Schultz, R. Steven. et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Oct 18, 2019

14072200 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Oct. 18, 2019)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O. Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www.uspto.gov
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
14/072,200 11/05/2013 R. Steven Schultz CHPTH.1136.1001.US13 3918
143183 7590 10/18/2019
Michael L. Wach
4425 Mariners Ridge
Alpharetta, GA 30005
EXAMINER
SUBRAMANIAN, NARAYANSWAMY
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3695
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
10/18/2019 ELECTRONIC
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
Notice of the Office communication was sent electronically on above-indicated "Notification Date" to the
following e-mail address(es):
docketing@pacificpatentgroup.com
eofficeaction@appcoll.com
mikewachsr@gmail.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte R. STEVEN SCHULTZ, PETER GALANIS,
JAMES G. NADLER, JAMES D. GREENE, and DUANE A. HYLTON
________________
Appeal 2018-008266
Application 14/072,200
Technology Center 3600
_________________

Before JEAN R. HOMERE, JAMES B. ARPIN, and
ROBERT J. WEINSCHENK, Administrative Patent Judges.

ARPIN, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
final rejection of claims 6–24, all of the pending claims. Final Act. 2.2
Claims 1–5 are cancelled. App. Br. 21 (Claims App’x). We have
jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We affirm.

1 We use the word “Appellant” to refer to “applicant” as defined in
37 C.F.R. § 1.42. Appellant identifies the real party-in-interest as
Chaperhouse LLC. App. Br. 2.
2 In this Decision, we refer to Appellant’s Appeal Brief (“App. Br.,” filed
April 19, 2018); the Final Office Action (“Final Act.,” mailed March 22,
2017); the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.,” mailed May 31, 2018; and the
originally-filed Specification (“Spec.,” filed November 5, 2013)). Rather
than repeat the Examiner’s findings and determinations and Appellant’s
contentions in their entirety, we refer to these documents.
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STATEMENT OF THE CASE
Appellant’s claimed methods and systems “relate[] generally to
electronically performed steps of sales and other transactions in which a
receipt is issued and, more specifically, to the issuance of electronic
transaction receipts having links to related information useful to the holder
of the receipt.” Spec., 1:15–17 (emphasis added).
As noted above, claims 6–24 are pending. Claims 6 and 18 are
independent. App. Br. 21 (claim 6), 24 (claim 18) (Claims App’x).
Claims 7–17 depend directly or indirectly from claim 6, and claims 19–24
depend directly or indirectly from claim 18. Id. at 21–26.
Claim 6 recites systems performing methods recited in claim 18. Id.
at 16–17, 21–22. Therefore, we focus our analysis on claim 18. See
Accenture Global Servs. GmbH v. Guidewire Software, Inc., 728 F.3d 1336,
1341 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (“Although [CLS Bank Int’l v. Alice Corp., 717 F.3d
1269 (Fed. Cir. 2013) (en banc)] issued as a plurality opinion, in that case a
majority of the court held that system claims that closely track method
claims and are grounded by the same meaningful limitations will generally
rise and fall together.” Id. at 1274 n.1 (parenthetical omitted)); Alice Corp. v.
CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208, 226–227 (2014) (“Put another way, the
system claims are no different from the method claims in substance.”).
Claim 18, reproduced below, is representative.
18. A computer implemented method of storing electronic
transaction receipts, comprising:
a. receiving a plurality of electronic transaction receipts, each
of the electronic transaction receipts associated with a transaction
that has occurred between a particular buyer of a plurality of
buyers and a particular seller of a plurality of sellers;
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b. storing the plurality of electronic transaction receipts in the
database;
c. receiving at least one request from at least one of the
plurality of buyers to transmit at least a portion of the plurality
of electronic transaction receipts associated with the at least one
of the plurality of buyers; and
d. transmitting the portion of the plurality of electronic
transaction receipts associated with the at least one of the
plurality of buyers to the at least one of the plurality of buyers.
Id. at 24.
