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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 August 4, 2026 has been entered.
Status of Claims
Claims 1, 5, 8, 12, 15, 19, and 20 have been amended. Claims 2, 9, and 16 have been cancelled. No claims have been added. Thus, claims 1, 3- 8, 10-15, and 17-20 remain pending and are presented for examination.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments and amendments filed 04 August 2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues, “As amended, independent claims 1, 8, and 15 do not stop at calculating the regression coefficient of the target performance indicator to the business indicator. Rather, the claims further recite adjusting at least one performance parameter of the application- specifically, at least one of a frame rate, a resolution, a power consumption, a memory usage, or an interface fluency of the application-based on the determined regression coefficient.” The argument is not persuasive because the currently examined claims do not include these adjustment limitations. Rather, the adjustment limitations relied upon by Applicant appear only in the unentered claims submitted on June 4, 2026. Accordingly, those limitations are not considered in evaluating the patent eligibility of the currently pending claims. As currently examined, the claims recite obtaining and analyzing performance and business-indicator data, performing regression and related statistical calculations, and determining regression coefficients. The claims do not require using the determined coefficient to control or modify the operation of the application or any technological component. Therefore, the claims do not recite the practical application asserted by Applicant, and the 101 rejection is maintained.
Applicant further argues that the claim goes beyond producing a value but rather uses the calculated result to effect a concrete change in the operation of the application that addresses a specific technical problem in the field of application performance monitoring, not a mere abstract mathematical exercise. However, the examiner disagrees. The current claims define a mathematical procedure for estimating a coefficient that is not directly obtained from the regression including the target performance indicator. In particular, the claims recite determining first and second regression coefficients, calculating ratios of corresponding coefficients, and determining the regression coefficient of the target performance indicator based on those ratios. These limitations improve, at most, the completeness, interpretability, or reliability of the resulting statistical model. The claims do not, however, recite an improvement to the operation of the application or to the functioning of a computer. The claims do not require the coefficient to control or modify a particular application, processor operation, memory operation, communication operation, or resource-allocation operation. Nor do the claims recite a particular application-performance monitoring architecture or a specified technical operation performed in response to the recovered coefficient.
Applicant argues the present amendments place the particular regression-model architecture and coefficient mapping directly, thereby integrating the alleged mathematical concept into a
practical application through a specific improvement to regression modeling and coefficient recovery under multicollinearity, rather than through a mere field-of-use limitation or an instruction to apply an abstract idea on a computer. However, Applicant’s argument is not persuasive. Although amended claim 1 recites a more particular regression procedure for addressing multicollinearity, the limitations of identifying correlated indicators, performing regression, determining coefficients, calculating coefficient ratios, and recovering a target coefficient, remain mathematical operations for analyzing performance data. The claims therefore further define the mathematical concept, but do not apply it to a particular technological process or improve the operation of the application, computer, or other technology. In particular, the claims do not recite a specific data structure, processing architecture, resource-allocation technique, or application-control operation that is improved by the coefficient-recovery procedure. Nor do they require the recovered coefficient to produce a specified technical change in the application. The recitation of an application identifies the source of the analyzed data and does not alter the claimed statistical processing. Accordingly, it remains a field-of-use limitation under MPEP § 2106.05(h).
It is also argued that the Office Action has not provided any evidence that the specific ordered combination is well understood, routine, or conventional, and that the absence of a prior-art rejection is a factual indication that the claimed combination is not well-understood, routine, or conventional. However, the Examiner first notes that the claims recitations of two regression models, correlated variables, and corresponding coefficient ratios further limits the mathematical concept recited in the claims. These limitations are not considered as additional elements and therefore evidence of being well understood routine and conventional is not required. Further, the Examiner asserts the absence of a prior art rejection does not establish that the claimed combination is nonconventional for purposes of § 101. The eligibility and prior-art inquiries are separate. A claim may recite a mathematical concept even if the mathematical formulation has not been shown to be anticipated or obvious over the prior art. The only additional elements recited by the claims are generic computer components that are used to perform the claimed mathematical processing. Applicant has not identified any unconventional computer implementation or other non-mathematical element that, alone or in combination with the mathematical concept, amounts to significantly more.
