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 .
This is a Final Office Action.
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 21-40 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.
a data extraction component configured to extract a subset of data from a plurality of data sources, the data including one or more keywords and the plurality of data sources including at least one chosen from the set of: audio data, and text data;
a scoring component configured to generate a score for the extracted data based on the one or more keywords using one method chosen from the set of: text processing, speech processing, morphological analysis, and syntactical analysis;
a statistics component configured to generate statistics based on the extracted data; and
a score output component configured to: normalize the score based on the statistics…wherein the normalized score is used 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 based on the extracted customer complaint data, and store the normalized score in a database to be associated with the extracted 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:
component (software code);
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 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/extracting, processing, scoring, categorizing 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. Alternately, the recited limitations can be considered as a mental process abstract idea category as they related to gathering and analyzing information based on observation, evaluation, judgement and opinion, and accomplished by receiving and analyzing and scoring information about a user either verbally or writing down with the aid of pen & paper, complaint data. The steps do not involve any activities that cannot be practically accomplished by the human mind and/or via pen & paper. 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. The Courts have established that even if the recitation of generic computer components are present, the claim can still be considered a mental process if it covers performance in the mind using observation, evaluation, and judgment and/or utilizing pen & paper, as is the case here. See CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1371 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (“That purely mental processes can be unpatentable, even when performed by a computer, was precisely the holding of the Supreme Court in Gottschalk v. Benson”).
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)); see also CyberSource, 654 F.3d at 1372–73; see also Credit Acceptance Corp. v. Westlake Servs., 859 F.3d 1044, 1055 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (holding that “mere automation of manual processes using generic computers does not constitute a patentable improvement.”). The Courts generally treat collecting information as well as analyzing information by steps people go through in their minds and/or by pen & paper as essentially mental processes within the abstract-idea category. See FairWarning IP, LLC v. Latric Systems, Inc., 839 F.3d 1089, 1093 (Fed. Cir. 2016). The focus of the claims are on “selecting certain information, analyzing it, and reporting or displaying the results of the analysis. That is all abstract.” (SAP America, Inc. v. Investpic, LLC, 898 F.3d 1161, 1167 (Fed. Cir. 2018)). See also Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350 (Fed. Cir. 2016) where collecting information, analyzing it, and displaying results from certain results of the collection and analysis was held to be an abstract idea.
Conclusion
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
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.
US20190095817 Distributed data processing for Machine Learning.
US20170235735 System and methods of generating structured data from unstructured data.
US20200250571 Automated data extraction and adaptation.
US20230222527 Omnichannel data processing and analysis.
Leong, Michael, et al. "Metroberta: Leveraging traditional customer relationship management data to develop a transit-topic-aware language model." Transportation Research Record 2678.9 (2024): 215-229.
T. Chumwatana and I. Chuaychoo, "Automatic filtering non-English complaint emails in tourism industry using N-gram extraction and classification techniques," 2016 4th International Symposium on Computational and Business Intelligence (ISCBI), Olten, Switzerland, 2016, pp. 216-220, doi: 10.1109/ISCBI.2016.7743287.
H. Chauhan, A. Gupta and A. Verma, "Analyzing Relative Importance of Service Quality Components from Enterprise CRM Data," Components from Enterprise CRM Data," 2011 Annual SRII Global Conference, San Jose, CA, USA, 2011, pp. 266-276, doi: 10.1109/SRII.2011.91.
C. İşcan, M. F. Özkara, A. E. Çelik and A. Akbulut, "Evaluating Turkish BERT-based Language Models for Effective Customer Feedback Interpretation in CRM," 2024 9th International Conference on Computer Science and Engineering (UBMK), Antalya, Turkiye, 2024, pp. 227-232, doi: 10.1109/UBMK63289.2024.10773436.
S. Senthurvelautham and S. Hettiarachchi, "SentScore: Autonomous Text Sentiment scoring and Summarizing System related to Complaint Management," 2018 4th International Conference for Convergence in Technology (I2CT), Mangalore, India, 2018, pp. 1-8, doi: 10.1109/I2CT42659.2018.9058199.
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/LAURA YESILDAG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3629