REJECTION
The Examiner rejects claims 6–24 under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as directed
to patent ineligible subject matter. Final Act. 3–18. We review the appealed
rejection for error based upon the issues identified by Appellant, and in light
of the arguments and evidence produced thereon. Ex parte Frye, 94
USPQ2d 1072, 1075 (BPAI 2010) (precedential). Arguments not made are
waived. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv). For the reasons given below, we
sustain the Examiner’s rejection.
ANALYSIS
Patent Ineligible Claims
A. Section 101
An invention is patent-eligible if it claims a “new and useful process,
machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.” 35 U.S.C. § 101.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court has long interpreted 35 U.S.C. § 101 to
include implicit exceptions: “[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena, and
abstract ideas” are not patentable. E.g., Alice, 573 U.S. at 216.
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In determining whether a claim falls within an excluded category, we
are guided by the Court’s two-part framework, described in Mayo and Alice.
Id. at 217–18 (citing Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc.,
566 U.S. 66, 75–77 (2012)). In accordance with that framework, we first
determine what concept the claim is “directed to.” See Alice, 573 U.S. at
219 (“On their face, the claims before us are drawn to the concept of
intermediated settlement, i.e., the use of a third party to mitigate settlement
risk.”); see also Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593, 611 (2010) (“Claims 1 and 4
in petitioners’ application explain the basic concept of hedging, or protecting
against risk.”). According to the Court, concepts determined to be abstract
ideas and, thus, patent ineligible, include certain methods of organizing
human activity, such as fundamental economic practices (Alice, 573 U.S.
at 219–20; Bilski, 561 U.S. at 611); mathematical formulas (Parker v. Flook,
437 U.S. 584, 594–95 (1978)); and mental processes (Gottschalk v. Benson,
409 U.S. 63, 67 (1972)).
In Diamond v. Diehr, the claim at issue recited a mathematical
formula, but the Court held that “a claim drawn to subject matter otherwise
statutory does not become nonstatutory simply because it uses a
mathematical formula.” Diamond v. Diehr, 450 U.S. 175, 187 (1981).
Having said that, the Court also indicated that a claim “seeking patent
protection for that formula in the abstract . . . is not accorded the protection
of our patent laws, . . . and this principle cannot be circumvented by
attempting to limit the use of the formula to a particular technological
environment.” Id. at 191 (citing Benson and Flook). Nevertheless, the
Court noted that “[i]t is now commonplace that an application of a law of
nature or mathematical formula to a known structure or process may well be
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deserving of patent protection.” Id. at 187; see also BASCOM Global
Internet Services, Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC, 827 F.3d 1341, 1352 (Fed.
Cir. 2016) (Even if the individual components were known, “an inventive
concept can be found in the ordered combination of claim limitations that
transform the abstract idea of filtering content into a particular, practical
application of that abstract idea” (emphasis added).).
If the claim is “directed to” an abstract idea, we next “must examine
the elements of the claim to determine whether it contains an ‘inventive
concept’ sufficient to ‘transform’ the claimed abstract idea into a patent-
eligible application.” Alice, 573 U.S. at 221 (quotation marks omitted).
“A claim that recites an abstract idea must include ‘additional features’ to
ensure ‘that the [claim] is more than a drafting effort designed to
monopolize the [abstract idea].’” Id. (alterations in original) (quoting Mayo,
566 U.S. at 77). “[M]erely requir[ing] generic computer implementation[]
fail[s] to transform that abstract idea into a patent-eligible invention.” Id.
B. Office Patent Eligibility Guidance
In an effort to achieve clarity and consistency in how the Office
applies the Court’s two part test, the Office published revised guidance on
the application of § 101. 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility
Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. 50 (Jan. 7, 2019).3 In Step One of our analysis, we
look to see whether the claims, as written, fall within one of the four
statutory categories identified in § 101. Id. at 53 (“Examiners should

3 “All USPTO personnel are, as a matter of internal agency management,
expected to follow the guidance.” 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter
Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. at 51.
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determine whether a claim satisfies the criteria for subject matter eligibility
by evaluating the claim in accordance with the criteria discussed in MPEP4
2106, i.e., whether the claim is to a statutory category (Step 1) and the
Alice/Mayo test for judicial exceptions (Steps 2A and 2B)”).