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- 8, 10-15, and 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Claims 1, 8, and 15 recite “obtaining a plurality of performance indicators of an application associated with a business indicator for the application, the business indicator indicating a performance level of the application at a user side to which the application is provided; determining, among the plurality of performance indicators, a target performance indicator having a multicollinearity problem and having a correlation with at least two first performance indicators greater than or equal to a first threshold, the at least two first performance indicators being mutually independent; performing multivariable linear regression processing on the target performance indicator as a dependent variable and the at least two first performance indicators as independent variables to determine a respective first regression coefficient for each of the at least two first performance indicators, each first regression coefficient indicating a degree of impact of the respective first performance indicator on the target performance indicator; determining a plurality of second regression coefficients between the business indicator and a plurality of second performance indicators, the second performance indicators being performance indicators other than the target performance indicator among the plurality of performance indicators, each second regression coefficient indicating a degree of impact of a respective second performance indicator on the business indicator; and for each of the at least two first performance indicators, determining a respective second regression coefficient associated with the first performance indicator from the plurality of second regression coefficients, determining a respective ratio of the respective second regression coefficient to the respective first regression coefficient, and determining a regression coefficient of the target performance indicator to the business indicator based on the respective ratios, the regression coefficient of the target performance indicator to the business indicator indicating a degree of impact of the target performance indicator on the business indicator”. The limitations above are processes that under the broadest reasonable interpretation fall into the “mathematical concepts” and “mental processes” grouping of abstract ideas –“concepts performed in the human mind by observation, evaluation, judgement, and opinion”, see MPEP 2106.04 (a)(2) (III).
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because the additional elements of “an electronic device, comprising: a processor and a memory; wherein the memory stores a computer-executed instruction; and the processor executes the computer-executed instruction stored in the memory, causing the processor to perform operations” (claim 8) and “a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, wherein the computer-readable storage medium stores a computer-executed instruction, and the computer-executed instruction, when executed by the processor, implements operations” (claim 15) are not indicative of integration into a practical application since they are recited at a high level of generality. Additionally, these additional elements amount to no more than mere instructions to implement the abstract idea on a computer and merely use a computer as a tool to practice the judicial exception. Further the recitation that the business indicator is for “an application” is a generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use- see MPE 2106.05(h). Even when viewed in combination, these additional elements are still mere instructions to implement the judicial exception and field of use.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception for the same reasons as presented above. The claims as a whole describe how to apply the concept of regression modeling of performance and business indicators using “an electronic device, comprising: a processor and a memory; wherein the memory stores a computer-executed instruction; and the processor executes the computer-executed instruction stored in the memory, causing the processor to perform operations” (claim 8) and “a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, wherein the computer-readable storage medium stores a computer-executed instruction, and the computer-executed instruction, when executed by the processor, implements operations” (claim 15), which are generic computer components, to apply the abstract idea on a computer. Moreover, the additional elements of are known and conventional computing elements as evidenced by the spec at para 0027; 0036; 0121-0131---describing these elements at a high level of generality. Even when considered in combination, these additional elements represent mere instructions to implement an abstract idea or other exception on a computer, which do not provide an inventive concept. Therefore, the claims are ineligible.
Dependent claims 3-7, 10-14, and 17-20 recite additional details that further narrow the previously recited abstract idea. There are no additional elements that are indicative of integration into a practical application; nor are there additional elements that amount to significantly more that the judicial exception. Thus, even when viewed as a whole, nothing in the claims adds significantly more to the abstract idea. Therefore, the claims are ineligible.
Reason for Claims Not Being Rejected Over Prior Art
Claims 1-20 are allowable over the prior art of record.
The closest prior art is:
Shi et al (US 2019/0205702) discloses determining a performance indicator for video content. Determining a sensitivity level between the performance indicator and each video content.
Harutyunyan et al (US 2023/0099001) discloses KPI/metric collection, normalization, synchronization as well as determining regression coefficients between the business indicator (KPI) and the second indicators.
Anand et al (US 2018/0196837) discloses monitoring KPIS and performance outputs over intervals including correlations between KPIs and performance and selecting KPI with highest coefficient as target.
Trivedi et al (US 2024/0205106) discloses user inputs received by way of the graphical user interface to define the threshold comparison condition are received by way of a graphical user interface that facilitates defining one or more KPIs that are being monitored, one or more comparison conditions (e.g., greater than, less than, equal to, not equal to, greater than or equal to, less than or equal to, within a range, outside a range, or some other suitable basis upon which values may be compared), an option to compare KPI values for different KPIs that are added for inclusion in the threshold correlation rule, and a preset threshold to which the one or more KPI values may be compared.
Zhang et al, “A KPI-Based Probabilistic Soft Sensor Development Approach that Maximizes the Coefficient of Determination” discloses conditional mean of KPI on others within Gaussian components yields coefficients.
There is no prior art known at this time that can be reasonably combined to teach “for each of the at least two first performance indicators, determining a respective second regression coefficient associated with the first performance indicator from the plurality of second regression coefficients, determining a respective ratio of the respective second regression coefficient to the respective first regression coefficient, and determining a regression coefficient of the target performance indicator to the business indicator based on the respective ratios, the regression coefficient of the target performance indicator to the business indicator indicating a degree of impact of the target performance indicator on the business indicator”.
Conclusion
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/SHANNON S CAMPBELL/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3628
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