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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 5/15/2026 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 21-26, 29-34 and 37-40 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 claims 21, 29 and 37 include the abstract features as underlined below which recite the following claim limitations, as an abstract idea.
extract customer complaint data from a plurality of data sources, the data including one or more customer complaints and including one or more keywords and the plurality of data sources includes at least one chosen from the set of: audio data, or text data;
transform the extracted customer complaint data by: converting, when the extracted customer complaint data includes audio data, the audio data into text using speech processing; and extracting linguistic features from the extracted customer complaint data using at least one of text processing, morphological analysis, or syntactical analysis;
compute a score for the transformed data based on the one or more keywords and a plurality of score categories;
automatically assigning the customer data to a category chosen from the plurality of score categories based on the score of the transformed customer complaint data;
rescore the transformed customer complaint data….
generate reporting outputs….
determine a resolution…
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/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.
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, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system, comprising:
Extract data from a plurality of data sources;
Converting audio data into text using speech processing (generic software application);
Extracting features from data using at least one of text processing, morphological analysis, or syntactical analysis (generic software application)
store in a database the computed score…
generating outputs…
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 (extracting, processing, scoring, categorizing 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. The invention does not solve a technical problem in speech or audio conversion it merely uses generic speech and text processing off-the shelf as a tool.
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:
a 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. Examiner asserts that the newly amended feature of generically converting, when the audio data into text using speech processing is typical speech processing technology and does not solve a technical problem improving any particular technical aspect of speech processing technology other than what is typically expected if natural language processing of converting audio into text data at a high level of generality and similarly, extracting linguistic features from the extracted data using at least one of text processing, morphological analysis, or syntactical analysis is again generically applying natural language processing technology using known techniques such as text and morphological analysis, within the realm of using NLP techniques as a tool. Furthermore, “transforming” data fails to transform actual technology, and converting audio data into text data is not an actual technological improvement, it merely is using off-the shelf speech processing and natural language processing techniques (NLP), thus applicant has not presented features of any technical details or improvement to speech processing other than using it as a tool to convert and extract using natural language processing techniques at a high level of generality. Thus, the rejection is maintained since there lacks any patentable subject matter.
Therefore, Examiner asserts that none of the features of the claimed invention when coupled to a generic computer performing and NLP functions are within the regular repertoire of computer functions, which is not patent eligible just because it can be implemented by using a computer implementing generic NLP technology. 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). 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
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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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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the Examiner should be directed to LAURA YESILDAG whose direct telephone number is (571) 270-5066 and work schedule is generally Monday-Friday, from 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM ET.
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/LAURA YESILDAG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3629
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