DETAILED ACTION
The following NON-FINAL Office Action is in response to application 19/069838 filed on 03/04/2025.
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 . 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 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.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 are currently pending and have been rejected as follows.
Priority
Examiner has noted that the Applicant has claimed priority from the parent application 16/193547 filed on 11/16/2018.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 03/06/2025 complies with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97, 1.98, and MPEP 609 and was 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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
Step 1
Claims 1-7 are directed to a system (i.e., a machine). Claims 8-14 are directed to a method (i.e., a process). Claims 15-20 are directed to a non-transitory computer-readable medium (i.e., a machine). Therefore, the claims all fall within one of the four statutory categories of invention.
Step 2A Prong 1
Independent Claim 1, Claim 8, and Claim 15 recites:
generate one or more alerts to represent one or more predicted supply chain events;
filter the one or more generated alerts based on one or more criteria;
generate one or more visualizations displaying one or more data sources affecting the one or more predicted supply chain events made by …;
identify one or more corrective actions to prevent at least one of the one or more predicted supply chain events;
initiate a corrective action to prevent at least one of the one or more predicted supply chain events.
Organizing Human Activity
The limitations of Claim 1, Claim 8, and Claim 15 stated above are processes that under broadest reasonable interpretation covers “certain methods of organizing human activity” (“commercial or legal interactions”). Specifically, business relations in light of paragraph 2 in Applicant’s specification “supply chain management and specifically to systems and methods for predicting and preventing service level failures in a supply chain”. Therefore, the claims recite an abstract idea.
Step 2A Prong 2
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The independent claims recite a server, a processor, a memory, a non-transitory computer-readable medium embodied with software, and a trained prediction model.
The additional elements of a server, a processor, a memory, and a non-transitory computer-readable medium embodied with software are recited at a high-level of generality (generic computer/functions), such that, when viewed as whole/ordered combination, it amounts to no more than mere instruction to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components. See MPEP 2106.05(f) “Mere Instructions to Apply an Exception”.
The trained prediction model amounts to merely indicating a field of use or technological environment in which to apply a judicial exception which cannot integrate a judicial exception into a practical application. Specifically, by requiring that the abstract idea of business relations be performed using a trained prediction model. The narrowing limitation is merely an attempt to limit the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment. See MPEP 2106.05(h).
Thus, the claims as a whole, looking at the additional elements individually and in combination, does not integrate the judicial exception into a practical application as the additional elements are mere instructions to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components or field of use, which does not impose meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claims are directed to an abstract idea.
Step 2B
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional element of a server, a processor, a memory, and a non-transitory computer-readable medium embodied with software to perform the steps/functions recited above amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer. Mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer component cannot provide an inventive concept.
Again, the trained prediction model amounts to merely indicating a field of use or technological environment in which to apply a judicial exception which cannot integrate a judicial exception into a practical application. Specifically, by requiring that the abstract idea of business relations be performed using a prediction model. The narrowing limitation is merely an attempt to limit the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment.
Limitations that amount to merely indicating a field of use or technological environment in which to apply a judicial exception do not amount to significantly more than the exception itself, and cannot integrate a judicial exception into a practical application.
None of the steps/functions of Claim 1, Claim 8, and Claim 15 when evaluated individually or as an ordered combination amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. The additional elements are merely used to perform the limitations directed to organizing human activity, mere instruction to apply an exception using a generic computer, and/or field of use, thus, the analysis does not change when considered as an ordered combination. Even when considered in combination, these additional elements represent mere instructions to apply an exception using a generic computer and/or field of use, which cannot provide an inventive concept. Thus, the additional elements do not meaningfully limit the claim. Accordingly, Claim 1, Claim 8, and Claim 15 are ineligible.
Dependent Claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 when considered both separately and in ordered combination with each dependent claim’s corresponding parent claims do not overcome the above analysis.
Claims 2, 9, and 16 further specify what the one or more predicted supply chain events comprise which is further organizing human activity.
Claims 3-5, 10-12, and 17-19 further specify what the one or more criteria comprise which is further organizing human activity.
