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 .
Status of Claims
This non-final office action is responsive to Applicant’s submission filed 01/27/2026. Currently, claims 1-20 are pending. Claim 1 has been amended. No newly added or cancelled claims.
Terminal Disclaimer
The terminal disclaimer filed on 01/27/2026 disclaiming the terminal portion of any patent granted on this application which would extend beyond the expiration date of U.S. Patent Nos. 11,720,977 and 12,106,386 has been reviewed and is accepted. The terminal disclaimer has been recorded.
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 a judicial exception (i.e., abstract idea) without significantly more.
The claims recite method, system and computer program product for managing employee advances.
Exemplary claim 1 recites in part,
“providing…for display a user interface by an application on a client device in which a user can request to receive compensation for a portion of time worked during a time interval before a subsequent date at which compensation for the time interval is scheduled to be distributed by an employer of the user;
responsive to a request from the user, accessing…an entry in a database associated with the user and including information representative of a total amount of uncompensated time worked by the user;
receiving…a requested amount of compensation from the user via the user interface; and
in response to 1) the requested amount of compensation being less than a total amount of compensation the user is owed, 2) an amount of time reported but not recorded as worked by the user not exceeding a historical average for the user, and 4) explicit confirmation from the user, automatically:
executing…a transfer of compensation from the online system to an account of the user; and
modifying…a database entry associated with the user by subtracting a compensated amount of time determined based on the requested amount of compensation from the total amount of uncompensated time.
But for recitation of the application with a user interface on a client device, an online system comprising a processor, and a database entry modifiable by the online system, the above limitations of claim 1, under their broadest reasonable interpretation, fall within the “Certain methods of organizing human activity” grouping of abstract ideas, enumerated in MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)(II). Specifically, the claims amount to managing commercial or legal interactions by managing payment of compensation (legal obligation) the user is owed based upon hours worked.
The claims recite a series of steps to manage payment of compensation the user is owed by allowing the user to request compensation for a portion of time worked during a time interview before the scheduled payment, accessing a record of the uncompensated time that has been worked, receiving a requested amount of compensation, and executing and recording a database entry of compensation transferred in response to the requested amount being less than the total amount of compensation owed, a historical average of time worked by the user, and explicit confirmation of the user.
If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers managing commercial or legal interactions, then it falls within the “Certain methods of organizing human activity” grouping of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The claim recites the additional elements in the form of computer elements (online system, client device, user interface) for performing the recited steps. Providing an interface on a display for a user to make a request and receiving requests via the displayed interface additionally amounts to insignificant extra-solution activity of data gathering (see MPEP 2106.05(g)). Accessing an entry in a database similarly additionally amounts to insignificant extra-solution activity of data gathering (see MPEP 2106.05(g)). Using the recited computer hardware to manage compensation for time worked by an employee merely limits the use of the abstract idea to computer environments – see MPEP 2106.05(h). As noted in MPEP 2106.04(d), limitations which amount to instructions to implement an abstract idea on a computer or merely using a computer as a tool, limitations which amount to insignificant extra-solution activity, and limitations which amount to generally linking an abstraction to a particular technological environment do not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application.
Consideration of the elements as a combination does not change the analysis as they do not add anything compared to when the steps are considered separately, and performance of the steps of the claim technologically does not present a meaningful limit to the scope of the claim which would reasonably integrate the steps into a practical application.
The recitation of additional elements is acknowledged, as identified above. The elements discussed above regarding claim 1 with respect to practical application, are equally applicable to consideration of whether the claims amount to significantly more.
The specification describes that the client device includes "a conventional computer system" as well as commercially available devices running Apple IOS or ANDROID at [0016], and this interface is used to present information to a user and collect information from the user. This is similar to what was found by the courts to be well-understood, routine, and conventional of presenting offers and gathering statistics (See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II)).
Accessing an entry in a database is also similar to what was found by the courts to be well-understood, routine, and conventional of electronic recordkeeping and storing and retrieving information in memory (See MPEP 2106.05(d)(II)).
Consideration of the elements as a combination does not change the analysis as they do not add anything compared to when the steps are considered separately, and performance of these steps technologically does not present a meaningful limit to the scope of the claim which would amount to significantly more.
Accordingly, claim 1 is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., abstract idea) without significantly more.
Claims 9 and 17 recite similar limitations as set forth in claim 1, and therefore are rejected based on similar rationale.
Dependent claims 2-8, 10-16 and 18-20 recite limitations directed to the abstract idea, and do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application nor provide an inventive concept.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-20 are allowed over prior art.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
In view of the prosecution history of U.S. Patent Appl. Nos. 17/572,499 and 18/335,394 (now U.S. Patent Nos. 11,720,977 and 12,106,386 respectively), none of the relevant patent and non-patent prior art (single or in combination) teaches the combination:
“in response to 1) the requested amount of compensation being less than a total amount of compensation the user is owed, 2) an amount of time reported but not recorded as worked by the user not exceeding a historical average for the user, and 3) explicit confirmation from the user, automatically:
executing, by the online system, a transfer of compensation from the online system to an account of the user; and
modifying, by the online system, a database entry associated with the user by subtracting a compensated amount of time determined based on the requested amount of compensation from the total amount of uncompensated time”,
as recited in claims 1, 9 and 17.
Conclusion
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/OLUSEGUN GOYEA/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3627