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 .
Claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s amendment has obviated the interpretation of the claims under 35 USC § 112(f) and the associated rejections under 35 USC §§ 112(a)-(b). Therefore, that interpretation and those rejections are withdrawn. However, the objection to the specification is maintained, as Applicant has not corrected the specification.
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
The use of the term BLUETOOTH (paragraph 161), which is a trade name or a mark used in commerce, has been noted in this application. The term should be accompanied by the generic terminology; furthermore, the term should be capitalized wherever it appears or, where appropriate, include a proper symbol indicating use in commerce such as ™, SM , or ® following the term.
Although the use of trade names and marks used in commerce (i.e., trademarks, service marks, certification marks, and collective marks) is permissible in patent applications, the proprietary nature of the marks should be respected and every effort made to prevent their use in any manner which might adversely affect their validity as commercial marks.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 1-5, 7-12, and 14-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over McDonough et al., “Automated Quantum Error Mitigation based on Probabilistic Error Reduction,” in IEEE/ACM Third Int’l Workshop on Quantum Computing Software 83-93 (2022) (“McDonough”) in view of Oliver et al. (US 20210406749) (“Oliver”) and further in view of Burgholzer et al., “Handling Non-Unitaries in Quantum Circuit Equivalence Checking,” in Proc. 59th ACM/IEEE Design Automation Conf. 529-34 (2022) (“Burgholzer”).
Regarding claim 1, McDonough discloses “[a] system, comprising: …
A processor … to: learn noise associated with a[n] … operation of a … quantum circuit executed on a quantum computer (McDonough Fig. 1 and accompanying text disclose an automated error mitigation protocol starting from user-defined quantum circuits [executed on a quantum computer] and returning noise-mitigated expectation values by, inter alia, performing noise tomography involving Pauli noise tomography or gate set tomography to characterize [learn] the noise), by modifying the … operation with … twirled Pauli operators to produce a modified … operation (McDonough Fig. 6 discloses a probabilistic error reduction circuit containing a twirl operator and its conjugation by a Clifford layer C), and by executing the modified … operation on the quantum computer to learn the noise associated with the … operation (McDonough Fig. 1 and accompanying text disclose an automated error mitigation protocol starting from user-defined quantum circuits [executed on a quantum computer] and returning noise-mitigated expectation values by, inter alia, performing noise tomography involving Pauli noise tomography or gate set tomography to characterize [learn] the noise).”
McDonough appears not to disclose explicitly the further limitations of the claim. However, Oliver discloses “a processor operatively coupled to a non-transitory computer-readable memory, the non-transitory computer-readable memory storing program instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to: (Oliver Fig. 12, computing device 1200 containing processors 1202 and computer-readable storage media 1206 storing error mitigation facility 1208) …
modify[] the … operation with a probabilistic Pauli-Z gate (states of a first qubit are measured after performance of a stochastic [probabilistic] Z gate operation – Oliver, paragraph 72) ….”
Oliver and the instant application both relate to quantum computing and are analogous. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified McDonough with to apply a probabilistic Z gate, as disclosed by Oliver, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would allow the system to mitigate errors. See Oliver, paragraph 40.
Neither McDonough nor Oliver appears to disclose explicitly the further limitations of the claim. However, Burgholzer discloses a “mid-circuit non-unitary operation of a dynamic quantum circuit (quantum circuit model is extended by non-unitary primitives such as mid-circuit measurements and resets as well as classically-controlled quantum operations; as a consequence, circuits are no longer static, but dynamic – Burgholzer, sec. 3.1, first paragraph) ….”
Burgholzer and the instant application both relate to quantum computing and are analogous. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of McDonough and Oliver to perform mid-circuit non-unitary operations of dynamic quantum circuits, as disclosed by Burgholzer, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would offer a broader range of available computing primitives than static quantum circuits. See Burgholzer, abstract.
