Jennifer Dogin et al.

Patent Trials and Appeals Board

Sep 19, 2019

13571857 - (D) (P.T.A.B. Sep. 19, 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.
13/571,857 08/10/2012 Jennifer DOGIN 0076412-000072 4132
21839 7590 09/19/2019
BUCHANAN, INGERSOLL & ROONEY PC
POST OFFICE BOX 1404
ALEXANDRIA, VA 22313-1404
EXAMINER
SHARVIN, DAVID P
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3692
NOTIFICATION DATE DELIVERY MODE
09/19/2019 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):
ADIPDOC1@BIPC.com
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
____________

BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
____________

Ex parte JENNIFER DOGIN and BRIAN MAW
____________

Appeal 2018-006810
Application 13/571,857
Technology Center 3600
____________

Before KARA L. SZPONDOWSKI, SCOTT B. HOWARD, and
STEVEN M. AMUNDSON, Administrative Patent Judges.

HOWARD, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

Appellant1 appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) from the Examiner’s
Final Rejection of claims 1, 2, 4, 6–10, 12, and 14–16, which constitute all
of the claims pending in this application. 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 Mastercard
International Incorporated. Appeal Br. 2.
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THE INVENTION
The disclosed and claimed invention is directed to “using controlled
payment numbers with controls set by a beneficiary to provide for the secure
use of benefits provided by a benefits agency for an authorized user on the
beneficiary’s behalf.” Spec. ¶ 1.2 Claim 1, which is illustrative of the
claimed subject matter, is reproduced in the Analysis section.

REJECTION
Claims 1, 2, 4, 6–10, 12, and 14–16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 101 as directed to patent-ineligible subject matter.

ANALYSIS
Section 101 Rejection
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 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 Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208,
216 (2014).
In determining whether a claim falls within an excluded category, we
are guided by the Supreme Court’s two-step 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,

2 We refer to the Specification filed Aug. 10, 2012 (“Spec.”); Final Office
Action mailed July 14, 2017 (“Final Act.”); Appeal Brief filed Dec. 18, 2017
(“Appeal Br.”); Examiner’s Answer mailed Apr. 18, 2018 (“Ans.”); and the
Reply Brief filed June 18, 2018 (“Reply Br.”).
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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.”).
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 v. Kappos, 561 U.S.
593, 611 (2010)); mathematical formulas (Parker v. Flook, 437 U.S. 584,
594–95 (1978)); and mental processes (Gottschalk v. Benson, 409 U.S. 63,
69 (1972)). Concepts determined to be patent eligible include physical and
chemical processes, such as “molding rubber products” (Diamond v. Diehr,
450 U.S. 175, 191 (1981)); “tanning, dyeing, making water-proof cloth,
vulcanizing India rubber, smelting ores” (id. at 182 n.7 (quoting Corning v.
Burden, 56 U.S. 252, 267–68 (1853))); and manufacturing flour (Benson,
409 U.S. at 69 (citing Cochrane v. Deener, 94 U.S. 780, 785 (1876))).
In Diehr, the claim at issue recited a mathematical formula, but the
Supreme Court held that “[a] claim drawn to subject matter otherwise
statutory does not become nonstatutory simply because it uses a
mathematical formula.” Diehr, 450 U.S. at 187; see also id. at 191 (“We
view respondents’ claims as nothing more than a process for molding rubber
products and not as an attempt to patent a mathematical formula.”). Having
said that, the Supreme 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
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attempting to limit the use of the formula to a particular technological
environment.” Id. (citing Benson and Flook); see, e.g., id. at 187 (“It is now
commonplace that an application of a law of nature or mathematical formula
to a known structure or process may well be deserving of patent
protection.”).
If the claim is “directed to” an abstract idea, we turn to the second
step of the Alice and Mayo framework, where “we 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 (citation 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.
The PTO recently published revised guidance on the application of
§ 101. 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed.
Reg. 50 (Jan. 7, 2019) (“Memorandum”). Under that guidance, we first look
to whether the claim recites:
(1) 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) additional elements that integrate the judicial exception
into a practical application (see MANUAL OF PATENT
EXAMINING PROCEDURE (“MPEP”) §§ 2106.05(a)–(c), (e)–(h)
(9th ed., Rev. 08.2017, Jan. 2018)).
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See Memorandum, 84 Fed. Reg. at 52, 54–55. 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.
Furthermore, the Memorandum “extracts and synthesizes key
concepts identified by the courts as abstract ideas to explain that the abstract
idea exception includes the following groupings of subject matter, when
recited as such in a claim limitation(s) (that is, when recited on their own or
per se)”:
(a) Mathematical concepts—mathematical
relationships, mathematical formulas or equations,
mathematical calculations;

