DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application is being examined under the pre-AIA first to invent provisions.
Priority
Applicant’s claim for the benefit of a prior-filed application under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) or under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121, 365(c), or 386(c) is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 6/1/26 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
When considering subject matter eligibility under 35 U.S.C. 101, it must be determined whether the claim is directed to one of the four statutory categories of invention, i.e., process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter. If the claim does fall within one of the statutory categories, it must then be determined whether the claim is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., law of nature, natural phenomenon, and abstract idea), and if so, it must additionally be determined whether the claim is a patent-eligible application of the exception. If an abstract idea is present in the claim, any element or combination of elements in the claim must be sufficient to ensure that the claim amounts to significantly more than the abstract idea itself. Examples of abstract ideas include fundamental economic practices; certain methods of organizing human activities; an idea itself; and mathematical relationships/formulas. Alice Corporation Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank International, et al., 573 U.S.___(2014).
Claim 1 is directed to a method of wagering. As such, the claims are directed to statutory subject matter (“process”) under Step 1 of the Alice flowchart as directed to a judicial exception (i.e. an abstract idea).
Addressing the claims under Step 2A, the claims are held to be directed to concepts similar to those found to be abstract, either as outlined in the 2014 lEG/July 2015 Update to Subject matter eligibility, or, as compared to certain decisions rendered by the courts. The claims describe a method of wagering; as evident by claim language which recites: “receiving a first bet; receiving a first description of a first set of cards; receiving a second description of a second set of cards; determining a third description of a third set of cards that are dealt to a first player in a first game; determining a fourth description of a fourth set of cards that are dealt to a first dealer in the first game; and providing a payout based on the first bet if the third description of the third set of cards matches first description of the first set of cards and if the fourth description of the fourth set of cards matches the second description of the second set of cards.” As a whole, claim 1 is thus directed to rules for playing a wagering card game and determining a payout based on outcomes, which falls within the abstract idea category of (1) “methods of organizing human activity,” including fundamental economic practices such as wagering and risk-hedging, and (2) “mental processes” or mathematical concepts for evaluating game outcomes.
Courts have determined that rules for playing wagering games and card games are abstract ideas; See in In re Smith, 815 F.3d 816 (Fed. Cir. 2016), the Federal Circuit held that claims to rules for a blackjack-type card game were directed to an abstract idea and ineligible under 35 USC 101 because they only recited the steps of the game using conventional physical cards and did not recite any technological improvement.
Therefore, while it is understood that the claims in the current application are not verbatim recitations of the guidelines or case law, the detailed analysis provided above shows how the current claim limitations at issue closely parallel the concepts provided by the guidelines and the precedential case law, and are therefore considered to be directed to an abstract idea (Step 2A: YES).
Step 2A, Prong Two: Claim does not contain additional elements that integrate the abstract idea exception into a practical application because the additional elements are mere instructions to apply the abstract idea exception; MPEP § 2106.05(f). (2) generally link the judicial exception to a particular technological environment MPEP § 2106.05(h); (3) are insignificant extra solution activity; MPEP § 2106.05(g). Claim 1 does not recite any additional elements beyond the abstract idea of wagering and card-game rules that integrate that idea into a practical application. The claim does not recite a particular machine or apparatus that is improved in its functioning or add a meaningful limitation that confines the claim to a specific, technological solution to a technical problem.
Rather, claimed elements such as receiving bets, receiving “descriptions” of sets of cards, determining descriptions of cards dealt to a player and dealer, and providing a payout based on matching descriptions represent the generic steps of conducting and resolving a wagering card game and could be performed by human participants using pen-and-paper or mental processes.
Even if the claim were understood to be implemented on generic computer or gaming hardware (e.g., using conventional processors and memory to track bets and card descriptions), such an implementation would amount to nothing more than using a generic computer as a tool to perform the abstract idea, which does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application, see Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014) (using a generic computer to implement abstract economic concept not sufficient).
Therefore, the claim as a whole, looking at the additional elements individually and in combination, are no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using generic computer/computer components and is not a practical application, see MPEP §2106.05(f). Accordingly, Claim 1 is directed to an abstract idea.
Under Step 2B, the examiner acknowledges the additional limitations (i.e. generic receiving, determining, and paying steps that are routine and conventional in the context of wagering games and card games).
On appeal, the Federal Circuit has affirmed – agreeing that the method of playing cards is an unpatentable abstract idea. The court held that a wagering game is roughly identical to fundamental economic practices that the Supreme Court held to be abstract ideas in Alice and Bilski. “Here, Applicants' claimed ‘method’ is directed to conducting a wagering game is drawn to an abstract idea much like Alice' s method of exchanging financial obligations and Bilski' s method of hedging risk.” Following the Board' s lead, the appellate court then found that the “purely conventional steps” associated with the physical act of playing cards do not “supply a sufficiently inventive concept.” “Just as the recitation of computer implementation fell short in Alice, shuffling and dealing a standard deck of cards are ‘purely conventional' activities.
Thus, under Step 2B, the Examiner concludes that there are no meaningful limitations in the claim that transform the judicial exception into a patent eligible application such that the claim amounts to significantly more than the judicial exception itself (Step 2B: NO).
The claims provide minimal technical structure or components for further consideration either individually or as ordered combinations with the independent claims. As such, additional recited limitations in the dependent claim only refine the identified abstract idea further. Further refinement of an abstract idea does not convert an abstract idea into something concrete.
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 pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim 1 is rejected under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Grassa (US Patent 5,390,934), and further in view of Walker et al. (US Patent Pub. 20060252482; referred to hereinafter as Walker).
Claim 1: Grassa discloses a method of playing a game (using a computing device, abstract), comprising, receiving a first bet (col. 9: 31-47), receiving a first description of a first set of cards (col. 10: 22-35), receiving a second description of a second set of cards (col. 10: 22-35, second player receives cards to play the basic Black Jack hand), determining, a third description of a third set of cards that are dealt to a first player in a first game (col. 10: 22-35, first player receives cards to play the basic Black Jack hand) determining a fourth description of a fourth set of cards that are dealt to a first dealer in the first game (col. 10: 22-35, dealer receives cards to play the basic Black Jack hand). Grassa however fails to disclose a payout based on the first bet in response to a determination that the third description of the third set of cards matches first description of the first set of cards and that the fourth description of the fourth set of cards matches the second description of the second set of cards. In an analogous art, Walker teaches providing an award if the player achieves an identical hand in set games (0079-0087). It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art, at the time of the invention to have modified the game disclosed by Grassa to include an incentive award for achieving a plurality of identical winning hands, thereby providing players an enticement to play longer and thus brining higher revenue for the gaming facilities.
Conclusion
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/SUNIT PANDYA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3715
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