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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 8/26/2026 has been entered.
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.
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.
Claim 2-5 and 11-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 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 applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Regarding claim 2 and analogous 11, the limitation of claim 2 recites “and each MC certainty is calculated based on an entropy of the output node probabilities of the associated classes” the claim is render indefinite as the claim 1 recites “determines the MC certainty by calculating an entropy of probabilities generated by the pre-trained machine learning main classifier” both limitations state calculating “an entropy” based on the machine learning main classifier. The claim is indefinite as to if the claims refer to the same entropy that was previously calculated or a different entropy value as claim 2 depends on claim 1 and claim 11 depends on claim 10. All dependent claims inherit the issue.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 6-9 and 10, 15-18 are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
The prior art of record teaches limitations as noted in the previous Office Action 08/03/2026.
See previous Office Action noting allowable subject matter. Also the examiner agrees with applicant’s remarks dates 8/26/2026.
Claim 2-5 and 11-14 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The remaining Independent claim 10 is allowable for the same reasons cited in claim 1. The remaining claims would be allowable because they depend on one of allowable independent claims 1 and 10.
Pertinent Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Kamhi et al. (US2017015776A1) - teaches calculating entropy for each set of classes in a set to measure the amount of uncertainty in the dataset.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ALFREDO CAMPOS whose telephone number is (571)272-4504. The examiner can normally be reached 7:00 - 4:00 pm M - F.
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/ALFREDO CAMPOS/Examiner, Art Unit 2129
/MICHAEL J HUNTLEY/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2129
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