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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination (RCE) under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 6/1/2026 has been entered.
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 21, 23-28, 31, and 33-38 rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
The claims do not provide significantly more than the judicial exception under the subject matter eligibility two-part statutory analysis, as provided below.
Regarding Step 1,
Step 1 addresses whether the claims are directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention, i.e., process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter according to MPEP §2106.03. The claims fall under one of the four statutory categories.
Regarding Step 2A [prong 1],
The claimed invention recites an abstract idea according to MPEP §2106.04. Independent claim 21 and 31 include the abstract features as underlined below which recite the following claim limitations, as an abstract idea.
Analyzing customer complaints…
extract customer complaint data from data sources…including one or more complaints, one or more keywords and the plurality of data sources including audio data or text data;
process the customer complaint data…;
generate, based on the processed customer complaint data, a score for each of the one or more customer complaints using a plurality of score categories, the score being based on the one or more keywords identified in the processed customer complaint data;
separate the complaints into predetermined number of categories based on the generated score;
generate statistics…;
normalize the score based on the statistics, wherein the normalizing includes scaling the score…;
use the normalized score to perform aggregation, analysis, and reporting of customer complaint data across the plurality of data sources, the analysis including determining a resolution for the customer complaints; and
store the normalized score associated with the processed customer complaint data.
The underlined claim limitations, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, fall under “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activities” grouping of abstract ideas, and includes at least managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions). See MPEP §2106.04(a)(2)(II).
But for the recitation of generic implementation of computer system components, the claimed invention merely recites a process for managing personal behavior/relationships or interactions between people because the claimed steps recite managing customer complaints, including collecting, processing, scoring, categorizing, analyzing and outputting/reporting customer complaints. Accordingly, since the claimed invention describes a process that falls under “Certain Methods of Organizing Human Activities” grouping, the claimed invention recites an abstract idea.
Regarding Step 2A [prong 2],
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application according to MPEP §2106.04(d). The claims include the following additional elements:
A system and non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of instructions, comprising one or more processors and one or more memories, comprising:
Using natural language processing including text/speech processing or morphological/syntactical analysis;
store the score (data) in a database to be associated with the extracted data.
In particular, the additional elements cited above beyond the abstract idea are recited at a high-level of generality and simply equivalent to a generic recitation and basic functionality that amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer technology components.
The claimed invention merely provides an abstract-idea-based-solution implemented with generic computer processes and components recited at a high-level of generality (aggregating, extracting, processing, scoring, categorizing and reporting data) using computer instructions to implement the abstract idea on a computer with computer code, and merely “apply it” without any meaningful technological limits or any improvement to technology, technical field or improvement to the functioning of the computer itself.
Therefore, the additional elements fail to integrate the recited abstract idea into any practical application since they do not impose any non-generic meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. Thus, the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea.
Regarding Step 2B,
The claimed invention does not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. See MPEP §2106.05.
As discussed above, the claimed additional elements recited above amounts to no more than mere instructions to implement the abstract idea by adding the words “apply it” using generic computer components and functionality. See MPEP §2106.05(h). Mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components are insufficient to provide an inventive concept. Furthermore, the claimed additional elements merely limit the abstract idea to be executed in a computer environment, thus do nothing more than generally linking the use of a judicial exception to a particular technological environment or field of use. See MPEP §2106.05(h).
Considered as an ordered combination, the additional elements are claimed at a high-level of generality and add nothing that is not already present when the steps are considered separately. The sequence of the claimed limitations is equally generic and otherwise held to be abstract since the combination of these additional elements is no more than mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components operating in their ordinary and generic capacities of what is typically expected of computers storing, categorizing, analyzing, scoring and outputting data, and receiving and transmitting data between generic computer devices. The claimed invention is not patent eligible because the additional elements are merely invoked as tools to execute the abstract idea and thus are insufficient to amount to an inventive concept significantly more than the judicial exception.
As for the dependent claims, they merely further narrow and reiterate the same abstract ideas for integrating, processing, categorizing, and reporting/transmitting data using generic data storage and transmittal techniques with the same additional elements as recited above which provide nothing more than applying the abstract idea using generic computer technology components. Furthermore the dependent claims recite the following additional elements: database;
These additional elements do not provide any improvement to technology, technical field or improvement to the functioning of the computer itself, and at best simply applying the abstract idea executed in a general-purpose computer environment. Therefore the dependent claims are also directed to ineligible subject matter since they do not provide significantly more than the abstract idea itself.
Thus, after considering all claim elements both individually and as an ordered combination, it has been determined that the claimed invention as a whole, is not enough to transform the abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention since nothing in the claim limitations provide significantly more than the abstract idea under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Response to Amendment and Arguments
Applicant’s argument and amendment has been considered however they are unpersuasive.
Regarding Applicant’s arguments for 101, Examiner asserts that the newly amended features still pertain to applying the abstract idea with generic computer technology. Furthermore, “the fact that the required calculations could be performed more efficiently via a computer does not materially alter the patent eligibility of the claimed subject matter.” See FairWarning, 839 F.3d at 1098.
Nevertheless, any such abstract idea, when coupled to a generic computer performing functions that are within the regular repertoire of computer functions, is not patent eligible. See CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (citing Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584, 586 (1978)).
The abstract idea is implemented with a computer system and non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of instructions, comprising one or more processors and one or more memories, using natural language processing including text/speech processing or morphological/syntactical analysis, and storing data in a database. None of these additional elements provide any improvement to technology or the functioning of the computer itself. Normalizing data is a statistical math concept used with generic computer technology at a high level of generality to categorize customer complain data, nothing about the invention provides any practical application under 35 USC 101. Thus, the claims are unpatentable.
Conclusion
The relevant prior art made of record not relied upon but considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure can be found in the current and/or previous PTO-892 Notice of References Cited.
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/LAURA YESILDAG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3629
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