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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Status of Claims
Claim(s) 1-20 have been examined.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claims recite a judicial exception which is not integrated into a practical application and the claims lack an inventive concept.
Step 1 is the first inquiry into eligibility analysis and asks whether the claims are directed to a statutory category. In this instance, the answer must be in the affirmative because they recite a method, system, and medium.
Step 2A prong 1 is the next step in the eligibility analyses and asks whether the claimed invention recites a judicial exception. In this instance, the claims recite the following limitations which comprise the abstract idea:
Identify one or more component compounds of the medicinal substance from the one or more images;
the outputs indicate the one or more compounds identified from the one or more images and a determination of whether the product listing is approved or denied;
This is an abstract idea because it is a certain method of organizing human activity that involves commercial interactions such as sales activities and/or behaviors, namely deciding whether an item offered for sale may be offered. It is also a mental process because a person looking at a photo of drug ingredients can read the ingredients and decide whether the item can be sold.
Step 2A prong 2 is the next step in the eligibility analyses and looks at whether the abstract idea is integrated into a practical application. This requires an additional element or combination of additional elements in the claims to apply, rely on, or use the judicial exception in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception, such that the claim is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception.
In this instance, the claims recite the additional elements such as:
a large language model, the generating of a product therefore based on the one or more images, and the prompting of that model (claims 1, 10, 19);
receiving one or more images associated with a product listing (claims 1, 10, 19);
an online marketplace (claims 1, 10, 19);
one or more processors and memory (claim 10);
non-transitory computer-readable media (claim 19);
a user interface (claims 3, 12);
However, these elements do not amount to an improvement in the functioning of a computer or any other technology or technical field, apply the judicial exception with, or by use of, a particular machine, or apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception.
The large language model is recited a high level of generality and is used merely as a tool to perform the recited identification. The specification does not describe any particular model architecture, training, or modification, and describes the prompt as ordinary text supplied to the model. Using a generic model as a tool to carry out an abstract idea does not integrate that idea into a practical application. The recitation of an online marketplace merely amounts to a generic link of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment, and the recitations of a processor, memory, and non-transitory media, and user interface are recited at a high level of generality and amount to no more than instructions to apply the exception using generic computing components.
The dependent claims also fail to recite elements which amount to an improvement in the functioning of a computer or any other technology or technical field, apply the judicial exception with, or by use of, a particular machine, or apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception. For example, claims 2, 4-6, 8, 9, 11, 13-15, 17-18, and 20 are directed to the abstract idea itself. In addition, even if they were not directed to the abstract idea, they do not amount to an integration according to any one of the considerations above.
Step 2B is the next step in the eligibility analyses and evaluates whether the claims recite additional elements that amount to an inventive concept (i.e., “significantly more”) than the recited judicial exception. According to Office procedure, revised Step 2A overlaps with Step 2B, and thus, many of the considerations need not be re-evaluated in Step 2B because the answer will be the same.
In Step 2A, several additional elements were identified as additional limitations:
a large language model, the generating of a product therefore based on the one or more images, and the prompting of that model (claims 1, 10, 19);
receiving one or more images associated with a product listing (claims 1, 10, 19);
an online marketplace (claims 1, 10, 19);
one or more processors and memory (claim 10);
non-transitory computer-readable media (claim 19);
a user interface (claims 3, 12);
These additional limitations, including the limitations in the dependent claims, do not amount to an inventive concept because they are recited at a high level of generality and also do not amount to an improvement in the functioning of a computer or any other technology or technical field, apply the judicial exception with, or by use of, a particular machine, or apply or use the judicial exception in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the judicial exception to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception.
In addition, they were already analyzed under Step 2A and did not amount to a practical application of the abstract idea.
Therefore, the claims lack one or more limitations which amount to an inventive concept in the claims.
For these reasons, the claims are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(d):
(d) REFERENCE IN DEPENDENT FORMS.—Subject to subsection (e), a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, fourth paragraph:
Subject to the following paragraph [i.e., the fifth paragraph of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112], a claim in dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim previously set forth and then specify a further limitation of the subject matter claimed. A claim in dependent form shall be construed to incorporate by reference all the limitations of the claim to which it refers.
Claim 7 and 16 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(d) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, 4th paragraph, as being of improper dependent form for failing to further limit the subject matter of the claim upon which it depends, or for failing to include all the limitations of the claim upon which it depends.
Claim 1 recites that the output “indicates the one or more component compounds identified from the one or more images” while claim 7 recites that the output “indicates that none of the one or more images depicted the one or more compound components.” If none of the images depicted the component compounds, then no component compounds were identified from the images, and the output cannot indicate them. Claim 7 therefore contradicts claim 1 rather than further limiting it. Applicant may cancel the claim(s), amend the claim(s) to place the claim(s) in proper dependent form, rewrite the claim(s) in independent form, or present a sufficient showing that the dependent claim(s) complies with the statutory requirements.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 7 and 16 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or joint inventor regards as the invention.
