DETAILED ACTION
Status of Claims
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This action is in reply to the amendment filed on 07/21/2026.
Claims 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 12, 16, 17, and 19 have been cancelled.
Claims 1, 4, 6-8, 11, 13-15, 18, and 20 are currently pending and have been examined.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 07/21/2026 with respect to claims 1, 4, 6-8, 11, 13-15, 18, and 20 rejected under 35 USC 101 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant argues the amended limitations of “determining a top-up amount based jointly on the predicted funding amount, an unused balance of an entity account, and a delay associated with an intersystem transfer; before the predicted future interval, causing a third-party entity to transfer an amount determined from the top-up amount into the entity account; receiving confirmation that the transfer was executed; only in response to that confirmation, authorizing a user to submit an instant advance request; and following approval, causing a second, intra-system transfer from the funded entity account to the user account.” integrates the abstract idea into a practical application under Step 2A, Prong 2, and addresses the constraints that intersystem transfers may involve delays that prevent funds from being available when an instant advance is requested and accounts for that delay by pre-positioning an appropriately calculated amount, confirming completion of the intersystem transfer, and conditioning authorization of the user interaction on that confirmation, the Examiner respectfully disagrees. These steps are further describing commercial and legal interactions, and as per MPEP 2106.05(f) Use of a computer or other machinery in its ordinary capacity for economic or other tasks (e.g., to receive, store, or transmit data) or simply adding a general purpose computer or computer components after the fact to an abstract idea (e.g., a fundamental economic practice or mathematical equation) does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or provide significantly more. See Affinity Labs v. DirecTV, 838 F.3d 1253, 1262, 120 USPQ2d 1201, 1207 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (cellular telephone);. With respect to the delay, this is not a technical issue, rather the [0049] specification describes the delay as:
“In determining a top-up amount, the top-up engine 250 accounts for time delays associated with intersystem transfers between the third-party entity 115 and the third-party system 110. For example, if the flexible advance system 125 provides daily funding instructions to the third-party entity 115 and there is a one day intersystem transfer delay, the top-up engine 250 determines the top-up amount for the following day (day + 1) based in part on the remaining, unused balance from the previous day (day — 1).”
Here, accounting for the delay, is further describing commercial and legal interactions.
With respect to Recentive Analytics, Inc. v. Fox Corp., 134 F.4th 1205 (Fed. Cir. 2025) and that the claims recites the specific downstream operations through which the model output controls delay-aware pre-funding, confirmation-gated authorization, and a subsequent intra-system transfer, the Examiner respectfully disagrees, controlling delays for pre-funding, confirmation-gated authorization, and a subsequent intra-system transfer, are further describing abstract concepts and commercial and legal interactions, and as per 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");, adding one abstract idea to another does not render the claims eligible. For the same reasons as above, reciting a more specific arrangement of predictive calculation, delay-aware pre-positioning, execution confirmation, conditional authorization, and intra-system execution is further limiting the abstract idea and does not amount significantly more than the abstract idea under Step 2B, as per MPEP 2106.05(f) Use of a computer or other machinery in its ordinary capacity for economic or other tasks (e.g., to receive, store, or transmit data) or simply adding a general purpose computer or computer components after the fact to an abstract idea (e.g., a fundamental economic practice or mathematical equation) does not integrate a judicial exception into a practical application or provide significantly more. See Affinity Labs v. DirecTV, 838 F.3d 1253, 1262, 120 USPQ2d 1201, 1207 (Fed. Cir. 2016) (cellular telephone);. With respect to applicant’s arguments that the claims are not WURC, just because claims may be novel under § 103 over a number of prior art rejections does not mean they are not directed to an abstract idea. Cf. Intellectual Ventures ILLCv. Symantec Corp., 838 F.3d 1307, 1315 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
Indeed, “[t]he ‘novelty’ of any element or steps in a process, or even of the process itself, is of no relevance in determining whether the subject matter of a claim falls within the § 101 categories of possibly patentable subject matter.” Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 188—89 (1981) (emphasis added); see also Mayo, 132 S. Ct. at 1303—04 (rejecting “the Government’s invitation to substitute §§ 102, 103, and 112 inquiries for the better established inquiry under § 101”). Here, the jury’s general finding that Symantec did not prove by clear and convincing evidence that three particular prior art references do not disclose all the limitations of or render obvious the asserted claims does not resolve the question of whether the claims embody an inventive concept at the second step of Mayo/Alice.
For the reasons above, the 101 rejection is hereby maintained.
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, 4, 6-8, 11, 13-15, 18, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more, and fails step 2 of the analysis because the focus of the claims is not on the devices themselves or a practical application but rather directed towards an abstract idea, the analysis is provided below.
Step 1 (Statutory Categories) - The claims pass step 1 of the subject matter eligibility test (see MPEP 2106(III)) as the claims are directed towards a system, method and non-transitory computer-readable medium.
