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 .
Priority
Application 18/748,998 was filed on June 20, 2024 and claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 63/509,874, filed June 23, 2023.
Status of the Claims
Claims 1, 3, 6, 11, 13, and 16 are currently pending. Claims 1 and 11 were amended in the reply filed March 2, 2026. Claims 4, 5, 7, 8, 14, 15, 17, and 18 were cancelled in the reply filed March 2, 2026.
Response to Arguments
112(a):
Applicant's amendments overcome the rejection made under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) and it is withdrawn.
101:
Applicant's arguments filed with respect to the rejection made under 35 U.S.C. § 101 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant first argues that the amended claims do not recite an abstract idea “but rather are a technical way of ‘stabilizing the share price’” (Remarks p. 8). Examiner respectfully disagrees. Stabilizing a share price is “certain methods of organizing human activity” as it is involves fundamental economic principles or practices as well as commercial or legal interactions (see MPEP 2106.04(a)(II)). Furthermore, Examiner clarifies that the questions of whether a claim recites and abstract idea under Step 2A – Prong 1 (see MPEP 2106.04(II)(A)(1)) is different that the question of whether a claim is directed to an abstract idea under Step 2A – Prong 2 (see MPEP 2106.04(II)(A)(2)). The recitation of an abstract idea is not negated by the presence of additional elements. As such, the amended claims do recite an abstract idea.
Applicant further argues that the claims are directed to an improvement to technology. Specifically, a “concrete computer-technology operations directed to improving the functioning of the claimed computer system, not merely automating a business practice” (Remarks p. 9) and “a specific sematic-search implementation that is itself technical and constrains how the system processes unstructured textual reports” (Remarks p. 9). Examiner respectfully disagrees. The semantic search implementation is described at a high level of detail (see specification 0040]). As such, it appears that semantic searching is used merely as a tool to perform the abstract idea. Similarly, text embeddings are described at a high level of detail (see specification [0041]), such that the text embedding are also used merely as a tool to perform the abstract idea. Furthermore, the alleged improvement to the claimed computer system is not supported by Applicant’s specification (see MPEP 2106.05(a) – “If it is asserted that the invention improves upon conventional functioning of a computer, or upon conventional technology or technological processes, a technical explanation as to how to implement the invention should be present in the specification. That is, the disclosure must provide sufficient details such that one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize the claimed invention as providing an improvement”). As such, the amended claims do not provide an improvement to the functioning of a computer or to any other technology or technical field. Rather, they only improve the recited abstract idea. An improvement in the abstract idea itself is not an improvement in technology. For example, in Trading Technologies Int’l v. IBG, 921 F.3d 1084, 1093-94, 2019 USPQ2d 138290 (Fed. Cir. 2019), the court determined that the claimed user interface simply provided a trader with more information to facilitate market trades, which improved the business process of market trading but did not improve computers or technology (See MPEP 2106.05(a)(II)).
Lastly, Applicant argues that the claims recite significantly more that any alleged abstract idea because “the claim now requires a particular architecture and data processing sequence that the Office Action does not establish as conventional, and that is not merely an instruction to apply an abstract idea on generic computer components” (Remarks p. 10-11). Examiner respectfully disagrees for the reasons stated above and in the 101 rejection below. Examiner notes that whether or not a claim includes well-understood, routine, conventional activities is only one of multiple considerations when determining whether additional elements amount to an inventive concept (see 2106.05 (A)).
Accordingly, the rejection is maintained.
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, 6, 11, 13, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Independent Claims
MPEP 2106 Step 2A- Prong 1:
Independent claims 1 and 11 recite, retrieving information from websites for a plurality of activist short sellers;
identifying, from the information, a release of a report on a target company by one of the plurality of activist short sellers;
extract the information from the websites;
storing the information;
retrieving market data on the target company;
identifying a movement in a share price for the target company based on the market data, [using] historical short reports, an industry, a region, and/or a market cap, wherein the movement in share price is identified when the movement is above a threshold;
identifying an impact of the report on the share price for the target company;
identifying a business impact on investors or potential investors of the target company, wherein the business impact is identified in response to the movement in share price being negative and above a threshold;
generating a business recommendation based on the impact of the report on the share price for the target company and the business impact on the investors or potential investors, wherein the business recommendation comprises establish a relationship, maintain the relationship, or terminate the relationship;
identifying a mitigating action based on historical mitigation actions;
ranking the impact on the share price of report with impacts on share prices from other reports;
generating a summary of the report;
identifying historical activist short reports that are similar to the report by converting historical activist short reports into text embeddings, converting the report into a text embedding, and find similar historical activist short reports;
and executing a mitigating step based on the impact on the share price of report, the mitigating step comprising a share buy-back program and delisting the target company from a public trading market,
correlate information to detect and store market events in real time.