Claims 5, 12, and 19 also recite the additional element of one or more other supply chain planning systems recited at a high-level of generality (generic computer/functions), such that, when viewed as whole/ordered combination, it amounts to no more than mere instruction to apply the judicial exception using generic computer components. See MPEP 2106.05(f) “Mere Instructions to Apply an Exception”.
Claims 6-7, 13-14, and 20 further specify when the one or more identified corrective actions can be made and further, what the prediction horizon comprises which is further organizing human activity.
The dependent claims further narrow the identified abstract idea but do not otherwise alter the analysis presented above. Nothing in dependent claims 2-7, 9-14, and 16-20 when viewed alone or as an ordered combination, adds additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. Claims 1-20 are ineligible.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-5, 8-12, and 15-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Appel et al. (US2020/0134545) in view of Achin et al. (US2018/0046926) in view of Speich et al. (US2016/0104108).
As per independent Claim 1, Claim 8, and Claim 15,
Appel teaches a system for using a trained prediction model to initiate a selected corrective action, comprising: a server comprising a processor and a memory, the server configured to: / A method for using a trained prediction model to initiate a selected corrective action, comprising: / A non-transitory computer-readable medium embodied with software for using a trained prediction model to initiate a selected corrective action, the software when executed configured to: (para. 4-6, 73-75 for server, processor, memory, and non-transitory medium; para. 34-35 cognitive model trained to facilitate predictions for the supply chain)
generate one or more alerts to represent one or more predicted supply chain events (para. 35-38 if vulnerability score is greater than the threshold, the system makes a recommendation for a mitigation strategy and supply chain events predicted such as a strike or high rainfall, and para. 24-27 external events include weather event, labor strike, political event, etc.)
identify one or more corrective actions to prevent at least one of the one or more predicted supply chain events (para. 36 recommendations for a mitigation strategy to mitigate the impact of an external event)
initiate a corrective action to prevent at least one of the one or more predicted supply chain events (para. 37 system can recommend other farms or anticipate extra costs; para. 38 recommendation of ground transportation or for a farmer to harvest before the weather event; para. 39 recommendations may be implemented by making real-world changes to the supply chain)
Appel suggests the limitation in para. 2-3 and 15 external factors and element impact the supply chain; Para. 30-33 Weighted Entity Network model where nodes are the entities and edges are relations among the entities; para. 34-35 cognitive model trained to facilitate predictions for the supply chain using aggregated historical data of supply chain features like weather/climate, market data, historical risk data, etc.)
Appel does not teach, but Achin teaches:
generate one or more visualizations displaying one or more data sources affecting the one or more predicted events made by the trained prediction model (para. 378-392 where in para. 380 calculate feature importance, para. 382 calculate the importance of any feature given a dataset and modelling technique, para. 384 user interface may display the feature importance values individually for each modelling technique; para. 401-403 where in para. 403 the system may display an evaluation of the dataset to the user to identify the more/less important features, predictive value of features, rank the features; see also para. 406)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the Appel with Achin with the motivation of increasing accuracy and efficiency. See para. 388-392 “Using the above-described techniques to provide feature importance values either for a prediction problem in general or for a particular model may have numerous benefits. For example: … (1) If a feature is uninformative in general or at least in all accurate models, collection of the data corresponding to that feature may be halted. In some cases there is a real cost to making a feature available, such as the labor of extracting it from its source location or even paying a vendor for the data. … (3) In some cases, it may be desirable to produce a model that uses as few features as possible to make predictions. … (4) Knowing which features are important help may help the user improve predictive models by experimenting with different ways of transforming and combining the most important features.”
Appel/Achin does not teach, but Speich teaches:
filter the one or more generated alerts based on one or more criteria (para. 28 filtering information on incidents to limit the amount of incidents presented on a display; para. 29-30 filtering based on a threshold value for a relevance of an entity where threshold is set by the user; Para. 96-97 indication of an incident; para. 98-99 category of incident relevant to logistics; para. 100 incident in area surrounding entity of the supply chain network; para. 102 concerned entities; figure 6 and para. 107-108 information provided to user; para. 110 user may have requested information about incidents that are indicated to have an extreme severity, are of a particular category, that potentially affect shipments of a second company)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the Appel with Speich with the motivation of customizing the alerts according to the particular needs of the entities and increasing efficiency (by filtering huge number of incidents).