Step 2A – Prong One (Do the claims recite an abstract idea?) - The idea is recited in the claims, in part, by:
training a machine-learned model by:
accessing historical seasonality data from a plurality of time intervals;
generating a plurality of training vectors based on the historical seasonality data, wherein each of the plurality of training vectors is associated with a time interval of the plurality of time intervals, and wherein each respective training vector is associated with a label indicating an actual usage amount of a respective time interval;
for each of the plurality of training vectors, applying the machine-learned model to the training vector to generate a prediction of a usage amount for the respective time interval;
iteratively updating the weights of the machine-learned model for each time interval of the plurality of time intervals based on a comparison between the predicted usage amounts and actual usage amounts;
applying the updated machine-learned model to seasonality data associated with user accounts maintained by a third-party computer system to predict a funding amount for a future time interval;
determining a top-up amount based on the predicted funding amount, a remaining unused balance of an entity account maintained by the third-party computer system, and a time delay associated with an intersystem transfer from a third-party entity to the entity account;
before the future time interval, transmitting, to the third-party entity, first instructions that cause the third-party entity to transfer a transfer amount determined based on the top-up amount to the entity account;
receiving an indication that the third-party entity executed the first instructions;
in response to receiving the indication, authorizing a user associated with one of the user accounts to submit an instant advance request; and
in response to approval of the instant advance request, transmitting second instructions to transfer funds from the entity account to the user account.
The steps recited above under Step 2A Prong One of the analysis under the broadest reasonable interpretation covers commercial or legal interactions (including marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations) for analyzing seasonality data to generate an action for a time interval but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is other than reciting an online system, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, a third-party computer system, and a hardware processor, nothing in the claim elements are directed towards other than commercial or legal interactions for analyzing historical seasonality data to predict future funding amounts needed, instruct the funds to be transferred and authorize cash advances. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers commercial or legal interactions, then it falls within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activities” groupings of abstract ideas. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Step 2A – Prong Two (Does the claim recite additional elements that integrate the judicial exception into a practical application?) - This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claims only recite the additional elements of an online system, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, a third-party computer system, and a hardware processor. The online system, non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, third-party computer system, and hardware processor are recited at a high level of generality such that it amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer components and limits the idea to the computer environment. Mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components and limiting an idea to a particular environment are not indicative of a practical application (see MPEP 20106.05(f) and MPEP 20106.05(h)). Additionally, with respect to instructing the third pard party entities, this is akin to Alice Corp. and ineligible for the same reasons, in which the Court walked through the test and found:
The Court identified the additional elements in the claim, e.g., by noting that the method claims recited steps of using a computer to "create electronic records, track multiple transactions, and issue simultaneous instructions", and that the product claims recited hardware such as a "data processing system" with a "communications controller" and a "data storage unit" (573 U.S. at 224-26, 110 USPQ2d at 1984-85);
The Court considered the additional elements individually, noting that all the computer functions were "‘well-understood, routine, conventional activit[ies]' previously known to the industry," each step "does no more than require a generic computer to perform generic computer functions", and the recited hardware was "purely functional and generic" (573 U.S. at 225-26, 110 USPQ2d at 1984-85);
Accordingly, these additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claims are directed towards an abstract idea.
Step 2B (Does the claim recite additional elements that amount to significantly more than the judicial exception?) - The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because, as discussed above, with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, using the additional elements of an online system, a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium, a third-party computer system, and a hardware processor to perform the steps recited in Step 2A Prong One of the analysis amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer components and limits the idea to the computer environment. Mere instructions to apply an exception using generic computer components and limiting an idea to particular environment does not provide an inventive concept. The additional elements have been considered separately, and as an ordered combination as a whole, and do not add significantly more (also known as an “inventive concept”) to the judicial exception. Further, MPEP 2106.05(d)(ii) provides that receiving and transmitting data over a network (see buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350, 1355, 112 USPQ2d 1093, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (computer receives and sends information over a network), and, Performing repetitive calculations, Flook, 437 U.S. at 594, 198 USPQ2d at 199 (recomputing or readjusting alarm limit values); Bancorp Services v. Sun Life, 687 F.3d 1266, 1278, 103 USPQ2d 1425, 1433 (Fed. Cir. 2012) ("The computer required by some of Bancorp’s claims is employed only for its most basic function, the performance of repetitive calculations, and as such does not impose meaningful limits on the scope of those claims."), are well-understood routine and conventional, similar to the instant application claims which recites and sending and receiving data over network (accessing historical data), and what amounts analyzing data and performing repetitive calculations for analyzing seasonality data but for the recitation of generic computer components. With respect to the machine learning model and training the model, the training of the model is recited at a generic level, and in view of the new July 2024 Subject Matter Eligibility Examples, which provides additional guidance on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility, including artificial intelligence, the Examiner finds the claims ineligible. Similar to Claim 2 of Example 47 in the July 2024 Subject Matter Eligibility Examples, the training is recited at high level of generality such that it amounts to using a generic computer to perform generic computer functions, akin to using a computer to perform repetitive calculations (See MPEP 2106.05(d)), and therefore amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer (See MPEP 2106.05(f)). Additionally, similar to Recentive Analytics, Inc. v. Fox Corp., Case No. 2023-2437 (Fed. Cir. Apr. 18, 2025), the claims are directed to the abstract idea of using a generic machine learning technique in a particular environment, with no inventive concept in which the Courts found the claims to be ineligible. The claims are not patent eligible.
The dependent claims have been given the full analysis including analyzing the additional limitations both individually and in combination as a whole. For instance, claims 4, 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 18, and 20 are all steps that fall within the “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activities” groupings of abstract ideas, further defining the abstract idea, amounting to mere instructions to apply the idea as discussed above. The Dependent claims when analyzed both individually and in combination are also held to be patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101 for the same reasoning as above and the additional recited limitations fail to establish that the claims are not directed to an abstract idea. The additional limitations of the dependent claims when considered individually and as an ordered combination do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
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 GREGORY S CUNNINGHAM II whose telephone number is (313)446-6564. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 8:30am-4pm.
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GREGORY S. CUNNINGHAM II
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 3694
/GREGORY S CUNNINGHAM II/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3694
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