Under the guidance, we then look to whether the claim recites:
(1) Step 2A – Prong One: any judicial exceptions, including
certain groupings of abstract ideas (i.e., mathematical concepts,
certain methods of organizing human activity, such as a
fundamental economic practice, or mental processes); and
(2) Step 2A – Prong Two: additional elements that integrate the
judicial exception into a practical application (see MPEP
§ 2106.05(a)–(c), (e)–(h)).
See 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg.
at 54–55 (“Revised Step 2A”).
Only if a claim (1) recites a judicial exception and (2) does not
integrate that exception into a practical application, do we then look to
whether the claim:
(3) adds a specific limitation beyond the judicial exception that
is not “well-understood, routine, conventional” in the field (see
MPEP § 2106.05(d)); or
(4) simply appends well-understood, routine, conventional
activities previously known to the industry, specified at a high
level of generality, to the judicial exception.
See id. at 56 (“Step 2B: If the Claim Is Directed to a Judicial Exception,
Evaluate Whether the Claim Provides an Inventive Concept.”).

4 All Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (“MPEP”) citations herein are
to MPEP, Rev. 08.2017, January 2018.
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C. Step One – Claims Directed to Statutory Categories
Appellant’s independent claim 6 and its associated dependent claims
are directed to systems (i.e., a “machine”), and claim 18 and its associated
dependent claims are directed to methods (i.e., a “process”). App. Br. 21–26
(Claims App’x). Thus, the pending claims are directed to recognized
statutory categories. Final Act. 3.
D. Two-Part Alice/Mayo Test
1. Independent Claims 6 and 18
a. Step 2A, Prong One – Claims Recite an Abstract Idea
Applying the first part of the Alice/Mayo analysis (Step 2A), “the
Examiner determines claim 18 “is directed to storing electronic transaction
receipts which is considered to be an abstract idea similar to the concepts
that have been identified by the courts such as classifying and storing digital
images in an organized manner.” Id. (citation omitted); Ans. 3. In
particular, the Examiner finds:
The specific details of storing and transmitting electronic
transaction receipts recited in the claim do not change the fact
that the claim is drawn to an abstract idea. The abstract idea of
the challenged claims is not only “storing and transmitting
electronic transaction receipts” in general, but also the specific
types of “storing and transmitting electronic transaction
receipts”. The details recited in the claim are only further
refinements of the abstract idea. That does not change the fact
that the claim is drawn to abstract ideas.
Ans. 4.
Claim 18 broadly recites the limitations of (1) receiving receipts from
transactions between buyers and sellers (“receiving a plurality of electronic
transaction receipts, each electronic transaction receipt associated with a
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transaction that has occurred between a particular buyer of a plurality of
buyers and a particular seller of a plurality of sellers”); (2) storing the
receipts (“storing the plurality of electronic transaction receipts in the
database”); (3) receiving a request to transmit for a portion of the stored
receipts (“receiving at least one request from at least one of the plurality of
buyers to transmit at least a portion of the plurality of electronic transaction
receipts associated with the at least one of the plurality of buyers”); and
(4) transmitting the requested portion of the receipts (“transmitting the
portion of the plurality of electronic transaction receipts associated with the
at least one of the plurality of buyers to the at least one of the plurality of
buyers.”). App. Br. 24 (Claims App’x); see Final Act. 3–4. The Examiner
concludes:
All the steps of the claim, collectively as an ordered combination,
are directed to storing and transmitting electronic transaction
receipts which is considered to be an abstract idea similar to the
concepts that have been identified by the courts such as
classifying and storing digital images in an organized manner
(See [TLI Communications LLC v. AV Automotive, LLC, 823
F.3d 607, 611 (Fed. Cir. 2016)]). The abstract idea of storing
electronic transaction receipts is a combination of the abstract-
idea processes identified above (See [Electric Power Grp., LLC
v. Alstrom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353 (Fed. Cir. 2016)
(“collecting information, analyzing it, and displaying certain
results of the collection and analysis”)]). Hence the steps of the
claim, taken individually or as an ordered combination, are
directed to abstract idea.