It cannot be determined how the output “indicates the one or more component compounds identified from the one or more images” while claim 7 recites that the output “indicates that none of the one or more images depicted the one or more compound components.” It seems that possibly the prompt feeds one or more component compounds as part of the prompt and has the LLM look at the photo to determine whether those compounds are present based on the images. It appears that claim 1 and 10 form a positive determination that they are present (e.g., “wherein the output indicates the one or more component compounds identified from the one or more images”) yet claims 7 and 16 are the alternative path, a negative determination, which cannot happen unless the LLM is just writing nonsense. Therefore, correction is required. For purposes of examination, claims 7 and 16 will be treated as non-functional descriptive material and given little to no patentable weight as whatever the output indicates has no bearing on anything functional in the claim.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1, 5, 7, 10, 14, 16, and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sawant (IN 202241071214) in view of Scheibelhut (US 2026/0065327) in further view of Sandu (US 11,763,086).
Referring to Claim 1, Sawant teaches a computer-implemented method comprising:
receiving one or more images associated with a product listing for an online marketplace, wherein the product listing is for a medicinal substance (see Sawant ¶0003, food products are listed by sellers in an e-commerce marketplace; ¶0010, fraudulent products are kept from being listed by detecting fraudulent keywords associated with the food product images; ¶0057, the pre-defined food verticals include a vitamin supplement and a protein supplement);
identify one or more component compounds of the medicinal substance from the one or more images (see Sawant ¶0055, the extraction module extracts one or more ingredients data from the received listing data using OCR; ¶0062, Table 3, the restricted word found in the listing is “artichoke” which is entry 22 of the banned ingredient table at ¶0059;);
generating an output, wherein the output indicates the one or more component compounds identified from the one or more images and a determination of whether the product listing is approved or denied (see Sawant ¶0062, the monitoring report of Table 3 records the restricted word found and an auto_status of FAILED for that listing request; claim 1, the food product is autoblocked at a listing level).
Sawant refuses the listing based on the prohibited ingredient and recites determining a food vertical from the extracted ingredient data and mapping the vertical to a “plurality of pre-defined prohibited ingredient classifications,” which identify “a food safety risk corresponding to at least one of a regulatory risk or a legal risk” and “autoblocking the one or more food products at a listing level.” Sawant does this through the use of OCR and mapping, and does not teach the use of a Large Language Model (LLM). Specifically, it does not teach generating a prompt for an LLM based on the one or more images, or prompting the LLM to identify one or more component compounds, such that the output is generated based on prompting the LLM. However, Scheibelhut teaches this (see Scheibelhut ¶0060, the extraction module generates a prompt that includes one or more images captured at a source location together with a request to identify and extract information from one or more objects in the images). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine these references because the results would be predictable. Specifically, instead of applying merely OCR to identify and extract information from images as taught by Sawant, the resulting combination would generate a prompt which was then fed into the LLM in order to accomplish these things, according to the teachings of Scheibelhut. This is a predictable result of the combination.
The combination does not teach that the output indicates a determination of whether the product listing is approved or denied (Sawant only teaches a refusal outcome). However, Sandu teaches this (see Sandu Col. 4 lines 39-48, the ingredient list must satisfy the applicable law and a determination is made that the listing of the product may be allowed to be listed on the e-commerce site, otherwise the listing is denied). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine these references because the results would be predictable. Specifically, the combination of Sawant and Scheibelhut would continue to identify the component compounds based on the images and refuse the listing where a prohibited compound is among them, except that now the listing determination would be expressly stated such according to the teachings of Sandu. This is a predictable result of the combination.
Referring to Claim 5, the combination teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein identifying the one or more component compounds of the medicinal substance comprises recognizing text in the one or more images that corresponds to the one or more component compounds (see Scheibelhut ¶0061, the multi-model LLM applies one or more computer vision algorithms such as OCR to images included in the prompt and extracts for each identified item the text associated with that item from the images).
Referring to Claim 7, the combination teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, wherein the output indicates that none of the one or more images depicted the one or more component compounds. The examiner notes that whatever the output indicates is non-functional descriptive material and given little to no patentable weight.
Referring to Claims 10 and 19, these claims are similar to claim 1 and are therefore rejected under the same reasons and rationale.
Referring to Claims 14, this claim is similar to claim 5 and is therefore rejected under the same reasons and rationale.
Referring to Claims 16, this claim is similar to claim 7 and is therefore rejected under the same reasons and rationale.
Claim(s) 3, 9, 12, and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sawant (IN 202241071214) in view of Scheibelhut (US 2026/0065327) in further view of Sandu (US 11,763,086) in further view of Ghatare (US 9,256,618).
Referring to Claim 3, the combination teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, but does not teach displaying, to a user via a user interface, an indication that the product listing is denied based on the output. However, Ghatare teaches this (see Ghatare Col. 11 lines 4-27, the seller is notified by a pop-up alert that based on an analysis of the image, it contains prohibited information and is not permitted, so the listing is removed and the seller’s account may even be terminated). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine these references because the results would be predictable. Specifically, the combination would continue to teach denial of the listing except that now an indication of the denial would be displayed to the user via the user interface according to the teachings of Ghatare. This is a predictable result of the combination.