(b) Certain methods of organizing human activity—
fundamental economic principles or practices (including
hedging, insurance, mitigating risk); commercial or legal
interactions (including agreements in the form of contracts;
legal obligations; advertising, marketing or sales activities or
behaviors; business relations); managing personal behavior or
relationships or interactions between people (including social
activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions); and

(c) Mental processes—concepts performed in the
human mind (including an observation, evaluation, judgment,
opinion).
Id. at 52 (footnotes omitted).
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USPTO Step 2A, Prong 1
The Examiner determines that the claims are “directed to . . . method
steps of issuing and processing a limited use payment device by way of a
controlled payment number and transaction processing (selecting payment
card use conditions, receiving the issued CPN with use conditions and
authorized user(s)),” and are similar to “abstract ideas similar to certain
methods of organizing human activity.” Final Act. 7; see Ans. 3–4.
Appellant contends that the “Examiner has oversimplified Appellant’s
claims” and did not address the “core features of the instant claims.” Appeal
Br. 14. Specifically, Appellant contends that the
claims of the instant application require necessary, and
unconventional, communication steps between the benefits
agency and (i) the card issuer, (ii) the financial transaction
processing system, and (iii) beneficiary, which are material to
tiered identification/selection of use conditions, association and
distribution of a CPN.
Appeal Br. 14; see also Reply Br. 2. According to Appellant, the
claimed steps “have necessary temporal aspects (e.g., specific order),
in which some steps are responsive to the occurrence of other steps.”
Id.
We are not persuaded by Appellant’s arguments that the Examiner
erred.
Representative claim 1—with emphasis added—is reproduced below:
1. A computer-implemented method of distributing a
controlled payment number (CPN) by a benefits agency, which
provides financial benefits to beneficiaries, the method
comprising:
receiving, by a receiving device of the benefits agency, a
payment card number from a card issuing bank;
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associating, in a database device of the benefits agency,
the payment card number received from the issuer, with a
beneficiary;
receiving, by the receiving device of the benefits agency,
a plurality of payment card use conditions, from a financial
transaction processing system, wherein said financial transaction
processing system, benefits agency, card issuing bank, and
beneficiary are separate and distinct entities;
selecting, by a processing device of the benefits agency, a
subset of payment card use conditions from the plurality of
payment card use conditions received from the financial
transaction processing system;
transmitting, by the transmitting device of the benefits
agency, to the beneficiary, the subset of payment card use
conditions, as selected by the benefits agency, from the plurality
of payment card use conditions received from the financial
transaction processing system;
receiving, by the receiving device of the benefits agency,
a request, from the beneficiary, for a CPN, wherein the request
for the CPN includes (i) a selection of at least one payment card
use condition from the subset of payment card use conditions, as
previously selected by the benefits agency, and (ii) identification
of at least an authorized user of the CPN;
transmitting, by the transmitting device of the benefits
agency, to the financial transaction processing system, request
information for the CPN, said request information including at
least (i) the payment card number associated with the beneficiary
and (ii) the at least one payment card use condition, selected by
the beneficiary, from the subset of payment card use conditions,
and (iii) the authorized user identification information, received
from the beneficiary;
receiving, by the receiving device of the benefits agency,
the CPN issued by the financial transaction processing system,
wherein said issued CPN (i) is associated with the at least one
payment card use condition selected by the beneficiary from the
subset of payment card use conditions selected by the benefits
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agency and (ii) is authorized for use by the beneficiary identified
authorized user;
associating, in the database of the benefits agency, the
issued CPN, received from the financial transaction processing
system, with the payment card number; and
distributing, by the benefits agency, to the beneficiary, the
issued CPN received from the financial transaction processing
system.
The emphasized limitations are steps that are directed toward
detecting or otherwise preventing financial fraud. Specifically, the
emphasized limitations result in associating a beneficiary and the
beneficiary’s payment card with a CPN, specific payment card use
conditions, and authorized users. The result is that authorized users may use
the payment card to benefit the beneficiary under specific card use
conditions. Consequently, the steps collectively recite a method of
preventing financial fraud (i.e., using a CPN to grant access to a payment
card for an authorized user limited to specific use conditions), which is one
of the “certain methods of organizing human activity” (i.e., “fundamental
economic principle or practice” and “commercial or legal interactions”),
identified as an abstract idea in the Memorandum. See Memorandum, 84
Fed. Reg. at 52; see CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d
1366, 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (claims that “are broad and essentially purport
to encompass any method or system for detecting credit card fraud which
utilizes information relating credit card transactions to particular ‘Internet
address[es]’” are abstract ideas).
Accordingly, we conclude the claim recites a certain method of
organizing human activity, which is an abstract idea identified in the
Memorandum.
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USPTO Step 2A, Prong 2
In determining whether claim 1 is “directed to” the identified abstract
ideas, we next consider whether claim 1 recites additional elements that
integrate the judicial exception into a practical application. For the reasons
set forth below, we discern no additional element (or combination of
elements) recited in claim 1 that integrates the judicial exception into a
practical application. See Memorandum, 84 Fed. Reg. at 54–55.
The Examiner concludes that the claims “are not improving the
functioning of the computer.” Ans. 5. Specifically, the Examiner concludes
that the claimed “[s]electing specific card use conditions and authorized user
conditions has been done previously by a computer,” and that it “is being
performed by and routed through the . . . separate and distinct benefits
agency does not provide a technological improvement but is performing
tasks that were previously performed by the financial transaction processing
systems or card issuer systems.” Ans. 4–5. According to the Examiner, the
claimed invention “is a business improvement, not a technological solution.”
Ans. 5.
Appellant contends that the “claims improve upon existing network
systems as a result of the specific location of the recited benefits agency
within the system and as a result of the specified communication flow
between entities in that system.” App. Br. 15; see App. Br. 20–21.
Specifically, Appellant contends the “claims operate in a non-conventional
and non-generic manner to improve upon the way conventional technology
operations to improve security measures surrounding benefits payment cards
issued to beneficiaries and further shield the beneficiary from fraud.”
Appeal Br. 15; see also id. at 19, 21–22; see Reply Br. 5. According to
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Appellant, the claimed invention “is a means to ‘improve the technology of
providing benefits paid to beneficiaries,’” and “clearly recite ‘a particular
solution to a problem or a particular way to achieve a desired outcome,’ (i.e.,
a unique manner to enable hierarchical controls on use to increase security
and prevent fraudulent use of a benefits card).” Reply Br. 3.3
Claim 1 does not constitute an improvement to computer technology;
rather, it merely adapts the abstract idea of associating a beneficiary and the
beneficiary’s payment card with a CPN, specific payment card use
conditions, and authorized users, to an execution of steps practically
performed by computers. See Spec. ¶¶ 27–28, 30, 62, 65 (the “financial
transaction processing agency 106 may identify a controlled payment
number that is controlled based on the selected payment card use
condition(s) and transmit the identified controlled payment number,” and the
“benefits agency 102 may distribute the received CPN to the beneficiary
108,” and “[e]ach of the components in the system 100 may communicate
via a network” and use “various computer system configurations” and “a
special purpose or a general purpose processor device”). We agree with the
Examiner that any improvement is to the business process (e.g., detecting or
otherwise preventing financial fraud), rather than an improvement to the
technology, as the claims merely shift which entity is performing the
functionality. See Ans. 4–5.
Moreover, relying on a computer to perform routine data processing
tasks more quickly or more accurately is insufficient to render a claim patent

