DETAILED ACTION
This Office action is in reply to correspondence filed 5 March 2026 in regard to application no. 18/948,955. Claim 8 has been cancelled. Claims 1-7 and 9 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 .
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of 35 U.S.C. 112(a):
(a) IN GENERAL.—The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.
The following is a quotation of the first paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112:
The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, to make and use the same, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor of carrying out his invention.
Claim 6 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(a) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), first paragraph, as failing to comply with the written description requirement. The claim(s) contains subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way as to reasonably convey to one skilled in the relevant art that the inventor or a joint inventor, or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the inventor(s), at the time the application was filed, had possession of the claimed invention. This claim purports to optimize a prediction model. As pointed out in the previous Office action, there is insufficient written support for such broadly claimed optimization which, quoting Nesterov (cited previously) is, in general, unsolvable. The present application provides no clue as to how any optimization of anything is performed. Therefore a person of ordinary skill in the relevant art would not be reasonably apprised that the inventor was in possession of such optimization at the time of filing.
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 1-7 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract without significantly more. The claim(s) recite(s) collecting data, analyzing the data in no particular manner, calculating an indicator in no particular manner, and generating and suggesting a price by modifying a display in a few different ways based on the available data.
First, pricing is a fundamental business practice, one of the "certain means of organizing human activity" deemed abstract. Businesses have been setting prices for centuries. Second, in the absence of computers, the steps can be performed mentally or with paper records and writing and changing results on paper. Humans can, and have for centuries, collected and analyzed data and made recommendations. Third, calculating an average, median and standard deviation are mathematical operations. The claims therefore recite several abstract ideas.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because aside from the bare inclusion of a generic computer, nothing is done beyond what was set forth above, which does not go beyond generally linking the abstract idea to the technological environment of generic, networked computers. See MPEP § 2106.05(h).
As the claims only manipulate data relating to historical purchases, pricing recommendations and the like, 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.
The claim is directed to a "computer system" which consists of generic components such as a processor, display and memory storing instructions for the processor to execute; neither the specification nor the drawings limit these in any meaningful way, 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. Web crawling and the use of APIs were well-understood, routine and conventional before the filing of the present invention. For example, Spivack et al. (U.S. Publication No. 2014/0040387), writing over ten years before the priority date of the present invention, could at that early date disclose that techniques to "crawl and download web pages" were by then "conventional". [0107] Sifry (U.S. Publication No. 2008/0288347) disclosed that at that even earlier data "APIs" were used by "conventional search providers". [0050] The applicant's own lack of description or explanation of their working further evidences their well-understood, routine and conventional nature.
The claim elements when considered as an ordered combination - a generic computer performing a chronological sequence of abstract steps while using well-understood, routine and conventional techniques - do nothing more than when they are analyzed individually.
The dependent claims further do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea: claim 2 simply recites additional data collection and storage; claims 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9 simply recite further, abstract manipulation of data; claim 5 simply recites providing output.
The claims are not patent eligible. The Examiner has thoroughly reviewed the originally filed application, including the specification and drawing sheets, and finds nothing likely sufficient to overcome this rejection.
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 5 March 2026 in regard to the rejection of claim 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 112(a) and the rejection of claims under § 101 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. In regard to § 112(a), the Examiner does not see, and the applicant does not explain, how simply changing optimization from “comprising feature selection and parameter adjustment” to “by feature selection and parameter adjustment” is supposed to somehow provide sufficient detail as to how any sort of optimization whatever is performed. The rejection is maintained.
In regard to § 101, the Examiner has withdrawn the “statutory category” rejection based on the present amendment and arguments; only the “abstract idea” rejection remains. Allowing for timely updates to data is not a technical improvement but simply a matter of using computers to perform tasks; it is well known and not relevant to the analysis that computers can perform repetitive tasks more quickly than persons. To allow “users to understand and accept the pricing strategies” may be an improvement to a user experience but does not improve a computer or technology. 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 is in order. In the previous Office action, claims were rejected based on various combinations of the following references: Eager et al., Rai et al., Chaudhary et al., Doner, Gaynor et al., Burns, Sr. et al., Yeung, and Sheive et al. As the claims have been amended, further search and consideration were conducted.
Feng (U.S. Publication No. 2023/0214921) discloses a trading strategy system [title] in which data may be related to “price and volume”. [0089] The system may create a “strategy” using “existing price information” to locate a target market and use it for back-testing. [0169] However, Feng is directed to trading based on price rather than recommending a price, and does not teach or suggest the various displays as in the present claims, a feature neither taught nor suggested by Feng nor the prior art previously made of record, alone or if combined.
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.
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/SCOTT C ANDERSON/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3694