Referring to Claim 9, the combination teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, but does not teach removing the product listing from the online marketplace based on the product listing being denied. However, Ghatare teaches this (see Ghatare Col. 11 lines 4-27, the seller is notified by a pop-up alert that based on an analysis of the image, it contains prohibited information and is not permitted, so the listing is removed and the seller’s account may even be terminated). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine these references because the results would be predictable. Specifically, the combination would continue to teach denial of the listing except that now the denial would entail a removal of the listing according to the teachings of Ghatare. This is a predictable result of the combination.
Referring to Claims 12, 18, these claims are similar to claims 3, 9 and are therefore rejected under the same reasons and rationale.
Claim(s) 2, 11, 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sawant (IN 202241071214) in view of Scheibelhut (US 2026/0065327) in further view of Sandu (US 11,763,086) in further view of Bachmann (US 2024/0249428).
Referring to Claim 2, the combination teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, but does not teach sending the output to a user for manual review, wherein the determination of whether the product listing is approved or denied is based on the manual review. However, Bachmann teaches sending output from an image analysis to a user for manual review to make an approval or rejection determination (see Bachmann ¶0137, the interface allows a pharmacist to review each of the images analyzed and returned by the image analysis engine, and if the comparison check passes then it’s approved, otherwise it’s rejected). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine these references because the results would be predictable. Specifically, the combination of Sawant and Scheibelhut and Sandu would continue to teach determining whether to approve or reject a listing based on an output except that now the output would be sent to a user for manual review according to the teachings of Bachmann. This is a predictable result of the combination.
Referring to Claims 11 and 20, these claims are similar to claim 2 and are therefore rejected under the same reasons and rationale.
Claim(s) 4 and 13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sawant (IN 202241071214) in view of Scheibelhut (US 2026/0065327) in further view of Sandu (US 11,763,086) in further view of Zuo (US 11,068,715).
Referring to Claim 4, the combination teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, but does not teach wherein each component compound of the one or more component compounds corresponds to a weight or percent composition of the medicinal substance. However, Zuo teaches wherein components correspond to a weight or percent of an underlying substance (see Zuo Col. 16 lines 6-10, 50-60, determining based on the optical character recognition that the term or keyword corresponds to a weight or percent composition such as 26g of protein). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine these references because the results would be predictable. Specifically, the combination of Sawant and Scheibelhut and Sandu would continue to teach determining medicinal components of an item based on its image except that now those medicinal components would include a weight or percent composition of the substance according to the teachings of Zuo. This is a predictable result of the combination.
Referring to Claim 13, this claim is similar to claim 4 and therefore rejected under the same reasons and rationale.
Claim(s) 6, 8, 15, 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sawant (IN 202241071214) in view of Scheibelhut (US 2026/0065327) in further view of Sandu (US 11,763,086) in further view of Bubeck (US 2015/018900).
Referring to Claim 6, the combination teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, but does not teach determining that the product listing is approved or denied based on comparing the one or more component compounds to a dataset that comprises medicinal substance regulations for a set of geographic regions. However, Bubeck teaches this (see Bubeck ¶0032, a jurisdiction selection is received comprising one or more jurisdictions for which a product information file is desired; ¶0033, each ingredient is checked against the regulatory corpus corresponding to that jurisdiction selection; Fig. 4, 8, the product is prohibited in Canda but allowed in the US). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine these references because the results would be predictable. Specifically, the combination of Sawant and Scheibelhut and Sandu would continue to teach approving or rejecting a listing, except that now the approval or rejection could be based on comparing the one or more component compounds to a dataset that comprises medicinal substance regulations for a set of geographic regions according to the teachings of Bubeck. This is a predictable result of the combination.
Referring to Claim 8, the combination teaches the computer-implemented method of claim 1, and while the combination teaches denying a product listing based on various criteria, it does not teach wherein that criteria comprises at least one component compound of the one or more component compounds having an amount that is greater than a threshold amount. However, Bubeck teaches wherein a criteria comprises at least one component compound of the one or more component compounds having an amount that is greater than a threshold amount (see Bubeck Fig. 8, the sodium lauryl sulfate amount exceeds the legal limit in the Philippines). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine these references because the results would be predictable. Specifically, the combination of Sawant and Scheibelhut and Sandu would continue to teach approving or rejecting a listing based on a criteria, except that now that criteria would comprise at least one component compound of the one or more component compounds having an amount that is greater than a threshold amount according to the teachings of Bubeck. This is a predictable result of the combination.
Referring to Claims 15 and 17, these claims are similar to claims 6 and 8 and are therefore rejected under the same reasons and rationale.
Remarks
Additional prior art relevant to the application but not relied upon includes:
Reference U (see PTO-892) which teaches automating nutritional claim verification through OCR and machine learning.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MATTHEW E ZIMMERMAN whose telephone number is (571)270-5278. The examiner can normally be reached 8-4pm M-T, 8-12pm W.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Marissa Thein can be reached at (571)272-6764. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MATTHEW E ZIMMERMAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3688
