DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is in reply to correspondence filed 25 February 2026 in regard to application no. 18/766,814. Claims 1-20 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 25 February 2026 has been entered.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. The independent claims each include “using a first application of a data scraping process” and “using a second application of the data scraping process”. There is no support for these limitations in the originally-filed application and they therefore represent impermissible new matter.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claims lie within statutory categories of invention, as each is directed to a system (machine), method (process) or non-transitory computer readable medium (manufacture). The claim(s) recite(s) four data gathering steps (retrieving historical transaction data and present transaction data, and two data scraping steps), an output step (issuing a loan including a repayment schedule), and transferring funds between accounts.
First, this recites a fundamental business practice and a commercial interaction. Lending goes back to biblical times and is a ubiquitous practice of commercial systems around the world. Second, these are steps that, in the absence of computers, could be performed (and once routinely were performed) in the human mind or with paper records.
A loan officer can, and in fact routinely does, collect financial records of a business applying for a loan. Making loans and providing repayment schedules, including transferring funds from the borrower's to the lender's account during repayment, were a common feature of lending long before there was any such thing as a computer; the records were kept on paper. None of this presents any practical difficulty, as it was all once very routine, and none requires any technology beyond a pen and paper.
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 regarding financial transactions, loan repayments and the like, 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.
They do not apply the abstract idea "in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking [it] to a particular technological environment", MPEP § 2106.05(e), as the lack of technical and algorithmic detail in the claims is so as not to go beyond such a general linkage.
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.
Claim 1, which has the most, includes a processor and memory storing instructions. These elements are recited at a high degree of generality and the specification is clear, ¶ 68, that no specific type of computer is required but that any number of known, pre-existing types of computers will suffice, which encompasses a generic computer.
It only performs generic computer functions of mathematical calculations, nondescript manipulation of data, and sharing data 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.
As mentioned previously, the applicant uses "scrape" merely as a synonym for "retrieve", but even if it were otherwise, data scraping was well-understood, routine and conventional before the filing of the claimed invention. For example, Blinn (U.S. Publication No. 2010/0293105) discloses a social networking system [title] in which he disclosed, at that early date, that "data can be scraped" using "any of a variety of conventional techniques". [0042]
The type of information being manipulated does not impose meaningful limitations or render the idea less abstract. The claim limitations when considered in ordered combination - a generic computer performing a chronological sequence of abstract steps - do nothing more than when they are analyzed individually. The other independent claims are simply different embodiments but are likewise directed to a generic computer performing, essentially, the same process.
The dependent claims further do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea: claims 2, 5, 9, 12, 16 and 18 simply recite further, abstract manipulation of data; claims 2,4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 19 and 20 are simply further descriptive of the type of information being manipulated.
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 25 February 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. In regard to 35 U.S.C. § 112(a), though the amendment removed the previous basis for the rejection, it introduced a new basis, as explained above.
In regard to § 101, first, regarding the assertion that the Examiner failed to present a prima facie case, the Examiner must respectfully disagree. All that is required in this instance is for an Examiner to point out what abstract idea(s) are recited in the claims, which elements are abstract and which are not, and to conduct the four step analysis: do the claims lie within a statutory category of invention; do they recite abstraction(s); do they integrate the abstract idea into a practical application; are there additional elements sufficient to meet the “significantly more” bar. The Examiner was careful to do so, over several pages, previously and above. Further, the idea of the prima facie rule is that the Examiner has to fairly apprise the applicant of the basis of a rejection so as to give the applicant a reasonable chance to respond; as the applicant’s response goes on for a good many pages, it seems such reasonable notice was adequately provided.
The claims are not “rejected collectively”; the phrase “[t]he claims recite(s)” refers to the independent claims, which are functionally identical; this is clearly the case because the Examiner provided, later in the Office action, a summary of why the dependent claims did not reach patent eligibility. As required by MPEP § 2106.07(a), each claim was discussed: claim 1 in the main body of the explanation, and a summary of the other independent claims and the dependent claims in the third paragraph of page 6.
The language referred to by the Examiner in identifying the abstraction was a summary of specific steps from the claims themselves. At this point (remarks, pg. 11, first full paragraph) the applicant has not pointed out any “non-judicially excepted limitations” and, as (the Examiner believes) this discussion is related to the step of identifying abstraction recited in the claims, the burden on the Examiner is to simply point out any abstraction recited (that is, set forth or described) in the claims; the additional elements come in later, at prong two of step 2A and in step 2B.
The applicant states the claims were rejected as being “allegedly directed to non-statutory subject matter”. That is imprecise. In fact, on page 3 of the Office action, the Examiner was careful to briefly point out that the “claims lie within statutory categories of invention”. [emphasis added] The issue is not one of statutory eligibility but rather of “judicial exception”.
In regard to the argument that the claims “merely involve[]” a fundamental business practice or commercial interaction, the Examiner must respectfully disagree. The steps are all financial in nature: retrieving financial information, issuing a loan with a repayment schedule, retrieving additional financial information, and transferring funds such as a portion of the net profit of certain accounts from one entity to another. This goes far beyond “mere involvement” of the abstract idea.
Flexibility to the cash flow of a business is a commercial concern rather than a technical problem, and whether the claims preempt by a “categorically attempt to claim the abstract idea of lending” (which, the Examiner agrees, they manifestly do not) is not sufficient. As the Court pointed out in Ariosa1, “[w]here a patent’s claims are deemed only to disclose patent ineligible subject matter under the Mayo framework, as they are in this case, preemption concerns are fully addressed and made moot”.
The Examiner agrees that the claims, as amended, do not recite mathematical concepts, and has removed this basis of the rejection in the above discussion. In regard to the “mental processes” basis, the applicant does not explain why scraping data – which is nothing more than data retrieval, albeit from a particular type of source – would present any difficulty whatever to a person reading from a printed page. Transferring funds can be done by writing a check. None of this presents any practical difficulty and none requires any technology. As mentioned previously and above, the mere fact that computers are used does not, by itself, alter the analysis.
The applicant states in conclusory fashion that the claims provide “an improvement in performance of computing devices and networked environments”. However, the problem identified in paragraph 4 and the solution in 6 are financial rather than technical in nature, and as the Internet operates in an open network similar to what is described in paragraph 19 and has been around since 1969 and in continuous operation since 1984, the Examiner is not clear as to how any of what is described is supposed to improve computers or networks in any way; at most, a generic computer is making use of a conventional network.
In regard to step 2B, the search for “significantly more”, the claims do not include any non-abstract element beyond the well-understood, routine and conventional, nor does the applicant adequately explain how the claims are supposed to improve a computer or other technology.
The claims are not patent eligible and the rejection is maintained.
Conclusion
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
1 Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc., 788 F.3d 1371,1385 (Fed. Cir. 2016)
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