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 .
Terminal Disclaimer
Applicant’s Terminal Disclaimer filed 9/9/24 has been approved.
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.
Claim(s) 1-20 is/are directed to statutory systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage medium embodied with software under Step 1 of the eligibility analysis. However, the claims are further directed toward a judicial exception under Step 2A Prong One of the eligibility analysis, namely an abstract idea. Under Step 2A Prong Two of the eligibility analysis, the claim(s) does/do not include additional elements to integrate the exception into a practical application of that exception. Under Step 2B of the eligibility analysis, the claims are not sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because nothing in the asserted claims purports to improve the functioning of the computer itself or effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field. The claim(s) is/are directed to the abstract idea of “systems and methods solving of linear programming supply chain planning problems using functional decomposition”, (see Spec, ¶ 2). This falls under MPEP 2106.04(a)(2), Abstract Idea Groupings, I. MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS, A. Mathematical Relationships, “iv. organizing information and manipulating information through mathematical correlations, Digitech Image Techs., LLC v. Electronics for Imaging, Inc., 758 F.3d 1344, 1350, 111 USPQ2d 1717, 1721 (Fed. Cir. 2014). The patentee in Digitech claimed methods of generating first and second data by taking existing information, manipulating the data using mathematical functions, and organizing this information into a new form. The court explained that such claims were directed to an abstract idea because they described a process of organizing information through mathematical correlations, like Flook's method of calculating using a mathematical formula. 758 F.3d at 1350, 111 USPQ2d at 1721”.
Here the claims recite a number of abstract mathematical concepts used to partition the supply chain network such as: “model the supply chain network as a graph; traverse the graph to apply a maxflow-mincut process to the graph…in response to detecting that the one or more subproblems are not balanced, partition the supply chain network by: applying a decomposition process…determining which of one or more buffers has two or more flows or operations; determining a complicating connecting entity having a lowest assigned level…searching for one or more connected entities using a depth-first-search … iteratively processing each common connected node as a complicating entity; and …generate one or more decomposed supply chain subproblems”.
The additional element(s) or combination of elements in the claim(s) other than the abstract idea per se, i.e. medium, storage, processor, memory, etc., amount(s) to no more than implementing the abstract idea on a generic computer system, (see MPEP 2106.04(a)(2)(III)(C)(1)) . Because a judicial exception is not eligible subject matter, if there are no additional claim elements besides the judicial exception, or if the additional claim elements merely recite another judicial exception, that is insufficient to integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. See, e.g., RecogniCorp, LLC v. Nintendo Co., 855 F.3d 1322, 1327, 122 USPQ2d 1377 (Fed. Cir. 2017) ("Adding one abstract idea (math) to another abstract idea (encoding and decoding) does not render the claim non-abstract"). Therefore, the claim(s) are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter.
Allowable Subject Matter
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The prior art of record fails to disclose, inter alia, modelling, by a computer comprising a processor and a memory, the supply chain network as a graph; traversing, by the computer, the graph to apply a maxflow-mincut process to the graph; in response to detecting that one or more subproblems are balanced, generating, by the computer, a first connected components list and one or more first complicating links; in response to detecting that the one or more subproblems are not balanced, partitioning, by the computer, the supply chain network by: applying, by the computer, a decomposition process according to a classification of the supply chain network; assigning, by the computer, one or more levels to each resource and material buffer according to corresponding placement in the supply chain network; determining, by the computer, which of one or more buffers has two or more flows or operations; determining, by the computer, a complicating connecting entity having a lowest assigned level, and removing a resource load or material flow from each complicating entity; searching, by the computer, for one or more connected entities using a depth-first-search for one or more connected nodes for each operation in each of the removed resource loads and the removed material flows; iteratively processing, by the computer, each common connected node as a complicating entity; and providing, by the computer, a second connected component list and one or more second complicating links of the supply chain network; and generating, by the computer, one or more decomposed supply chain subproblems.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: US-20190303849-A1, US-20080221960-A1, US-9805330-B2, US-9754232-B2, and WO-2013085692-A1.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RUSSELL S GLASS whose telephone number is (571)272-7285. The examiner can normally be reached M-F, 9-5.
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/RUSSELL S GLASS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3627
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