DETAILED ACTION
The following is a Final Office action. In response to Non-Final communications received 12/23/2025, Applicant, on 3/19/2026, amended Claims 1, 8, and 15, cancelled Claims 3, 10, and 17, and added Claims 21-23. Claims 1-2, 4-9, 11-16, and 18-23 are pending in this action, have been considered in full, and are rejected below.
Response to Arguments
Arguments regarding Double Patenting – The rejection is hereby removed in light of Applicant’s filing of a Terminal Disclaimer on 3/17/2026.
Arguments regarding 35 USC §101 Alice – Applicant recites the amended limitations of the claims, states that these claims establish integration into a practical application as the claims don’t merely analyze data and report a result, but reroute traffic between service providers, stating that this is physical actions which cannot be performed in the human mind, and thus is not abstract and practically integrated. Examiner disagrees as this is a mere allegation of eligibility under 101, as Applicant does not state why the claims are practically integrated. The rejection shows that the claims recite clear abstractions of both mental processes and certain methods of organizing human activity and instructing a remedial action is both a mental process and organizing human activity. Applicant does not state how or why these would not be considered abstract under Prong 2A. The claims are not practically integrated as the additional elements of an outage risk detection system, computing environment, etc. are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic processor performing a generic computer function of storing, retrieving, sending, and processing data) such that they amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer components. This is utilization of current technologies, “Applying It”, similar to that of Alice, and there is no improvement to any additional element, alone or in combination. There is no improvement to a technology or any technological process and performing these actions on a computer system would be utilization of current technologies to perform the abstract limitations of the Claims, and any inventive concept would be contained wholly within the abstraction. Initiating a remedial action such as rerouting operations and reconfiguring the systems can be instructional here as claimed and thus is not practically integrated.
Therefore, the arguments are non-persuasive, the Claims are ineligible as there is no inventive concept, and the rejection of the Claims and their dependents are maintained under 35 USC 101.
Arguments regarding 35 USC §103 – The rejection is hereby removed in light of the reasons found in the “Allowable Subject Matter” section found below.
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.
Alice - Claims 1-2, 4-9, 11-16, and 18-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Claims 1, 8, and 15 recite limitations to ingesting events, wherein each event indicates a condition detected by a monitoring tool with respect to a computing component within a computing environment (Collecting Information, an Observation, a Mental Process; a Commercial Interaction, i.e. managing service incidents; a Certain Method of Organizing Human Activity), determining that an event is received in accordance with an acceptance rate and in response to determining that the event is received in accordance with the determined acceptance rate, normalizing the event into a unified common event format, queuing the normalized event for processing, and assigning an ingested timestamp to the event (Analyzing the Information, an Evaluation, a Mental Process; a Commercial Interaction, i.e. managing service incidents; a Certain Method of Organizing Human Activity), monitoring ingested events to identify computer services with current service incidents, wherein the computer services are such that they have incidents that historically require human interaction to resolve (Collecting and Analyzing the Information, an Observation and Evaluation, a Mental Process; a Commercial Interaction, i.e. managing service incidents; a Certain Method of Organizing Human Activity),aggregating an aggregate count of organizations experiencing service incidents for a computer service of the computer services within a plurality of time windows (Analyzing the Information, an Evaluation, a Mental Process; a Commercial Interaction, i.e. managing service incidents; a Certain Method of Organizing Human Activity), determining a baseline aggregate count and historical variability for the aggregate count based on a statistical norm and deviation for the plurality of time windows (Analyzing the Information, an Evaluation, a Mental Process; a Commercial Interaction, i.e. managing service incidents; a Certain Method of Organizing Human Activity), setting a threshold level based on the baseline aggregate count and a multiple of statistical deviations of the aggregate count (Analyzing the Information, an Evaluation, a Mental Process; a Commercial Interaction, i.e. managing service incidents; a Certain Method of Organizing Human Activity), generating an outage risk detection alert responsive to the aggregate count surpassing the threshold level (Transmitting the Analyzed Information, a Judgment, a Mental Process; a Commercial Interaction, i.e. managing service incidents; a Certain Method of Organizing Human Activity), and responding to the system outage, wherein responding to the system outage comprises: initiating a remedial action, wherein the remedial action comprises at least one of rerouting operations from a first computer service provider to a second computer service provider, rectifying a cause of the event, or reconfiguring