3 Appellant has not argued the claim is directed to a particular machine or
results in a transformation or reduction of a particular article to a different
state or thing. See MPEP § 2016.05(b), (c); Memorandum, 84 Fed. Reg.
at 54.
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eligible. See Alice, 573 U.S. at 224 (“use of a computer to create electronic
records, track multiple transactions, and issue simultaneous instructions” is
not an inventive concept); Bancorp Servs., L.L.C. v. Sun Life Assur. Co. of
Can. (U.S.), 687 F.3d 1266, 1278 (Fed. Cir. 2012) (a computer “employed
only for its most basic function . . . does not impose meaningful limits on the
scope of those claims”); MPEP § 2106.05(f)(2) (“Use of a computer or other
machinery in its ordinary capacity for economic or other tasks (e.g., to
receive, store, or transmit data) or simply adding a general purpose computer
or computer components after the fact to an abstract idea (e.g., a
fundamental economic practice or mathematical equation) does not provide
significantly more.”).
Appellant further analogizes the claims here to the claims in
BASCOM. Appeal Br. 15, 16–17, 18–20 (citing BASCOM Glob. Internet
Servs., Inc. v. AT&T Mobility LLC, 827 F.3d 1341, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 2016)).
Specifically, Appellant argues “the inventive concept of the instant claims,
like Bascom, is the specific location of the benefits agency, which
provides advantages over existing systems . . . for example, [it] enables
hierarchical regulations on card use controls for the provision of a CPN to
better shield the beneficiary against fraud.” Id. at 19; see also Reply Br. 4.
Appellant misplaces its reliance on BASCOM. There, the claims
recited a “specific method of filtering Internet content” requiring “the
installation of a filtering tool at a specific location, remote from the end-
users, with customizable filtering features specific to each end user.”
BASCOM, 827 F.3d at 1345–46, 1350. The Federal Circuit reasoned that the
claims covered “a technology-based solution . . . to filter content on the
Internet that overcomes existing problems with other Internet filtering
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systems” and “improve[s] an existing technological process.” Id. at 1351
(citing Alice, 573 U.S. at 223); see Alice, 573 U.S. at 223 (explaining that
“the claims in Diehr were patent eligible because they improved an existing
technological process”).
In contrast to the claims in BASCOM, the claims here, including the
claimed location of the benefits agency, do not cover a technology-based
solution that improves an existing technological process. See Final Act. 8–9;
Ans. 4–8. As the Examiner correctly determines, the claimed “specific
location” of the benefits agency does not provide “any additional benefits to
the system” in the same way “as the specific location of the filtering in
BASCOM provided additional improvements to the system.” Ans. 6.
Specifically, the Examiner determines that the “payment card contains use
conditions and limits by authorized user regardless of the location of the
benefits agency and . . . that the use conditions, not the location of the
benefits agency, are protecting the card holder from fraud.” Id.
Furthermore, in BASCOM, the Specification described the inventive
concept as “the installation of a filtering tool at a specific location” that
“rests on taking advantage of the ability of at least some ISPs to identify
individual accounts that communicate with the ISP server, and to associate a
request for Internet content with a specific individual account.” BASCOM,
827 F.3d at 1350. In contrast, here, Appellant does not direct our attention
to anything in the Specification that identifies advantages or improvements
to the technological process due to the location of the benefits agency.
Rather, Appellant indicates the advantage of the specific location of the
benefits agency allows the arrangement “to better shield the beneficiary
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against fraud.” Appeal Br. 19; see also Appeal Br. 22. Hence, the claims
here do not resemble the claims in BASCOM.
Appellant further argues that “preemption is not apparent,” and the
claims do “‘not preempt all uses’ of the alleged abstract idea of ‘issuing and
processing a limited use payment device by way of a controlled payment
number and transaction processing.” Appeal Br. 16–17. Although the
extent of preemption is a consideration, the absence of complete preemption
is not dispositive. See, e.g., Ariosa Diagnostics, Inc. v. Sequenom, Inc., 788
F.3d 1371, 1379 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (“While preemption may signal patent
ineligible subject matter, the absence of complete preemption does not
demonstrate patent eligibility.”). Therefore, even if the claims do not
preempt the abstract idea, that alone is not enough to render the claims
patent eligible.
Accordingly, we are not persuaded of error in the Examiner’s
determination that claim 1 is directed to an abstract idea, and we find the
claimed additional elements do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical
application.
USPTO Step 2B
Turning to step 2B of the USPTO Guidance, we look to whether