See para. 5-7 “Available information about a supply chain network could be a useful basis for risk assessment and incident monitoring, for a supply chain risk and disruption management, and for various other fields of application. It is an object of the invention to enhance information that may be available for a supply chain network” and para. 29 “Enabling a user to set one or more threshold values may have the effect that the result can be customized to the particular needs of a company. Using a single threshold value may have the effect that the filtering can be particularly easy and fast, which may be of advantage in case a huge number of incidents has to be filtered.”.
As per dependent Claim 2, Claim 9, and Claim 16,
Appel/Achin/Speich teaches the system of claim 1, the method of claim 8, and the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15.
Appel further teaches:
wherein the one or more predicted supply chain events comprise one or more item/stocking location combinations that are each predicted to cause a service level failure (para. 15; para. 16-23, 24-27 with figures 1-2 where the first and second farmer store their produce at storage provider and the storage provide providers product to grocery stores; Para. 37-38 predicted supply chain failure is a first farmer having difficulties because of rainfall volume in the near future, a strike resulting in ground transportation taking another route, or future high rainfall volume resulting in a farmer harvesting before the rainfall; para. 24-27 supply chain event may be a weather event, labor strike, political event, etc. that results in failure of first ground transport to provide service (of transporting produce to market) to the first farmer and to the storage provider (storage provider will not be able to maximize their storage capacity))
As per dependent Claim 3, Claim 10, and Claim 17,
Appel/Achin/Speich teaches the system of claim 1, the method of claim 8, and the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15.
Appel/Achin does not teach, but Speich teaches:
wherein the one or more criteria are based on one or more of: an importance or priority of an item, an importance or priority of one or more supply chain entities, a product that is discontinued, a sales volume of a product and a priority of a customer (Para. 96-97 indication of an incident; para. 98-99 category of incident relevant to logistics; para. 100 incident in area surrounding entity of the supply chain network; para. 102 concerned entities; figure 6 and para. 107-108 information provided to user; para. 110 user may have requested information about incidents that are indicated to have an extreme severity, area of a particular category, that potentially affect shipments of a second company)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the Appel with Speich with the motivation of customizing the alerts according to the particular needs of the entities and increasing efficiency. See para. 5-7 and para. 29.
As per dependent Claim 4, Claim 11, and Claim 18,
Appel/Achin/Speich teaches the system of claim 1, the method of claim 8, and the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15.
Appel/Achin does not teach, but Speich teaches:
wherein the one or more criteria comprise one or more exclusion rules based, at least in part, on a duration of a horizon (Para. 27 “only data… within a predetermined past period of time could be considered…. Only a limited amount of data …has to be obtained and processed for each update”; para. 72-73 obtained data limited to particular period; para. 84 obtain data on shipments after Tx until Tx+1; Para. 28 filtering information on incidents to limit the amount of incidents presented on a display; para. 29-30 filtering based on a threshold value for a relevance of an entity where threshold is set by the user; Para. 96-97 indication of an incident; para. 98-99 category of incident relevant to logistics; para. 100 incident in area surrounding entity of the supply chain network; para. 102 concerned entities; figure 6 and para. 107-108 information provided to user – specifically a file could be provided for all incidents that occurred during a predetermined period of time)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the Appel with Speich with the motivation of customizing the alerts according to the particular needs of the entities and increasing efficiency. See para. 5-7 and para. 29.
As per dependent Claim 5, Claim 12, and Claim 19,
Appel/Achin/Speich teaches the system of claim 1, the method of claim 8, and the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15.
Appel/Achin does not teach, but Speich teaches:
wherein the one or more criteria comprise one or more alerts handled by one or more other supply chain planning systems (Para. 128 company specific supply chain network – other parties can use the data and define their own settings for notifications of incidents; Para. 58 shipment database stores data collected by different logistic service providers; para. 66 distributing notifications about incidents relating to the respective logistics service provider – report in particular, incidents relating to the logistic service provider’s own premises or to its own vehicles; See also para. 114-121 where in para. 114 user requests information that affects shipments of the third company and information on alternative routes; para. 117-118 where user selects alternative route and server may inform logistics service provider about the alternative route; para. 121 if shipment is handled by third company directly, the device could inform logistics unit about preferred new route)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the Appel with Speich with the motivation of customizing the alerts according to the particular needs of the entities and increasing efficiency. See para. 5-7 and para. 29.
