DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is in reply to correspondence filed 19 December 2025 in regard to application no. 18/890,265. Claims 4, 7, 12, 15 and 18 have been cancelled. Claims 1-3, 5, 6, 8-11, 13, 14, 16, 17 and 19-25 are pending and are considered below.
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 .
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, 5, 6, 8-11, 13, 14, 16, 17 and 19-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claims lie within statutory categories of invention, as each is directed to a method (process), system (machine) or non-transitory computer-readable medium (manufacture). The claim(s) recite(s) receiving transaction data, determining a fraud classification and a data item associated with the transaction in nor particular manner, providing data to a machine learning program in no particular manner, and providing the program as output to an external, unclaimed system which then makes a determination.
Briefly setting aside the training of a machine learning program — this will be addressed below — the remainder of the claim recites determining fraud in a transaction, which is both a fundamental business practice and a commercial interaction, each of which is among the “certain methods of organizing human activity” deemed abstract.
Further, in the absence of computers and machine learning, these are steps that can be performed in the human mind. A store manager can receive data representing a transaction, e.g. verbally or by consulting paper records, and can mentally associate this with a type of fraud and other information, and can store or send such information verbally or on paper. None of this presents any practical difficulty and none requires any technology beyond, at most, pen and paper.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because aside from the bare inclusion of a generic computer and nondescript use of Al, discussed below, nothing is done beyond what was set forth above, which does not go beyond generally linking the abstract idea to the technological environment of networked, Al-enabled computers. See MPEP § 2106.05(h).
As the claims only manipulate data pertaining to transaction fraud, they do not improve the “functioning of a computer” or of “any other technology or technical field”. See MPEP § 2106.05(a). They do not apply the abstract idea “with, or by use of a particular machine”, MPEP § 2106.05(b), as the below-cited Guidance is clear that a generic computer is not the particular machine envisioned.
They do not effect a “transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing”, MPEP § 2106.05(c). First, such data, being intangible, are not a particular article at all. Second, the claimed manipulation is neither transformative nor reductive; as the courts have pointed out, in the end, data are still data.
They do not apply the abstract idea “in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking [it] to a particular technological environment”, MPEP § 2106.05(e), as the lack of technical and algorithmic detail in the claims is so as not to go beyond such a general linkage.
The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because the additional claim limitations, considered individually and as an ordered combination, are insufficient to elevate an otherwise-ineligible claim to patent eligibility.
Claim 9, which has the most, includes a processor and memory storing instructions and, at least implicitly, access to some type of network. These elements are recited at a high degree of generality and the specification does not meaningfully limit them, such that a generic computer will suffice. It only performs generic computer functions of nondescriptly manipulating data and sharing data with persons and/or other devices. Generic computers performing generic computer functions, without an inventive concept, do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
The type of information being manipulated does not impose meaningful limitations or render the idea less abstract. In light of Recentive1, simply using known machine learning techniques in a new data environment is insufficient to confer patent eligibility on an otherwise-ineligible invention. The claim limitations when considered as an ordered combination — a generic computer performing a chronological sequence of abstract steps while making use of known Al techniques — do nothing more than when they are analyzed individually.
The other independent claims are simply different embodiments but are likewise directed to a generic computer performing, essentially, the same process. The dependent claims further do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea: claims 2, 5, 10 and 13 simply recite additional output, claim 22 simply recites a source of data. Claims 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 16, 19-21, 24 and 25 are simply further descriptive of the type of information being manipulated; claim 23 simply recites additional input and output.
The claims are not patent eligible. For further guidance please see MPEP § 2106.03 — 2106.07(c) (formerly referred to as the “2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance”, 84 Fed. Reg. 50, 55 (7 January 2019)).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 19 December 2025 in regard to rejections made under 35 U.S.C. § 101 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. “Mitigating false alerts and the processing of false alerts” is within the abstract idea. Integration into a practical application is a term of art and may be satisfied by showing, e.g., an improvement to a computer, use of a particular machine, transforming matter or presenting a particular, rather than general, link between the abstraction and the technology. The applicant has made no reasoned argument as to any of these but merely states in conclusory fashion that, because it mitigates such false alerts and their processing, it provides such integration. The Examiner respectfully disagrees. In regard to the argument that a claim which merely mentions an abstract idea is not directed to it, the Examiner points out that the entire point of the invention – as the applicant characterizes it in the argument just mentioned above – is to the abstract idea which the Examiner has identified. The claims are not patent eligible and the rejection is maintained.
Conclusion
As no rejection is made herein under 35 U.S.C. § 102 or 103, a brief review of the state of the art at the relevant time – the present claims have priority to March 2016 – is in order. In the previous Office action, claims were rejected based on various combinations of the following references: Xiong et al., McMahon et al., Benamour et al., and Burke et al. As the claims have been amended, further search and consideration were conducted.
In addition to the prior art previously made of record, Choudhuri et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2013/0024339) disclose a multi-stage filtering system for fraud detection. [title] It may “receive financial transaction data” and process it through a pair of filters, [0018] and then may “generate a fraud alert”. [0021] It may determine that a “fraud alert is a false positive” based on determining that “a transaction that was initially deemed fraudulent is actually a non-fraudulent transaction”. [0157]
But neither Choudhuri nor the prior art previously made of record, alone or if combined, teach or suggest every limitation of the claims of the present invention, in particular the use of codes (the data item indicating the justification for the fraud classification and the customer identity) and sending data to an external system to determine whether a potential fraud alert is a false positive, combined with the other presently claimed features.
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 SCOTT C ANDERSON whose telephone number is (571)270-7442. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:00 to 5:30.
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/SCOTT C ANDERSON/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3694
1 Recentive Analytics, Inc. v. Fox Corp. et al., 134 F.4th 1205,1216 (Fed. Cir. 2025)
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