Prosecution Insights
Last updated: April 19, 2026
Application No. 18/073,022

APPARATUS FOR ENHANCING LONGEVITY AND METHOD FOR ITS USE

Non-Final OA §103
Filed
Dec 01, 2022
Examiner
ZHANG, SHIRLEY X
Art Unit
2447
Tech Center
2400 — Computer Networks
Assignee
Oceandrive Ventures LLC
OA Round
7 (Non-Final)
70%
Grant Probability
Favorable
7-8
OA Rounds
3y 5m
To Grant
84%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 70% — above average
70%
Career Allow Rate
420 granted / 604 resolved
+11.5% vs TC avg
Moderate +15% lift
Without
With
+14.6%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
3y 5m
Avg Prosecution
22 currently pending
Career history
626
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
13.3%
-26.7% vs TC avg
§103
42.3%
+2.3% vs TC avg
§102
19.9%
-20.1% vs TC avg
§112
14.0%
-26.0% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 604 resolved cases

Office Action

§103
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 . DETAILED ACTION This office action is prepared in response to a Request for Continued Examination (RCE) filed on December 18, 2025. Claims 7 and 17 have been cancelled. Claims 1-6, 8-16 and 18-22 are pending and rejected. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 December 18, 2025 has been entered. Response to Amendments The claim amendments and Applicant’s arguments filed on December 18, 2025 have been carefully considered. However, the amendments and arguments failed to place the application in condition for allowance for reasons set forth in the section 35 U.S.C. 103 below. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103 The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action: A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made. Claims 1-6, 8-16 and 18-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Aliper et al. (US 2020/0286625) in view of Kuperman et al. (US 2022/0180993). Regarding claim 1, Aliper disclosed an apparatus for enhancing longevity (Aliper, [0002], “extending organismal life spans…”), wherein the apparatus comprises: at least a processor; and a memory communicatively connected to the at least a processor (Aliper, Fig. 14) the memory containing instructions configuring the at least a processor to: receive a baseline measurement for a user, wherein the baseline measurement is measured during a baseline assessment (Aliper disclosed in [0076] that “the transcriptome signature is compared to a baseline transcriptome signature that is constructed from more than one tissue or organ transcriptome signature” which means that the baseline transcriptome signature is constructed in a separate assessment performed for the baseline), wherein the baseline measurement comprises a biomarker pathway measurement (Aliper, [0050, 0051, 0059, 0060], “ receiving a first transcriptome signature derived from a patient tissue or organ”; Aliper, Abstract, “The biological data signature can be based on biological pathway activation signatures for genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, methylomics, metabolomics, lipidomics, glycomics, or secretomics.”); compare the baseline measurement to a longevity enhancement threshold (Aliper, [0050, 0051, 0059, 0060], “receiving a second transcriptome signature derived from a baseline” and “computing a difference between predicted ages for the signature of (a) and the signature of (b)”; said baseline is equivalent to the threshold in the claim); and generate a vitality enhancement program for the user as a function of the comparison of the baseline measurement and the longevity enhancement threshold (Aliper, [0047, 0048, 0058], “a method can include developing a drug therapy based on the output”), wherein the vitality enhancement program further comprises a treatment schedule and a plurality of vitality enhancement programs (Aliper, [0062], “The present invention also relates to a multi-stage therapeutic for treating senescence (aging) of whole organisms (in particular, human individuals)…; Aliper, [0238], “The whole multi-stage longevity therapeutics pipeline (stages 1-4) can be applied recurrently. The period between the therapies is defined individually on the tissue (organ)-specific basis and may vary from 1 month to 10 years.”) comprising: a first vitality enhancement program comprising consuming a first consumable ingredient at a first frequency and a first duration; and a second vitality enhancement program comprising consuming a second consumable ingredient at a second frequency and a second duration, wherein the first vitality enhancement program is a prerequisite treatment for the second vitality enhancement program, wherein the first consumable ingredient is different than the second consumable ingredient (Aliper, [0069-0078] disclosed how the personalized drug treatment protocol is developed using machine learning platforms and [0227-0239] disclosed that the multi-stage longevity therapeutic pipeline as disclosed in Fig. 2 can be applied recurrently). Aliper might not have explicitly disclosed wherein receiving the baseline measurement includes receiving the baseline measurement based on a longevity category comprising a longevity subcategory which includes at least musculoskeletal healing However, Aliper disclosed in the abstract that his invention is about using proteome markers derived from a tissue or organ of the subject to determine a biological aging clock and methods for delaying aging, which falls under the study of musculoskeletal healing. Aliper futher disclosed [0059, 0060, 0071, 0072, 0075] of “receiving a second transcriptome signature and/or second proteome signature derived from a baseline”. Said disclosures by Aliper could be combined to make the claim limitation “wherein receiving the baseline measurement includes receiving the baseline measurement based on a longevity category comprising a longevity subcategory which includes at least musculoskeletal healing” obvious. Furthermore, both Aliper and Kuperman disclosed wherein the vitality enhancement program comprises a testing schedule, wherein the testing schedule comprises a schedule for repeating the baseline assessment at a specified interval (Aliper disclosed in [0237-0239] that “The whole multi-stage longevity therapeutics pipeline (stages 1-4) can be applied recurrently. The period between the therapies is defined individually on the tissue (organ)-specific basis and may vary from 1 month to 10 years.” And “In an embodiment, the first four steps Rescue; Remove; Replenish; Reinforce can be used as a multi-stage longevity therapeutics pipeline and can be applied more than once, and on an ongoing basis.” One of the stages involves baseline assessment; Kuperman, [0096], “Although FIG. 3 illustrates generating a personalized dose-response profile based on data from two time periods (e.g., a baseline time period and a treatment time period), in other embodiments, the data collection and analysis processes of the method 300 can be repeated multiple times so that the personalized dose-response profile is generated based on data from three, four, five, tens, hundreds, or thousands of time periods.”). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Aliper and Kuperman because both references disclosed methods and systems that help patients improve their health and life span by using machine learning techniques to analyze vital signals and biomarkers and recommend treatment plans (Aliper, Abstract; Kuperman, Abstract and [0098, 0099]). Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of treatment plan development by Aliper and Kuperman. Claim 11 lists substantially the same subject matter as claim 1, in method form rather than apparatus form, therefore is rejected based on the same rationale. Regarding claims 2 and 12, Aliper and Kuperman disclosed the subject matter of claims 1 and 11, respectively. Aliper further disclosed wherein the baseline measurement comprises an energy comparison metric based on an evaluation of telomere length (Aliper, [0006], “Many biomarkers of aging have been proposed including telomere length”). Regarding claims 3 and 13, Aliper and Kuperman disclosed the subject matter of claims 1 and 11, respectively. Aliper further disclosed wherein the baseline measurement comprises comparison of telomere length based on the biomarker pathway measurement, wherein the comparison is between the telomere length of the user and an average value of telomere length for a person with a characteristic that corresponds to the user (Aliper, [0139], “Fold changes between the gene expression levels in the samples under investigation and an average expression level of samples within the normal set is used as input data for the iPANDA algorithm”). Regarding claims 4 and 14, Aliper and Kuperman disclosed the subject matter of claims 1 and 11, respectively. Aliper further disclosed wherein the baseline measurement comprises a longevity measurement (Aliper, [0005, 0104], “life span”). Regarding claims 5 and 15, Aliper and Kuperman disclosed the subject matter of claims 1 and 11, respectively. Aliper further disclosed wherein the baseline measurement comprises comparison between the user and an average value for a person with a characteristic that corresponds to the user (Aliper, [0139, 0169]). Regarding claims 6 and 16, Aliper and Kuperman disclosed the subject matter of claims 1 and 11, respectively. Aliper further disclosed wherein the baseline measurement comprises a rate of aging comprising a numerical difference between a first baseline measurement and a second numerical measurement, wherein the numerical difference is divided by a time between the first baseline measurement and the second baseline measurement (Aliper, [0278, 0335]). Regarding claims 8 and 18, Aliper and Kuperman disclosed the subject matter of claims 1 and 11, respectively. Aliper further disclosed wherein generating the vitality enhancement program for the user comprises generating the vitality enhancement program as a function of a plurality of longevity categories (Aliper, [0066, 0067]). Regarding claims 9 and 19, Aliper and Kuperman disclosed the subject matter of claims 1 and 11, respectively. Aliper further disclosed wherein generating the vitality enhancement program further comprises: training a machine-learning process using vitality training data, wherein vitality training data contains a plurality of inputs containing baseline measurements and longevity enhancement thresholds correlated with a plurality of outputs containing vitality enhancement programs; and generating the vitality enhancement program for the user as a function of the trained machine-learning process (Aliper, Fig. 6, [0078, 0092, 0142, 0146] contains disclosure of how the machine learning model is trained using biomarker data ). Regarding claims 10 and 20, Aliper and Kuperman disclosed the subject matter of claims 1 and 11, respectively. Aliper further disclosed wherein generating the vitality enhancement program further comprises: receiving an updated baseline measurement; comparing the updated baseline measurement to the longevity threshold; and updating the vitality enhancement program as a function of the comparison of the updated baseline measurement and the longevity enhancement threshold (Aliper, [0227-0239]). Regarding claims 21 and 22, Aliper disclosed the subject matter of claims 1 and 11, respectively. Aliper further disclosed wherein the baseline measurement comprises a performance measurement of the user based on a static balance and a dynamic balance of the user (Aliper, [0046], Kuperman, [0048]); and comparing the baseline measurement to the longevity enhancement threshold comprises classifying the longevity enhancement threshold to a performance category and calculating the longevity enhancement threshold as a function of the performance measurement of the user (Aliper, [0046]; Kuperman, [0035]). One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Aliper and Kuperman because both references disclosed methods and systems that help patients improve their health and life span by using machine learning techniques to analyze vital signals and biomarkers and recommend treatment plans (Aliper, Abstract; Kuperman, Abstract and [0098, 0099]). Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the teachings of treatment plan development by Aliper and Kuperman. Conclusion Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHIRLEY X ZHANG whose telephone number is (571)270-5012. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30am - 5:00pm. Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Joon H Hwang can be reached at 571-272-4036. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. /SHIRLEY X ZHANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2447
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Prosecution Timeline

Dec 01, 2022
Application Filed
Feb 23, 2023
Non-Final Rejection — §103
Apr 06, 2023
Interview Requested
Apr 20, 2023
Examiner Interview Summary
Apr 24, 2023
Response Filed
May 17, 2023
Final Rejection — §103
Jul 03, 2023
Request for Continued Examination
Jul 11, 2023
Response after Non-Final Action
Oct 04, 2023
Non-Final Rejection — §103
Nov 30, 2023
Response Filed
Dec 12, 2023
Final Rejection — §103
Jul 08, 2024
Response after Non-Final Action
Mar 04, 2025
Request for Continued Examination
May 01, 2025
Response after Non-Final Action
May 15, 2025
Non-Final Rejection — §103
Aug 12, 2025
Interview Requested
Aug 18, 2025
Applicant Interview (Telephonic)
Aug 18, 2025
Examiner Interview Summary
Aug 19, 2025
Response Filed
Sep 16, 2025
Final Rejection — §103
Dec 18, 2025
Request for Continued Examination
Jan 07, 2026
Response after Non-Final Action
Feb 13, 2026
Non-Final Rejection — §103 (current)

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Study what changed to get past this examiner. Based on 5 most recent grants.

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Prosecution Projections

7-8
Expected OA Rounds
70%
Grant Probability
84%
With Interview (+14.6%)
3y 5m
Median Time to Grant
High
PTA Risk
Based on 604 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allow rate.

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