DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 1-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter as follows. Claim 1 is drawn to a “computer program comprising instructions”. A computer program is software per se and does not fall within the definition of a process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter (In re Nuijten), and are therefore non-statutory. Appropriate corrections required.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 9-13 are allowed.
Claims 1-8 would be allowable if the 35 USC 101 rejection are alleviated.
Regarding independent Claims 1 and 9, the Examiner found neither prior art cited in its entirety, nor based on the prior art, found any motivation to combine any of the said prior art that teaches: “receive calibration data, the calibration data indicating an achievable range of colors physically reproducible on a calibration printing surface by a printer for each of a plurality of different printing substance loads… compare for each of the plurality of different printing substance loads the achievable range of reproducible colors and the target range of colors to determine any difference between the target range and the achievable range for each respective printing substance load; and identify an appropriate printing substance load for the printer based on at least the comparison” in combination with the other limitations of the independent claims.
The dependent claims are allowable due to its dependence to the independent claims.
A closest prior art, Yamauchi et al. US2007/0279656 teaches “the image data outputted in the form of the print job to the printer 14 is read to compute the color gamut of the image data. That is, in Step S112, the color gamut necessary to form the proper image is computed based on the image data. In Step 114, the computed color gamut and the color gamut (color gamut information) of printer 14 are compared to each other. In Step 116, it is confirmed whether or not the color gamut of the image data is located within the color gamut of printer 14” where in the color gamut is considered the claimed range of colors. However, Yamauchi et al fail to teach fully the allowable subject matter as indicated. Therefore the claims are allowable over Yamauchi et al.
A closest prior art, Shimomura et al. US2019/0155188 discloses the calculation of toner to be used with respect to a color gamut as seen in Paragraph [0092]. However, Shimomura et al fail to teach fully the allowable subject matter as indicated. Therefore the claims are allowable over Shimomura et al.
A closest prior art, Sawada et al. US2013/0135683 discloses a calculation of the amount of ink to be used determined by “interpolation (area interpolation in the present illustrative embodiment) based on the position of the total ink amount determination point on the color gamut surface and limitation values corresponding to the vertexes of the color gamut surface on which the total ink amount determination point is positioned” as seen in Paragraph [0062]. However, Sawada et al. et al fail to teach fully the allowable subject matter as indicated. Therefore the claims are allowable over Sawada et al.
Conclusion
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/MING Y HON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2666
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