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 .
This action is in response to the Continued Examination filed on 4/6/2026 and Amendment filed on 10/23/2025. Claims 1-20 are pending. Claims 1-4, 6-8, 10 have been amended. Claims 11-20 are newly added.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 4/6/2026 has been entered.
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 non an abstract idea without significantly more.
Regarding independent claims 1 and 11, the following 2-step analysis is applied for analyzing the 35 U.S.C. § 101 subject matter eligibility of the claims:
Step 1: Statutory Category
Claim 1 recites a "method of presenting medical information," which falls within the statutory category of a process. Claim 11 recites a "system for presenting medical information" comprising a camera, frames, and a processor, which falls within the statutory category of a machine.
Step 2A, Prong 1: Abstract Idea
Claims 1 and 11 are directed to an abstract idea, specifically mental processes and certain methods of organizing human activity. The limitations as drafted cover a process that can be performed by a human. More specifically, a human can:
Observe an image of a medical object;
Recognize the object using visual cues like color or grey scale without needing an optical code;
Associate the recognized object with a data record (e.g., a mental or physical file);
Select information (interactive media) based on that recognition; and
Present and anchor that information to the object (e.g., pointing at a specific part of a medication bottle while explaining its use).
The focus of the claims is on the high-level concept of collecting data (capturing images), analyzing data (recognizing and associating), and displaying data (superimposing media).
Step 2A, Prong 2: Integration into Practical Application
The judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. The additional elements in the claims merely recite:
"Portable camera" and "Eyeglass frames": These amount to generic sensor and wearable hardware that provide the environment for the abstract idea.
"At least one processor" (Claim 11): This is a general-purpose processor performing "well-understood, routine, and conventional" operations. As noted in the Specification of similar cases, these are instructions provided to a processor of a general-purpose computer.
"Automatically anchored": The requirement to anchor digital information to a physical image is a conventional feature of augmented reality and does not impose a meaningful technical limit on practicing the abstract idea.
The operations amount to the manipulation of data content rather than a technical improvement to computer functionality or camera hardware.
Step 2B: Significantly More
The claims do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. The claim limitations amount to:
Generic computer implementation on terminals or wearable hardware (eyeglass frames);
Functional language: The steps of "automatically recognizing" and "selecting" are recited as results. As in the provided examples, for recited "artificial intelligence" or recognition mechanisms, no specific model (such as a particular neural network type) or specific training steps are recited.
Insignificant solution activity: The use of color/grey scale for recognition is a well-known mathematical and visual process and does not represent an unconventional technological solution.
Regarding Dependent Claims 2-10 and 12-20
Limitations in all dependent claims have been examined in a similar way to the independent claims above. It was found that all dependent claims are patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101:
Claims 2-3 and 12-13: Reciting AR/VR/MR or 2D/3D objects merely limits the abstract idea to a specific technological field or conventional data environment.
Claims 4-6 and 14-16: "Pattern recognition" and "recognizing characters" on a "product container" are further mental processes a human performs when reading or identifying objects.
Claims 7, 9-10, 17, and 19-20: Reciting specific buttons (e.g., "Price Tag," "Side effects," "Dosage") or media types (e.g., "video," "tutorial") is directed to non-functional descriptive material (the content of the data) and provides no technical solution or inventive concept.
Claims 8 and 18: Displaying on a "user’s retina" or "smart glasses" is not specified to be any particular hardware mechanism and can be broadly interpreted as conventional data output.
Conclusion: Claims 1-20 are directed to an abstract idea without significantly more and are therefore patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 20180036640 A1 Augmented Reality System
US 20170270698 A1 SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR GENERATING AUGMENTED REALITY ENVIRONMENTS
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to YUJANG TSWEI whose telephone number is (571)272-6669. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30am-5:30pm EST.
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/YuJang Tswei/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2614
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