DETAILED ACTION
Claims 16-33 are pending.
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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d).
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements provided complies with the provisions of MPEP § 609. It has been placed in the application file, and the information referred to therein has been considered as to the merits. A signed copy of the form is attached.
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 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. Claim 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., an abstract idea) without “significantly more.” Claim 16 is directed to the methods of organizing human activity of performing by an application configured to be executed on a “Process monitor for open die forging”, which is considered an abstract idea. The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the generically-recited computer elements (e.g. a voice input, a mobile point-of-sale and a speech recognition processor) do not add a meaningful limitation to the abstract idea because the actions, functions, and/or steps performed by the generically-recited computer elements would be routine and conventional in any computer implementations.
First, because the courts have declined to define “abstract idea,” other than by example, examiners have been instructed to refer to the body of case law precedent in order to identify abstract ideas by way of comparison to concepts already found to be abstract. See July 2015 Update: Subject Matter Eligibility, published by USPTO (“July 2015 Update”). The examiner refers to the following recent cases that, if not directly relevant to the present claims, at least represent "methods of organizing human activity" that include similar concepts as the present claims, and therefore assist in the present abstract idea determination;
buySAFE: abstract idea found to be related to managing relationships or transactions between people such as creating a contractual relationship;
Bilski: abstract idea found to be related to hedging;
Alice: abstract idea found to be mitigating settlement risks;
Accenture: abstract idea found to be related to generating rule-based tasks for processing an insurance claim;
Fort Properties, In re Comiskey: abstract idea found to be related to satisfying or avoiding a legal obligation such as tax-free investing or arbitration;
Ultamercial: abstract idea found to be related to advertising, marketing, or sales activities or behaviors such as using advertising as an exchange or currency;
In re Maucorps: abstract idea found to be using an algorithm for determining the optimal number of visits by a business representative to a client;
Freddie Mac: abstract idea found to be computing a price for the sale of a fixed income asset and generating a financial analysis output.
Similarly, as noted above, the examiner finds that the present claims are directed to the methods of organizing human activity of organizing human activity of performing by an application configured to be executed on a “robot having at least one foo Process monitor for open die forging”, which is considered to be an abstract idea.
Second, in response to an abstract idea finding, the examiner is to determine if any limitation in the claim(s), individually or in combination with each other, amount to “significantly more” than the abstract idea. For this step, examiners have been instructed to rely on what the courts have recognized, or those in the art would recognize, as elements that are well-understood, routine, and conventional. See July 2015 Update. For example, the courts have recognized the following computer functions to be well-understood, routine, and conventional functions when performed by generic computer elements:
Flook, Bancorp: performing repetitive calculations; Alice: receiving, processing, and storing data, also referred to as electronical record keeping;
electronically scanning or extracting data from a physical document;
Content Extraction: Ultramercial: updating an activity log;
Benson, Bancorp, CyberSource: automating mental tasks;
Ultramercial, buySAFE, Cyberfone: receiving or transmitting data over a network such as by using the Internet to gather data.
Similarly, as noted above, the examiner finds the that the present claims do not include “significantly more” because the generically-recited computer elements do not add a meaningful limitation to the abstract idea as the actions, functions, and/or steps performed by the generically-recited computer elements would be routine and conventional in any computer implementations.
Applicant is suggested to rewrite the claimed language as the following:
To overcome the issue raised above with respect to claim 16, the Applicant is suggested to add, in line 3, after the word “calculating” --, by a processor --; and in line 7, after the word “calculating”, -- by the processor --.
Dependent claims not specifically rejected are rejected as being dependent upon a rejected base claim.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MCDIEUNEL MARC whose telephone number is (571) 272-6964. The examiner can normally be reached on Work 9:00 AM to 7:30.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, WADE MILES can be reached on (571) 270-7777. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is (571)-273-3976.
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/McDieunel Marc/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3665
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