one or more systems that rely on the computing component associated with the system outage (Transmitting the Analyzed Information, an Evaluation and Judgment, a Mental Process; a Commercial Interaction, i.e. managing service incidents; a Certain Method of Organizing Human Activity), which under their broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind for the purposes of a Commercial Interaction, i.e. managing service incidents, but for the recitation of generic computer components. That is, other than reciting an outage risk detection system, a computer service (generally linked), computing environment associated with the system outage, system, memory, processor, and computer-readable medium, nothing in the claim element precludes the step from practically being performed or read into the mind for the purposes of a Commercial Interaction. For example, aggregating a count of organizations experiencing service incidents within a plurality of time windows encompasses a supervisor or technician at an internet service provider who fields calls having to do with an outage and counting/aggregating these calls, which is an observation, evaluation, and judgment. If a claim limitation, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers performance of the limitation in the mind but for the recitation of generic computer components, then it falls within the “Mental Processes” grouping of abstract ideas, an observation, evaluation, and judgment. Further, as described above, the claims recite limitations for a Commercial Interaction, a “Certain Method of Organizing Human Activity”. Accordingly, the claim recites an abstract idea.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claim recites the above stated additional elements to perform the abstract limitations as above. The system, computing environment, memory, processor, and medium are recited at a high-level of generality (i.e., as a generic software/module performing a generic computer function of storing, retrieving, sending, and processing data) such that they amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer components. Even if taken as an additional element, the receiving and transmitting steps above are insignificant extra-solution activity as these are receiving, storing, and transmitting data as per the MPEP 2106.05(d). 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 claim is directed to an abstract idea.
The claim does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception, when considered both individually and as an ordered combination. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element being used to perform the abstract limitations stated above amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer components. Mere instructions to apply an exception using generic computer components cannot provide an inventive concept. The claim is not patent eligible. Applicant’s Specification states:
“[0026]Generally, the client computers 102-104 may include virtually any portable computing device capable of receiving and sending a message over a network, such as the network 111, the wireless network 110, or the like. The client computers 102-104 may also be described generally as client computers that are configured to be portable. Thus, the client computers 102-104 may include virtually any portable computing device capable of connecting to another computing device and receiving information. Such devices include portable devices such as, cellular telephones, smart phones, display pagers, radio frequency (RF) devices, infrared (IR) devices, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA's), handheld computers, laptop computers, wearable computers, tablet computers, integrated devices combining one or more of the preceding devices, or the like. Likewise, the client computers 102-104 may include Internet-of-Things (IOT) devices as well. Accordingly, the client computers 102-104 typically range widely in terms of capabilities and features. For example, a cell phone may have a numeric keypad and a few lines of monochrome Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) on which only text may be displayed. In another example, a mobile device may have a touch-sensitive screen, a stylus, and several lines of color LCD in which both text and graphics may be displayed.”
Which shows that any generic computer can be used to perform the abstract limitations, such as a laptop, phone, desktop, etc., and from this interpretation, one would reasonably deduce the aforementioned steps are all functions that can be done on generic components, and thus application of an abstract idea on a generic computer, as per the Alice decision and not requiring further analysis under Berkheimer, but for edification the Applicant’s specification has been used as above satisfying any such requirement. This is “Applying It” by utilizing current technologies. For the receiving and transmitting steps that were considered extra-solution activity in Step 2A above, if they were to be considered additional elements, they have been re-evaluated in Step 2B and determined to be well-understood, routine, conventional, activity in the field. The background does not provide any indication that the additional elements, such as the systems, processor, memory, etc., nor the receiving or transmitting steps as above, are anything other than a generic, and the MPEP Section 2106.05(d) indicates that mere collection or receipt, storing, or transmission of data is a well‐understood, routine, and conventional function when it is claimed in a merely generic manner (as it is here). For these reasons, there is no inventive concept. The claim is not patent eligible.
