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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 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 claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
In the instant case, claims 1-7 are directed to a method, claims 8-14 are directed to a software-based point-of sale (POS) comprising transceiver and processor and claims 15-20 are directed to a non-transitory computer readable storage medium. Therefore, these claims fall within the four statutory categories of invention.
The claims directed to fraud prevention and risk mitigation which is an abstract idea. Specifically, the claims recite “receiving…token for storage ...; monitoring…an activity log…; identifying based on the monitoring unregistered…; capturing…transaction card details…; transmitting…the transaction details…and causing …to flag the transaction…”, which is grouped within the “certain methods of organizing human activity” grouping of abstract ideas in prong one of step 2A of the Alice/Mayo test (See MPEP 2106) because the claims involve a series of steps of receiving a token, watching a log of which applications have requested access to a piece of hardware, noticing an application on that log that is not on the registered list, capturing the data that application is handling, sending that data to a remote party and having hat remote party mark the data as compromised and stop it from being used further which is a process that deals with commercial interactions. Accordingly, the claims recite an abstract idea (See MPEP 2106).
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application because, when analyzed under prong two of step 2A of the Alice/Mayo test (See MPEP 2106), the additional elements of the claims such as, offline smart token, secure merchant authentication component, transceiver, software-based POS, a processor, memory and non-transitory storage medium merely use a computer as a tool to perform an abstract idea. Specifically, offline smart token, secure merchant authentication component, transceiver, software-based POS, a processor, memory and non-transitory storage medium perform the steps of receiving a token, watching a log of which applications have requested access to a piece of hardware, noticing an application on that log that is not on the registered list, capturing the data that application is handling, sending that data to a remote party and having hat remote party mark the data as compromised and stop it from being used further. The use of a processor/computer as a tool to implement the abstract idea does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because it requires no more than a computer performing functions that correspond to acts required to carry out the abstract idea. The additional elements do not involve improvements to the functioning of a computer, or to any other technology or technical field (MPEP 2106.05(a)), the claims do not apply or use the abstract idea to effect a particular treatment or prophylaxis for a disease or medical condition (Vanda Memo), the claims do not apply the abstract idea with, or by use of, a particular machine (MPEP 2106.05(b)), the claims do not effect a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different state or thing (MPEP 2106.05(c)), and the claims do not apply or use the abstract idea in some other meaningful way beyond generally linking the use of the abstract idea to a particular technological environment, such that the claim as a whole is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the exception (MPEP 2106.05(e) and Vanda Memo). Therefore, the claims do not, for example, purport to improve the functioning of a computer. Nor do they effect an improvement in any other technology or technical field. Accordingly, the additional elements do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea, and the claims are directed to an abstract idea.
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because, when analyzed under step 2B of the Alice/Mayo test (See MPEP 2106), the additional elements of offline smart token, secure merchant authentication component, transceiver, software-based POS, a processor, memory and non-transitory storage medium, to perform the steps amounts to no more than using a computer or processor to automate and/or implement the abstract idea of fraud prevention and risk mitigation. As discussed above, taking the claim elements separately, offline smart token, secure merchant authentication component, transceiver, software-based POS, a processor, memory and non-transitory storage medium perform the steps of receiving a token, watching a log of which applications have requested access to a piece of hardware, noticing an application on that log that is not on the registered list, capturing the data that application is handling, sending that data to a remote party and having hat remote party mark the data as compromised and stop it from being used further. These functions correspond to the actions required to perform the abstract idea. Viewed as a whole, the combination of elements recited in the claims merely recite the concept of fraud prevention and risk mitigation. Therefore, the use of these additional elements does no more than employ the computer as a tool to automate and/or implement the abstract idea. The use of a computer or processor to merely automate and/or implement the abstract idea cannot provide significantly more than the abstract idea itself (MPEP 2106.05(I)(A)(f) & (h)). Therefore, the claim is not patent eligible.
Dependent claims further describe the abstract idea of fraud prevention and risk mitigation. Specifically, claims 2, 12 and 16 further describing the receiving of token upon registration which is party of the abstract idea. Claims 3, 11 and 19 describing the transaction card detail data which is part of the abstract idea. Claims 4, 9 and 17 further describing the additional element of transceiver. Claims 5, 10 and 18 further describing determining step of unregistered application which is part of the abstract idea of fraud prevention and risk mitigation. Claim 6-7, 13-14 and 20 describing information captured and transmitting compromised transaction to the issue which is part of the abstract idea of fraud prevention and risk mitigation. The dependent claims do not include additional elements that integrate the abstract idea into a practical application or that provide significantly more than the abstract idea. Therefore, the dependent claims are also not patent eligible.
Statement regarding Prior art for claims 1-20
Regarding claims 1, 8 and 15 LISKE U.S. Patent Publication No. 20150319183 discloses system and method for protecting against point-of-sale malware using memory scaping. LISKE discloses protecting computer system from card holder data theft that include memory scaping malware or logging of user inputted data. Further describing an application software that is desired to protected from unauthorized tampering of protection (See Abstract and paragraph 0023, 0026). Lefevre U.S. Patent Publication discloses: where the POS system is infected with malware for stealing financial data, the trust orchestrator platform may detect the issue and may perform one or more corresponding actions (See paragraph 0054). Munjal U.S. Patent Publication 20230177440 discloses: monitoring transaction log information for audit purpose to identifying fraudulent payment card transaction (See paragraph 0021).
However, prior art does not disclose the combination of claim elements of: receiving, from a secure merchant authentication (SMA) component associated with an interchange network, an offline smart token for storage on the software-based POS system; monitoring, by the offline smart token, an activity log stored on the software-based POS system, the activity log recording each access request by an application for access to a transceiver of the software-based POS system; identifying, based on the monitoring, an unregistered application accessing the transceiver of the software-based POS system; capturing, by the offline smart token, transaction card details being transmitted or received via the transceiver of the software-based POS system; transmitting, by the offline smart token, the transaction card details to the SMA component; and causing, based on the transmission, the SMA component to flag the transaction card details in a database and block further transactions using the transaction card details.
Conclusion
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/ZESHAN QAYYUM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3697
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