Final Act. 4; see also Cellspin Soft, Inc. v. Fitbit, Inc., 927 F.3d 1306, 1319
(Fed. Cir. 2019) (citing Electric Power Grp. with approval). As evidenced
by the analysis above, claim 18 is broad in its scope and does not
meaningfully limit the abstract idea, particularly, how the receipts are
received, stored, requested, selected for transmission, or transmitted. See
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Affinity Labs of Texas, LLC v. Amazon.com Inc., 838 F.3d 1266, 1272 (Fed.
Cir. 2016) (“[The patent] claims the general concept of streaming user-
selected content to a portable device. The addition of basic user
customization features to the interface does not alter the abstract nature of
the claims and does not add an inventive component that renders the claims
patentable.”); Electric Power Grp., 830 F.3d at 1353.
Claim 18’s limitations, under their broadest reasonable interpretation,
recite collecting receipts, storing them, and disseminating requested portions
of the stored receipts, which receipts result from transactions between buyers
and sellers, which are “commercial . . . interactions (including . . . sales
activities or behaviors; business relations); [and] manag[e] personal behavior
or relationships or interactions between people[, e.g., buyers and sellers,]
(including . . . following rules or instructions),” and which fall within the
broader category of “[c]ertain methods of organizing human activity.” Final
Act. 3–4; App. Br. 24 (Claims App’x); see 2019 Revised Patent Subject
Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. at 52; see also Spec., 1:15–17
(The recited methods relate “to electronically performed steps of sales and
other transactions in which a receipt is issued.”). Thus, we determine that
the rejected claims recite an abstract idea, namely “[c]ertain methods of
organizing human activity.”
b. Step 2A, Prong Two – Abstract Idea Not Integrated Into
Practical Application
The Examiner finds:
The claims merely amount to the application or
instructions to apply the abstract idea (i.e. storing electronic
transaction receipts) on one or more computers, and are
considered to amount to nothing more than requiring a generic
computer system (e.g. a database and a device suitably
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programmed) to merely carry out the abstract idea itself. As
such, the claims, when considered as a whole, are nothing more
than the instructions to implement the abstract idea (i.e. storing
electronic transaction receipts) in a particular, albeit well-
understood, routine and conventional technological
environment.
Accordingly, the Examiner concludes that there are no
meaningful limitations in the claims that transform the judicial
exception into a patent eligible application such that the claims
amount to significantly more than the judicial exception itself.5
Final Act. 13 (emphasis added).
Appellant contends that
the claims certainly affect an improvement to a technology or
technical field. It is well known and accepted that electronic
commerce entails execution of transactions in quantity and at
high rate, each producing an electronic transaction receipt.
Storing the resulting volume of receipts in a manner that a
particular buyer can request and be practicably transmitted
specific receipts on demand represents a technical problem.
App. Br. 7 (emphases added). However, the claims do not recite that the
receipts must be received in a high volume or at a high rate. E.g., id. at 24
(Claims App’x). The claims simply recite that “a plurality of electronic
transaction receipts,” i.e., two or more electronic transaction receipts, are
received. Id. Appellant may not read teachings from the Specification into
the claims to show that the claims do not recite an abstract idea. See id.
at 10–13. Moreover, even if the claims recited the ability to handle large

5 We acknowledge that some of the considerations at Step 2A, Prong Two,
properly may be evaluated under Step 2 of Alice (Step 2B of the Office
guidance). For purposes of maintaining consistent treatment within the
Office, we evaluate those considerations under first part of the Alice/Mayo
analysis (Step 2A of the Office guidance). See 2019 Revised Patent Subject
Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. at 55 n.25, 27–32.
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volumes of receipts at a high rate, this ability would be due to the
capabilities of a “conventional personal computer.” Spec. 7:26–27, 8:23–27,
10:26–27; see FairWarning IP, LLC v. Iatric Sys., 839 F.3d 1089, 1095
(Fed. Cir. 2016).
Appellant further asserts:
For perspective on the [technical] problem, consider the
receipt management struggles of a single household where
finding a receipt to return a recently-purchased item may entail
searching with great frustration through drawers looking for a
receipt printout, through electronic records, and so forth. Then,
scale the household’s receipt-management problem up to an
online retailer. The inventors recognized that the technical field
of transaction data management needed improvement and
invented a technical solution-the claimed invention.