Claims 2, 4-7, 9, 11-14, 16, and 18-20 contain the identified abstract ideas, further narrowing them, with the additional elements of SMS, HTTP request, and an API call which are all highly generalized as per Applicant’s Specification when considered as part of a practical application or under prong 2 of the Alice analysis of the MPEP, thus not integrated into a practical application, nor are they significantly more for the same reasons and rationale as above.
New Claims 21-23 contain the identified abstract ideas, further narrowing them such as by transmitting a rejection notification, generating alerts, or using a routing key, with no new additional elements to be considered as part of a practical application or under prong 2 of the Alice analysis of the MPEP, thus not integrated into a practical application, nor are they significantly more for the same reasons and rationale as above.
After considering all claim elements, both individually and in combination, Examiner has determined that the claims are directed to the above abstract ideas and do not amount to significantly more. Therefore, the claims and dependent claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 as being directed to non-statutory subject matter. See Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, No. 13–298.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-2, 4-9, 11-16, and 18-23 overcome the current prior art and the Claims are allowable, but would need to be amended in such a way as to overcome the 35 USC 101 rejection.
The closest prior art of record are Hu (U.S. Publication No. 2023/012,8837), Malleshaiah (U.S. Publication No. 2023/039,6512), and Zuchlewski (U.S. Publication No. 2023/010,5150). Hu, a system and method for intelligent outage evaluation and insight management for monitoring and incident management system, teaches a method implemented by an outage risk detection system, ingesting events, wherein each event indicates a condition detected by a monitoring tool with respect to a computing component within a computing environment, monitoring ingested events to identify computer services with current service incidents, wherein the computer services are such that they have incidents that historically require human interaction to resolve, aggregating an aggregate count of organizations experiencing service incidents for a computer service of the computer services within a plurality of time windows, and generating an outage risk detection alert for the particular computer service, and surpassing a threshold level, it does not explicitly state responsive to the aggregate count for a time window of the plurality of time windows. Malleshaiah, a system and method for advance machine learning techniques for internet outage detection, teaches responsive to the aggregate count for a time window of the plurality of time windows where the numbers of users/companies that are affected during a duration or time window then there are processes performed, but neither it nor Hu teaches rejecting an event that is not received in accordance with a pre-determined acceptance rate. Zuchlewski, a system and method for auto pause incident notification, teaches rejecting an event that is not received in accordance with a pre-determined acceptance rate and wherein each event is received via Short Message Service (SMS), HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request, or Application Programming Interface (API) call, but does not teach the specific manner as to what is done when the event is received in accordance with the determined acceptance rate, normalizing the event, queuing it for processing, assigning an ingested timestamp to the event, nor does it teach determining a baseline aggregate count and historical variability for the aggregate count based on a statistical norm and deviation. None of the above prior art explicitly teaches this teach using what is done when the event is received in accordance with the determined acceptance rate, normalizing the event, queuing it for processing, assigning an ingested timestamp to the event, nor does it teach determining a baseline aggregate count and historical variability for the aggregate count based on a statistical norm and deviation, along with the other limitations of the amended Claims, and these are the reasons which adequately reflect the Examiner's opinion as to why Claims 1-2, 4-9, 11-16, and 18-23 are allowable over the prior art of record.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
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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 JOSEPH M WAESCO whose telephone number is (571)272-9913. The examiner can normally be reached on 8 AM - 5 PM M-F.
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/JOSEPH M WAESCO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3625B 6/24/2026
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