The limitations above are processes that under broadest reasonable interpretation cover “certain methods of organizing human activity” (including fundamental economic principles and commercial or legal interactions). Specifically, making recommendations regarding stock shares and performing mitigation actions based on company and market data is establishing business relationships, performing sales activities, and mitigating risk. Examiner particularly notes that the claims recite a “business recommendation” that relates to establishing a relationship with a target company as well as “mitigating action” and paragraphs [0033, 0037] of Applicant’s specification discuss evaluating and predicting risk.
MPEP 2106 Step 2A- Prong 2:
The judicial exceptions are not integrated into a practical application. Claims 1 and 11 as a whole amount to: merely including instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer, or merely using a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea, or “apply it”; or generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use.
Independent claims 1 and 11 recite the following additional elements to perform the above recited steps: an orchestration computer program executed by an electronic device (claim 1), a machine learning model (claims 1 and 11), an elastic search database and a document-based database (claims 1 and 11), a structured query language ("SQL") storage (claims 1 and 11), semantic searches (claims 1 and 11), a vector database (claims 1 and 11), a non-transitory computer readable storage medium (claim 11), and one or more computer processors (claim 11). These additional elements are generic computer components performing generic computer functions at a high level of generality, and are recited at a high level of generality. These additional elements amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component.
Furthermore, claims 1 and 11 recite the additional elements of a plurality of web scrapers and a large language model. These additional elements are described at high level of generality such that, when viewed as a whole, the additional element does no more than generally link the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use (i.e., collecting information from the internet and natural language processing, respectively).
Individually and as a whole, these additional elements do not integrate the judicial exceptions into a practical application because the claims do not: improve the functioning of the computer itself or any other technology or technical field; apply the judicial exception with, or by use of, a particular machine; effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing; add meaningful limitations beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment to transform the judicial exception into patent-eligible subject matter; amount to more than a recitation of the words "apply it" (or an equivalent) or are more than mere instructions to implement an abstract idea or other exception on a computer.
MPEP 2106 Step 2B:
Independent claims 1 and 11 do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more (also known as an “inventive concept”) than the judicial exception. As discussed above, the additional elements are generic computer components performing generic computer functions at a high level of generality and/or generally link the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept. Alone or in combination, the additional elements do not contribute significantly more than the judicial exception and as a result, the claims are ineligible.
Dependent Claims
Dependent claims 3, 6, 13, and 16, recite additional details that merely narrow the previously recited abstract idea limitations without reciting any additional elements. They are therefore, ineligible for the reasons as discussed above with respect to independent claims 1 and 11.
Allowable Subject Matter
Available prior art, alone or in combination fail to teach all of the claim limitations in the independent claims. Examiner notes that there is a 101 rejection of the claims as well as a 112(a) rejection.
The following are the closest prior art:
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2016/0125542 to Goldin et al. (Goldin) teaches a method of identifying a number of securities of publicly traded companies which are ideal targets for short selling that includes scraping publicly available information on the internet about a company, searching for social connections between a target company and a company which has been previously successfully targeted for a short selling campaign, and collecting and disseminating evidence which would cause a change in the perceived value.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2012/0296845 to Andrews et al. (Andrews) teaches a system that automatically process and "read" news stories and content from blogs, twitter, and other social media sources, represented by news/media corpus, in as close to real-time as possible. The system processes the collected data to arrive at green scores, green certification, and/or model the value of financial securities, including generating a composite environmental or green index.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2020/0202436 to Krishnan (Krishnan) teaches a method for providing stock predictive information by a cloud-based computing system implementing a random forest algorithm via a machine learning model by receiving a set of stock data from multiple sources of stock data wherein the set of stock data at least comprises stock prices at the open and close of a market, changes in stock prices during the open and close of a market, and real-time stock data.
U.S. Patent Publication No. 2014/0172668 to McClintock (McClintock) teaches methods for performing an action in response to an event. The method includes monitoring one or more streams of data such as streaming stock data and determining whether one or more criteria are met by data retrieved from the one or more data streams. The predetermined criteria may include a threshold stock price, a threshold stock volume, or a threshold stock increase/decrease.
NPL “Responding to Activist Short Sellers: Allegations, Firm Responses, and Outcomes” Brendel et al. (Brendel) teaches an analysis on how firms respond to activist short seller reports and how the responses are associated with outcomes for the targeted firms.
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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/S.S.W./Examiner, Art Unit 3628
/RUPANGINI SINGH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3628
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