App. Br. 7. However, we are not persuaded that this suggests a technical
problem or its solution. Instead, we determine that Appellant’s example
shows a problem in a particular technological environment, namely, buyer-
seller transactions involving electronic receipts, the solution of which is
facilitated by the use of a conventional personal computer, having access to
a database. See id. at 21 (Claims App’x) (Claim 6 reciting a system
including a device for interfacing with a database and a database for storing
electronic receipts.); see also Spec., 9:1–5 (“Although in the illustrated
embodiment of the invention the computing device on which the buyer
receives receipts is described as a conventional personal computer such as a
desktop or laptop computer, in other embodiments of the invention the
device can be any suitable type of device that has a hypermedia user
interface, i.e., that allows a user to interact with documents through the use
of hyperlinks.”), 19:25–27 (“To facilitate receipt data transfer, such as
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exporting the receipt data to finance and spreadsheet programs and the like,
the receipt data is stored in database 89 in a standard or uniform format.”).
Moreover, the Specification discloses:
As illustrated in Fig. 4, the client computer operated by buyer 20
can be a conventional personal computer on which a Web
browser 40 operates. As well-known in the art, a browser is a
software program that allows a user to receive and view
hypertext documents from a server. Received documents are
displayed on the video monitor 42 of the computer or other
suitable display. Common commercially available browsers
such as NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR and MICROSOFT
EXPLORER typically display a hyperlink in some distinguishing
way, e.g. in a different color, font or style. Browsers associate
hyperlinks with Internet target documents and, when the user
activates a hyperlink, the computer transmits a request for that
document. As is conventional, the computer includes a mouse
44 with which the user can activate displayed hyperlinks. The
computer also include other hardware and software elements
conventionally included in personal computers, such as a
keyboard 46, a processor 48, disk storage device 50 such as a
hard disk drive, input/output interfaces 52, a network interface
54, and a removable read/write storage device 56 such as a drive
that uses a CD-ROM 58 or floppy disk. The software elements
of the programmed computer, such as browser 40, are illustrated
for purposes of clarity as executable in a main memory 60, but
as persons skilled in the art will understand they may not in
actuality reside simultaneously or in their entireties in memory
60. The computer has other hardware and software elements of
the types conventionally included in personal computers, such as
an operating system, but are not shown for purposes of clarity.
Note that software elements can be loaded into the computer via
read/write storage device 56 or network 22.
Spec., 7:26–8:16; see id. at 5:16–17 (“The term ‘document’ includes files
and other items of any suitable medium, including graphical imagery, still
and moving images, and sound.”), 7:16–25 (“As well-known in the art, a
hyperlink is a reference or link from some point in one hypermedia
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document to another document or point in a document.”), 10:26–11:2 (“As
in the above-described system, it includes similar conventional computer
elements along the lines of a memory 94, network interface 96, processor 98,
disk storage device 100, and a removable-medium read/write storage device
102 for reading from and writing to a disk 104.”). The methods of claim 18
merely invoke (and the systems of claim 6 merely recite) generic hardware
and known data storage, retrieval, and transmission techniques, and the
recited methods are not linked to any particular machine (MPEP
§ 2106.05(b)) and merely apply generic computer hardware and software to
facilitate the solution to an electronic transaction-related problem (MPEP
§ 2106.05(f)). Ans. 9; see 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility
Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. at 55 n.27, 30.
Appellant contends that, like the claims at issue in McRO, Inc. v.
Bandai Namco Games America Inc., 837 F.3d 1299, 1313 (Fed. Cir. 2016),
“the present improvement in the highly technical field of managing
electronic transaction receipts certainly qualifies as an eligible
improvement.” App. Br. 17. In McRO, our reviewing court determined,
The prior art “animator would decide what the animated face
should look like at key points in time between the start and end
times, and then ‘draw’ the face at those times.” The computer
here is employed to perform a distinct process to automate a task
previously performed by humans. . . . It is the incorporation of
the claimed rules, not the use of the computer, that “improved
[the] existing technological process” by allowing the automation
of further tasks. This is unlike Flook, Bilski, and Alice, where
the claimed computer-automated process and the prior method
were carried out in the same way.
