity of a customer stored in a record of the CRM and a corresponding territory;
feeding back to the CRM an additional query with the territory in order to identify one or more CRM end users assigned to the customer; and
recording an activity in the CRM for the one of the CRM end users based upon the document.
The underlined claim limitations, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, fall under “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activities” grouping of abstract ideas, and includes at least managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions). See MPEP §2106.04(a)(2)(II).
But for the recitation of generic implementation of computer system components, the claimed invention merely recites a process for managing personal behavior/relationships or interactions between people because the claimed steps recite managing customer relationship management. Accordingly, since the claimed invention describes a process that falls under “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activities” grouping, the claimed invention recites an abstract idea.
Regarding Step 2A [prong 2],
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application according to MPEP §2106.04(d). Claims 1-3 include the following additional elements:
A data processing system a (CRM) application; A computing device comprising a non- transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions stored therein, the instructions being executable by at least one processing core of a processing unit to cause the processing unit;
a host computing platform comprising one or more computers, each with memory and one or processing units including one or more processing cores; and, a logging module comprising computer program instructions enabled while executing in the memory of at least one of the processing units of the host computing platform;
a communicative coupling to both a communications client executing in the host computing platform, and also a CRM application remotely disposed from over a computer communications network;
In particular, the additional elements cited above beyond the abstract idea are recited at a high-level of generality and simply equivalent to a generic recitation and basic functionality that amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer technology components.
The claimed invention merely provides an abstract-idea-based-solution implemented with generic computer processes and components recited at a high-level of generality (receiving, storing, determining, and comparing data) using computer instructions to implement the abstract idea on a computer, and merely “apply it” without any meaningful technological limits or any improvement to technology, technical field or improvement to the functioning of the computer itself.
Therefore, the additional elements fail to integrate the recited abstract idea into any practical application since they do not impose any non-generic meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Thus, the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea.
Regarding Step 2B,
The claimed invention does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. See MPEP §2106.05.
As discussed above, the claimed additional elements recited above amounts to no more than mere instructions to implement the abstract idea by adding the words “apply it” using generic computer components and functionality. See MPEP §2106.05(h). Mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components are insufficient to provide an inventive concept. Furthermore, the claimed additional elements merely limit the abstract idea to be executed in a computer environment, thus do nothing more than generally linking the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use. See MPEP §2106.05(h).
Considered as an ordered combination, the additional elements are claimed at a high-level of generality and add nothing that is not already present when the steps are considered separately. The sequence of the claimed limitations is equally generic and otherwise held to be abstract since the combination of these additional elements is no more than mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components operating in their ordinary and generic capacities of what is typically expected of computers storing and updating data, and receiving and transmitting data between generic computer devices. The claimed invention is not patent eligible because the additional elements are merely invoked as tools to execute the abstract idea and thus are insufficient to amount to an inventive concept significantly more than the judicial exception.
Thus, after considering all claim elements in Claims 1-3 both individually and as an ordered combination, it has been determined that the claimed invention as a whole, is not enough to transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention since nothing in the claim limitations provide significantly more than the abstract idea under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of application for patent in the United States.
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by McConnell (US 20140040162).
Regarding Claims 1-3,
McConnell discloses:
A method (claim 1), system (claim 2) and computing device comprising a non- transitory computer readable storage medium (claim 3) having program instructions stored therein for selectively logging external activities internally within a customer relationship management (CRM) application (Abstract, summary and Figs. 1-7) comprising:
establishing a communicative coupling to both a communications client executing in a computing platform, and also a CRM application remotely disposed from over a computer communications network ([0173-0177] system may be distributed at remote servers, Each application server 7001-700N may be communicably coupled to database systems, e.g., having access to system data 625 and tenant data 623, via a different network connection);
extracting a document comprising an e-mail message from the communications client; extracting from the e-mail message, a set of associated parties comprising each of a sender of the e-mail message and one or more specified recipients of the e-mail message ([0035-0043] In an embodiment, the real-time user-specific information 471 can comprise information collected and/or used by various client applications hosted by the requesting user system 400 and stored locally on the requesting user system 400. For example, real-time user-specific information 471 can include interaction information gathered from an email, when the user-specific information 471 includes interaction information comprising contact information associated with a user's contact, e.g., 201a, the query manager 313 can be configured to generate a search query based on the contact information, e.g., name, email address, company name, etc., and to submit the query to the data manager component 308);
transmitting a query to the communicatively coupled CRM application with the set of associated parties in order to determine if a customer record of the CRM application matches one of the associated parties of the e-mail message; receiving in response to the transmitted query from the CRM application, an identity of a customer stored in a record of the CRM application and a corresponding territory; feeding back to the CRM application, an additional query with the territory in order to identify one or more CRM end users assigned to the customer ([0038] the real-time user-specific information 471 can also include, in an embodiment, geo-location information associated with the requesting user system 400 gathered from a Global Positioning System (“GPS”) unit, [0085] system answering this question based at least in part on the real-time user-specific information 471 that indicates the current geo-location of the requesting user system 400 and the location information associated with the contact 201a included in the accessible record 315); and
recording an activity in the CRM application for the one of the CRM end users based upon the document ([0110-0125] in response to receiving the indication to request recommended records, real-time user-specific information stored on the user system 400 is collected in block 154. In an embodiment, an information handler component 460 in the recommendation component 450 hosted by the user system 400 is configured to collect real-time user-specific information 471 stored on the user system 400 in response to receiving the indication to request recommended CRM records, when the CRM recommendation service 310 identifies at least one recommended record 318 in a manner described earlier, a first response message 334 including information identifying the recommended records 318 is transmitted to the requesting user system).
Conclusion
The relevant prior art made of record not relied upon but considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure can be found in the current and/or previous PTO-892 Notice of References Cited.
US 20190364009 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CLASSIFYING ELECTRONIC ACTIVITIES BASED ON SENDER AND RECIPIENT INFORMATION
US 20220012748 Method and system for generating insights regarding a party in response to a call
US 20120072500 AUTOMATIC TRACKING OF CONTACT INTERACTIONS
M. A. Mir, A. Ali, K. Ata, M. Imad and M. Naseem, "Task and Billing Automation System," 2020 International Conference on Information Science and Communication Technology (ICISCT), Karachi, Pakistan, 2020, pp. 1-8, doi: 10.1109/ICISCT49550.2020.9079938.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the Examiner should be directed to LAURA YESILDAG whose direct telephone number is (571) 270-5066 and work schedule is generally Monday-Friday, from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM ET.
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If attempts to reach the Examiner are unsuccessful, the Examiner’s Supervisor, LYNDA JASMIN, can be reached at (571) 272-6782 for any urgent matter that needs immediate attention. Additional information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the USPTO Patent Center. For more information about the USPTO Patent Center, please access https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/ The Patent Center is available to all users for electronic filing and management of patent applications and can be contacted for questions at 1-866-217-9197 or 571-272-4100.
/LAURA YESILDAG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3629