DETAILED ACTION
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on June 18, 2026 has been entered.
2. Claim 8 is canceled.
3. Claims 1-7 and 9-26 are currently pending and have been considered below.
Information Disclosure Statement (IDS)
4. The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on March 10, 2026 and June 18, 2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
5. The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
6. Claims 1-7 and 9-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
7. Claims 1 and 19 recite the limitations “in response to obtaining one or more predictions or classifications relating to conditions of respective industrial components of said industrial setting and said industrial setting that collectively indicate that there are likely no issues relating to any industrial component of said industrial setting and said industrial setting, compressing the one or more instances of sensor data using a lossy codec.” However, the claim limitation “conditions of respective industrial components of said industrial setting and said industrial setting that collectively indicate that there are likely no issues relating to any industrial component of said industrial setting and said industrial setting” is unclear. The claim language “said industrial setting” is recited twice, and leaves the reader in doubt as to the meaning of the technical features that are referred to, thereby rendering the definition of the subject-matter unclear. Appropriate correction/clarification is required.
Regarding Claims 13 and 25, the claims are rejected with the same rationale as in claims 1 and 19.
Claim Objection
8. Claims 1-7 and 9-18 are objected to because of the following informalities: Claim 1 limitation “….generate a digital twin of said industrial setting…”(line 7) should read “….generate [[a]] the digital twin of said industrial setting…” Appropriate correction is required.
9. Claims 10, 11, 14, 22, 23, and 26 are objected to because of the following informalities: Claims 10, 11, 14, 22, 23, and 26 limitation “….in response to obtaining a prediction or classification relating to a condition of a particular industrial…” should read “….in response to obtaining [[a]] the prediction or classification relating to [[a]] the condition of a particular industrial…” Appropriate correction is required.
Examiner’s Notes
10. Claims 1-7 and 9-26 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112, second paragraph and claim objections, set forth in this Office action.
11. The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The combined limitations of both Claims 1 and 19 are not anticipated nor made obvious by the prior art. Although the prior rejections recited art for the majority of limitations, the novel limitations concern applying a lossy codec to the sensor data.
Although Lund et al. US 2016/0333855 (hereinafter Lund) teaches using data from cameras [0039], he is silent concerning using any lossy codec. Lossy codecs are routine and conventional in the transfer of image data in order to reduce data size and bandwidth use in communication. However, the decision to use lossy codec is almost exclusively the need to reduce data to either use less memory or increase the image transfer speeds. There is no teaching in the of a sensor system which, “selectively encode the one or more instances of sensor data prior to transmission to the data handling platform based on the respective predictions or classifications outputted by the machine-learned models in response to the respective feature vector to obtain one or more sensor kit packets, wherein selectively encoding the one or more instances of sensor data includes: in response to obtaining one or more predictions or classifications relating to conditions of respective industrial components of said industrial setting and said industrial setting that collectively indicate that there are likely no issues relating to any industrial component of said industrial setting and said industrial setting, compressing the one or more instances of sensor data using a lossy codec.”
Note that a system that routinely uses a lossy codec at all times is not selectively applying the lossy codec for a given set of conditions tied to a condition of industrial components. Thus the routine use of a lossy codec on 100% of sensor data does not read on the claimed limitation.
Conclusion
12. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EYOB HAGOS whose telephone number is (571)272-3508. The examiner can normally be reached on 8:30-5:30PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor Shelby Turner can be reached on 571-272-6334. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Eyob Hagos/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2857
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