McRO, 837 F.3d at 1314–15 (citations omitted). As our reviewing court
concluded in McRO, however,
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the automation goes beyond merely “organizing [existing]
information into a new form” or carrying out a fundamental
economic practice. The claimed process uses a combined order
of specific rules that renders information into a specific format
that is then used and applied to create desired results . . . . While
the result may not be tangible, there is nothing that requires a
method “be tied to a machine or transform an article” to be
patentable.
McRO, 837 F.3d at 1315 (citations omitted). That is not the case here.
Ans. 7. The claims recite automation that does not go beyond merely
receiving and storing information in a conventional database and retrieving
and transmitting the stored information pursuant to a request. See App.
Br. 7. Consequently, we are persuaded that the instant claims are not
directed to improvements in the functioning of a computer or any other
technology or technical field. See App. Br. 8–14.
In view of Appellant’s claim recitations and Specification and
consistent with the Examiner’s determinations, we are persuaded the
rejected claims do not recite:
(i) an improvement to the functioning of a computer;
(ii) an improvement to another technology or technical field;
(iii) an application of the abstract idea with, or by use of, a
particular machine;
(iv) a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a
different state or thing; or
(v) other meaningful limitations beyond generally linking the
use of the abstract idea to a particular technological
environment.
See MPEP § 2106.05(a)–(c), (e)–(h); see Final Act. 13, 18; Ans. 9. Thus, we
conclude that the rejected claims do not integrate the judicial exception into
a practical application and that the claims are directed to an abstract idea.
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c. Step 2B – Not Significantly More Than the Abstract Idea
Because we find that the claims are recite an abstract idea and do not
integrate that abstract idea into a practical application, we now consider
whether the claims include additional limitations, such that the claims
amount to significantly more than the abstract idea. Applying second part of
the Alice/Mayo test, the Examiner concludes:
That is, the elements involved in the recited process undertake
their roles in performance of their activities according to their
generic functionalities which are well-understood, routine and
conventional. The elements together execute in routinely and
conventionally accepted coordinated manners and interact with
their partner elements to achieve an overall outcome which,
similarly, is merely the combined and coordinated execution of
generic computer functionalities which are well-understood,
routine and conventional activities previously known to the
industry.
Final Act. 5; see id. at 15; Ans. 5–6. We agree.
Appellant contends that the Examiner fails to make necessary findings
of fact to support the determination that the rejected claims are patent
ineligible, citing Berkheimer v. HP Inc., 881 F.3d 1360 (Fed. Cir. 2018)
(cert. petition pending). App. Br. 18–19. The Examiner finds, however, that
the Specification describes the systems and components invoked by the
rejected claims are well-known, routine, and conventional. Final Act. 5;
Ans. 5. The Specification does not assert that any of the recited
components, alone or in combination, are novel. On the contrary, the
Specification makes clear that the components and techniques recited in the
rejected claims are well-understood, routine, and conventional. See, e.g.,
Spec., 7:16–8:16, 10:26–11:2.
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On this record, we agree with the Examiner that independent
claim 18, as well as independent claim 6 (see Final Act. 5), is directed to an
abstract idea and fails to recite significantly more than the identified abstract
idea. Thus, we are not persuaded that the Examiner erred in determining
that these claims are patent ineligible, and we sustain that rejection.
2. Dependent Claims 7–17 and 19–24
The Examiner determines that dependent claims 7–17 and 19–24 also
are directed to an abstract idea and fails to recite significantly more than the
identified abstract idea. Final Act. 6–12. Appellant contends that the
dependent claims further differentiate over the identified abstract idea, but
Appellants contentions amount to little more than unsupported and
conclusory assertions, and are not sufficient to overcome the Examiner’s
case for patent ineligibility. App. Br. 14–17; see Ans. 6–7. Therefore, we
also sustain the patent ineligibility rejection of the dependent claims.
DECISION
1. The Examiner did not err in rejecting claims 6–24 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 101, as directed to patent-ineligible subject matter.
2. Thus, on this record, claims 6–24 are not patentable.

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CONCLUSION
We affirm the Examiner’s rejection of claims 6–24.
Claims
Rejected
35 U.S.C. Basis Affirmed Reversed
6–24 § 101 Eligibility 6–24
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED