DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1 and 3-19 are pending in the Instant Application.
Claims 1, 3-8 and 19 are rejected (Final Rejection).
Claims 9-18 are allowed.
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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
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.
Claims 1, 3-8 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites:
“performing a temporal coding on a performance result of the rate coding by the encoding module; generating an SNN input signal based on the performance result of the rate coding and the temporal coding.”
Originally, “a performance result” is of the rate coding by the encoding module. Then, “the performance result,” is of the rate coding and the temporal coding. The use of “a” and “the” would indicate that the performance result is the same in each instance, while the second performance result appears to be a result of both the rate and temporal coding. The use of “performance result” in each instance makes it unclear as to if an additional action is performed to make “the performance result” from “a performance result,” and it also unclear what the generated SNN input signal is based on. Therefore, claim 1 is rejected as being indefinite. Claims 3-8 and 19 are dependent on claim 1, do not cure the issue and are rejected for the same rationale and reasoning.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims are 9-18 allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Applicant’s REMARKS from 21 January 2026 are persuasive. The following limitations in claim 13 including, “a neuromorphic chip configured to receive an input signal and to generate an SNN input signal and an SNN output signal… wherein the neuromorphic chip is configured to: perform a rate coding and a temporal coding on the received input signal; generate Thus, the claim is allowed. Claims 10-14 and 17 are allowed at least on their dependency on an allowed claim.
As per claim 15, claim 15 was objected to in the previous office action. Claim 15 is now rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of base claim 9 and intervening claim 13.Thus, claim 15 is allowed. Claims 16 and 18 are allowed at least based on their dependency on an allowed claims.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see REMARKS, filed 21 January 2026, with respect to the rejections of claims 1 and 2-19 under 35 U.S.C. 102 and 35 U.S.C. 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejections have been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new grounds of rejection for claims 1, 3-8 and 19 is made in view of 35 U.S.C. 112(b).
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/KANNAN SHANMUGASUNDARAM/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2168
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