.
Claims 6-7, 13-14, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Appel et al. (US2020/0134545) in view of Achin et al. (US2018/0046926) in view of Speich et al. (US2016/0104108) as applied to Claim 1, 8, and 15 above, further in view of Hariharan et al. (US2015/0074011).
As per dependent Claim 6, Claim 13, and Claim 20,
Appel/Achin/Speich teaches the system of claim 1, the method of claim 8, and the non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 15.
Appel teaches the prediction horizon of the trained prediction model (para. 29-33 where in para. 32-33 aggregate the historical data to a certain granularity level (monthly, yearly, or any other time granularity); para. 34 historical data snapshots used to train model; para. 33-35 generate cognitive model to make predictions for supply chain based on the aggregated historical data)
Appel/Achin/Speich does not teach, but Hariharan teaches:
wherein the one or more identified corrective actions can be made within a prediction horizon (Para. 38 maintenance information comprising a corrective action, a duration and/or urgency each corresponding to an anomaly; para. 31 anomaly is an event associated with an asset that indicates a problem/deficiency; para. 41-42 maintenance information identifies the corrective action as replacement and duration as one hour; para. 64-72 where in para. 70 predicted asset failure within two weeks, set a two-week due date for commencing a corrective action)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the Appel with Hariharan with the motivation of increasing efficiency (by avoiding delays and optimizing availability of assets).
See Para. 11 “avoiding delays while decreasing maintenance costs” and Para. 70 “The urgency of the corrective action may be an indication of when corrective action should occur in order to optimize availability of the asset. A corrective action may have a high urgency value if, for example, an asset is stolen or destroyed. A corrective action may have a low urgency value if, for example, the reported anomaly will not negatively affect performance of the asset. The urgency of a corrective action may include a due date for commencing or completing the corrective action. For example, an anomaly report may predict an asset failure within two weeks and set a two-week due date for commencing a corrective action. In this case, AMP 106 schedules the maintenance period prior to the due date. AMP 106 may schedule the maintenance period during a time in which the asset schedule indicates the asset is available, thereby avoiding disruption of any orders or asset commitments. However, if no times are available before a due date of a corrective action, or if the urgency of the corrective action is high (e.g., compared to a learned or known threshold), then AMP 106 may schedule the maintenance period regardless of availability of the asset, which may ultimately require adjustment of other asset commitments. AMP 106 schedules the maintenance period by adjusting the asset schedule to reflect that the asset is unavailable for a period equal to the duration of the corrective action”.
As per dependent Claim 7 and Claim 14,
Appel/Achin/Speich/Hariharan teaches the system of claim 6 and the method of claim 13.
Appel/Achin/Speich does not teach, but Hariharan teaches:
wherein the prediction horizon comprises a length of time long enough for the one or more identified corrective actions to be enacted (Para. 38 maintenance information comprising a corrective action, a duration and/or urgency each corresponding to an anomaly; para. 31 anomaly is an event associated with an asset that indicates a problem/deficiency; para. 41-42 maintenance information identifies the corrective action as replacement and duration as one hour; para. 64-72 where in para. 70 predicted asset failure within two weeks, set a two-week due date for commencing a corrective action)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the Appel with Hariharan with the motivation of increasing efficiency (by avoiding delays and optimizing availability of assets). See Para. 11 and Para. 70.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Adayikkoth (US2013/0339375) teaches supply chain stakeholders filtering and observing relevant business events.
Shah et al. (US2009/0248488) teaches allowing a user to view visual representations of different types of impact on the supply chain.
McNamara et al. (US2015/0046363) teaches implementing recommendations to mitigate supply chain failures.
Li (US2018/0121555) teaches filtering out old events.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Lisa Ma whose telephone number is (571)272-2495. The examiner can normally be reached Monday to Thursday 7 AM - 5 PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Shannon Campbell can be reached at (571)272-5587. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspttho.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/L.M./Examiner, Art Unit 3628
/RUPANGINI SINGH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3628
Prosecution Insights