I am somewhat amazed by Google’s New Patent No. US 9633013 B2; Claim 1 below:
1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
receiving a sequence of symbols that have been optically captured from a rendered document;
determining that the sequence of symbols includes a particular symbol, word, or phrase that has been mapped to one or more actions;
selecting an action from the one or more actions; and
transmitting an instruction to a document management system to perform the selected action.
In addition to its gaping abstract idea problems, the patent claims priority to a collection of more than one hundred (100) provisional patent applications – 2004 priority date.
Despite this application being filed in 2016 and issued in 2017, the claims were never rejected on eligibility grounds – or on any grounds other than obviousness-type-double-patenting. The notice of allowance explains:
The prior art of the record fail to teach or suggest singly and/or in combination a system and computer implemented method which provides for receiving a sequence of symbols that have been optically captured from a rendered document, determining that the sequence of symbols includes a particular symbol, word, or phrase that has been mapped to one or more actions, selecting an action from the one or more actions, and transmitting an instruction to a document management system to perform the selected action as prescribed for in the claimed invention.
I’ll also note here that the patent appears to be co-owned by Google and the widow of named inventor, Martin King. More claims continue to be filed in the family, including pending APN 15/462,309, which has also been rejected only on one ground – obviousness type double patenting – without any consideration for Alice/Mayo. The first claim of the ‘309 patent soon-to-issue is as follows (written as Claim 20):