claim 1 (a) adds a specific limitation or combination of limitations that are
not well-understood, routine, conventional activity in the field, or (b) simply
appends well-understood, routine, conventional activities previously known
to the industry, specified at a high level of generality, to the judicial
exception. Memorandum, 84 Fed. Reg. at 56.
The Examiner determines that the claimed additional elements
such as the receiving device, transmitting device, and database
require functionality no more than that of a generic computer and
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generic components . . . to perform the generic computer
functions of receiving a payment card number, associating the
payment card number to a beneficiary, receiving [possible
selectable data ie use conditions], transmitting [selected data],
associating the issued CPN to the payment card number,
distributing the issued CPN, and processing [the authorization
request], which are similar to the generic computer functions
identified by the court.
Final Act. 8–9 (citing Spec. ¶¶ 62, 65); see Ans. 6.
Appellant argues that the “claims operate in a non-conventional and
non-generic manner to improve upon the way conventional technology
operations to improve security measures surrounding benefits payment cards
issued to beneficiaries and further shield the beneficiary from fraud.”
Appeal Br. 15; see also id. at 19, 21–22; Reply Br. 5.
We are not persuaded by Appellant’s argument that the Examiner
erred. As discussed above, claim 1 is directed to associating a beneficiary
and the beneficiary’s payment card with a CPN, specific payment card use
conditions, and authorized users, which is an abstract idea, by executing
steps practically performed by computers. Similarly, the additional elements
in the claim amount to no more than mere instructions to apply the abstract
idea using generic computer components (e.g., receiving device, database
device, financial transaction processing system, processing device,
transmitting device), which is insufficient to provide an inventive concept.
See, e.g., Spec. ¶¶ 61–69. Specifically, the Specification generically
describes the claimed computer components, including “various computer
system configurations” and “at least one processor device and a memory.”
Spec. ¶ 62. The Specification further describes that the “processor device
. . . may be a single processor, a plurality of processors, or combinations
thereof.” Spec. ¶ 63. As an example, the “[p]rocessor device 704 may be a
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special purpose or a general purpose processor device” and “may be
connected to a communication infrastructure.” Spec. ¶ 65. Accordingly, we
agree with the Examiner that the additional claim limitations besides the
abstract idea are well-understood, routine, and conventional elements.
Appellant does not direct our attention to anything in the Specification
that indicates the claimed computer components (e.g., receiving device,
database device, financial transaction processing system, processing device,
transmitting device) perform anything other than well-understood, routine,
and conventional functions, such as receiving and transmitting information
(i.e., receiving payment card numbers, receiving payment card use
conditions, transmitting selected payment card use conditions, receiving
requests including selected payment card use conditions and authorized user
identification, transmitting request for the CPN, receiving the CPN,
distributing the CPN), and analyzing and storing the information to associate
a beneficiary and the beneficiary’s payment card with a CPN, specific
payment card use conditions, and authorized users (i.e., associate the
payment card number with a beneficiary, associate the issued CPN with the
payment card number). See buySAFE, Inc. v. Google, Inc., 765 F.3d 1350,
1355 (Fed. Cir. 2014) (“That a computer receives and sends the information
over a network—with no further specification—is not even arguably
inventive”); In re TLI Commc’ns LLC Patent Litig., 823 F.3d 607, 614 (Fed.
Cir. 2016) (server that receives data, extracts classification information from
the received data, and stores the digital images insufficient to add an
inventive concept); Alice, 573 U.S. at 225–26 (receiving, storing, sending
information over networks insufficient to add an inventive concept);
CyberSource, 654 F.3d at 1370 (use of Internet to verify credit-card
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transaction does not add enough to abstract idea of verifying the
transaction); see also MPEP § 2106.05(d) (“Courts have held computer‐
implemented processes not to be significantly more than an abstract idea
(and thus ineligible) where the claim as a whole amounts to nothing more
than generic computer functions merely used to implement an abstract idea,
such as an idea that could be done by a human analog (i.e., by hand or by
merely thinking.”).
Conclusion on Section 101 Rejection
Accordingly, we sustain the Examiner’s rejection of claim 1 as being
directed to patent-ineligible subject matter, as well as independent claims 6,
9, and 14 with commensurate limitations, and dependent claims 2, 4, 7, 8,
10, 12, and 15, and 16, not separately argued.4

