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 Amendment
The amendment filed on December 09, 2025 has been entered. Claims 1-2, 6-9, 11-13, 16, 18-20 have been amended, and claims 3-5, 10, 14-15, 17 have been canceled. Claims 1-2, 6-9, 11-13, 16, 18-20 are currently pending in the application.
Response to Arguments
35 U.S.C 103
Applicant’s arguments have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) has been withdrawn.
35 U.S.C 101
Regarding claims 1-2, 6-9, 11-13, 16, 18-20, applicant argues that in independent claims 1, 19-20 the additional elements sufficiently integrate the alleged judicial exceptions into a practical application under Step 2A, Prong 2 of 101 analysis and amounts to significantly more than the alleged abstract concept.
Examiner has carefully considered Applicant’s argument and respectfully disagrees. Examiner submits the reasoning under the 35 U.S.C. 101 rejection below.
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 1-2, 6-9, 11-13, 16, 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more. The claims does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional computer elements, which are recited at a high level of generality, provide conventional computer functions that do not add meaningful limits to practicing the abstract idea.
Claim 1 recites the following limitations directed to an abstract idea “validating and mapping, by the application, the dataset to one or more fields using intelligent tagging techniques or templates stored in a database; classifying the transactions by applying: a rule engine configured to apply classification rules and resolve rule conflicts; manual user inputs provided via an interactive interface of the application; managing contras by detecting transaction pairs that offset each other and correcting misidentified contras”. These steps describe a mental process that may be performed in the human mind including observing data points and evaluating those observations.
Furthermore the claim does not recite additional limitations that integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or are “significantly more” than the abstract idea because the claims do not recite an improvement to another technology or technical field, an improvement to the functioning of the computer itself, an integration into a practical application, or meaningful limitations beyond generally linking the user of an abstract idea to a particular technological environment. Claim 1 recites in addition to the abstract idea, receiving, by the application, identification of a dataset including a plurality of transactions including one or more tax-related data types; an artificial intelligence (AI) model trained on anonymized and synthetic transaction data, the model being updated based on changes in tax laws or business structures; correcting misidentified contras using the AI model; exporting the classified transactions in a machine-readable format for storage in the database or for downstream tax analysis. When considering whether this is an improvement to computer functionality, the Examiner determines whether the additional elements amount to more than a recitation of the words “apply it” to implement this abstract idea or other exception on a computer. In this case the examiner finds these additional limitations as a simple “apply it” situation where AI models are used to accomplish tasks without detailing how the AI models operate. For example for detecting and correcting contras, an AI model is simply used to recite an outcome, failing to recite how a solution to this problem is accomplished. Similarly with using an intelligent tagging algorithm or hybrid classifications using AI and rules engines, only an idea of a solution or outcome is recited without detailing how such algorithms such as an intelligent tagging algorithm operates. Being able to classify tax-related data and correctly identifying contras transactions are simply automating a manual process. Details of specific technical implementations are notably absent when applying AI models to achieve desired outcomes. It should be noted the limitations of the current claims are performed by the generically recited computer/processor. The limitations are merely instructions to implement the abstract idea on a computer and require no more than a generic computer to perform generic computer functions that are well-understood, routine and conventional activities previously known to the industry. With respect to the limitations above identified as insignificant extra-solution activity above, when re-evaluated these elements are well-understood, routine, and conventional as evidenced by the court cases in MPEP 2106.05(d)(II), "i. Receiving or transmitting data over a network, as per OIP Techs., Inc., v. Amazon.com, Inc., 788 F.3d 1359, 1363, 115 USPQ2d 1090, 1093 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (sending messages over a network) and thus remains insignificant extra-solution activity that does not provide significantly more. Therefore, claim 1 is directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Claims 2, 6-9, 11-13, 16, 18, which depend on claim 1 and include all the limitations of claim 1, recite the additional elements of “wherein receiving identification of a dataset comprises receiving a direct upload of the dataset via a uniform resource locator (URL) through the application; wherein mapping the dataset to one or more fields comprises using manually created fields and a template including predefined standard fields stored in the database; wherein creating the new analysis comprises receiving, via the application, an identification of an existing template stored in the database for use in the analysis; wherein creating the analysis comprises receiving, via the application, details of a new template for use in the analysis, the new template being stored in the database for subsequent analyses; wherein creating the analysis further comprises receiving, via the application, a user selection of an AI model from among a plurality of pre-trained models stored in the database; wherein managing contras comprises the application identifying transaction pairs as contras and presenting the identified contras to a user via the client device for review; receiving, via the application, a user selection of a first transaction within a contra pair to retain for the analysis and discarding a second transaction within the pair; storing details of the contra pairs in the database; and using the AI model to identify subsequent contra pairs and automatically eliminate one or both transactions from future analyses; wherein classifying the transactions further comprises receiving, via the application, a user-defined prioritization of manual classification, rules-based classification, and AI classification when conflicts occur; training the AI model to distinguish between different data types and classification types based on anonymized and synthetic transaction data”. These limitations do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea of a mental process.
Therefore, claims 2, 6-9, 11-13, 16, 18 are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Claims 19-20 recite similar limitations and are also directed to the abstract idea of a mental process of analyzing and evaluating information. These claims are rejected using the same rationale used in claims 1-18 above.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to TONY WU whose telephone number is (571)272-2033. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday (9-5).
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/TONY WU/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2166