4 Although Appellant states that the Examiner’s determination that
“[d]ependent claims 2, 4, 7–8, 10, 12, and 15–16 do not remedy the
deficiencies of the independent claims and are rejected accordingly . . . all
claims have been reviewed and are found to be substantially similar and
linkedto the same abstract idea” is not sufficient, Appellant does not
specifically identify how the Examiner erred. See Appeal Br. 22 (quoting
Final Act. 9). However, this amounts to little more than general denial that
fails to address the Examiner’s findings and conclusions and is, therefore,
insufficient to be considered an argument for separate patentability. See 37
C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(iv) (setting forth the requirements for an “argument for
separate patentability of the claim”); In re Lovin, 652 F.3d 1349, 1357 (Fed.
Cir. 2011) (“[W]e hold that the Board reasonably interpreted Rule 41.37 to
require more substantive arguments in an appeal brief than . . . a naked
assertion that” the Examiner erred.).
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CONCLUSION
In summary:
Claims
Rejected
Basis Affirmed Reversed
1, 2, 4, 6–10, 12,
and 14–16
§ 101 1, 2, 4, 6–10,
12, and 14–16

DECISION
We affirm the Examiner’s § 101 rejection of claims 1, 2, 4, 6–10, 12,
and 14–16.
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). See 37
C.F.R. § 41.50(f).

AFFIRMED