Claim 8 is a method claim corresponding to system claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim. Similarly, claim 15 is a computer program product claim corresponding to system claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Regarding claim 2, McDonough, as modified by Oliver and Burgholzer, discloses that “the mid-circuit non-unitary operation comprises a mid-circuit qubit measurement that feeds forward to at least one classically-controlled quantum gate (once qubit re-use is eliminated from a dynamic circuit, the only potentially non-unitary primitives remaining are mid-circuit measurements and classically-controlled operations [gates] conditioned on their result [i.e., the measurement results are fed forward to the classically-controlled gates] – Burgholzer, p. 532, first full paragraph).” It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of McDonough and Oliver to perform non-unitary operations comprising mid-circuit qubit measurements feeding forward to classically-controlled quantum gates, as disclosed by Burgholzer, and an ordinary artisan could reasonably expect to have done so successfully. Doing so would offer a broader range of available computing primitives than static quantum circuits. See Burgholzer, abstract.
Claim 9 is a method claim corresponding to system claim 2 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim. Similarly, claim 16 is a computer program product claim corresponding to system claim 2 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Regarding claim 3, the rejection of claim 2 is incorporated. McDonough further discloses that “the at least one … quantum gate is between the twirled Pauli operators (McDonough Fig. 6 shows a Clifford gate Ci that is between the twirled operators).”
Burgholzer discloses a “classically-controlled quantum gate”, as shown in the rejection of claim 2. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of McDonough and Oliver to use a classically-controlled quantum gate, as disclosed by Burgholzer, for substantially the same reason as given in the rejection of claim 2.
Claim 10 is a method claim corresponding to system claim 3 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim. Similarly, claim 17 is a computer program product claim corresponding to system claim 3 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Regarding claim 4, the rejection of claim 2 is incorporated. McDonough further discloses that “the at least one … quantum gate is not between the twirled Pauli operators (McDonough Fig. 6 shows a single-qubit gate Gi that is not between the twirled operators).”
Burgholzer discloses a “classically-controlled quantum gate”, as shown in the rejection of claim 2. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of McDonough and Oliver to use a classically-controlled quantum gate, as disclosed by Burgholzer, for substantially the same reason as given in the rejection of claim 2.
Claim 11 is a method claim corresponding to system claim 4 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim. Similarly, claim 18 is a computer program product claim corresponding to system claim 4 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Regarding claim 5, the rejection of claim 1 is incorporated. McDonough further discloses that “the program instructions further cause the processor to learn the noise by repeatedly executing, on the quantum computer and across a set of Pauli bases and across a set of repetition depths, the … operation as modified with … the twirled Pauli operators and extracting, based on such repeated executions, a set of basis fidelities respectively corresponding to the set of Pauli bases (McDonough Fig. 5 discloses a benchmark circuit that changes from the computational basis to a Pauli basis being benchmarked, applies a noisy layer with a Pauli twirl operator P that is repeated an even number 2d of times [where d can vary to create multiple repetition depths], and uses the results to benchmark fidelity pairs [i.e., extract basis fidelities corresponding to the Pauli basis]; first full paragraph on p. 89 shows that there are nine Pauli bases tested [i.e., there is a set of Pauli bases]).”
Oliver discloses a “probabilistic Pauli-Z gate”, as shown in the rejection of claim 1. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified McDonough to use a probabilistic Z gate, as disclosed by Oliver, for substantially the same reason as given in the rejection of claim 1.
Burgholzer discloses a “mid-circuit non-unitary operation”, as shown in the rejection of claim 1. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified the combination of McDonough and Oliver to perform a mid-circuit non-unitary operation, as disclosed by Burgholzer, for substantially the same reason as given in the rejection of claim 1.
Claim 12 is a method claim corresponding to system claim 5 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim. Similarly, claim 19 is a computer program product claim corresponding to system claim 5 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Regarding claim 7, McDonough, as modified by Oliver and Burgholzer, discloses that “the program instructions further cause the processor to:
mitigate the noise by inserting an inverse of the noise into the dynamic quantum circuit (McDonough Fig. 6 discloses a probabilistic error reduction circuit that contains, inter alia, a noise inverse component [mitigation component]).”
Claim 14 is a method claim corresponding to system claim 7 and is rejected for the same reasons as given in the rejection of that claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6, 13, and 20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed August 10, 2026 (“Remarks”) have been fully considered but they are, except insofar as a rejection has been withdrawn, not persuasive.
Applicant alleges that the McDonough/Oliver/Burgholzer combination does not render the amended claims obvious because the claims require the modification of a mid-circuit non-unitary operation with probabilistic Pauli-Z gates and twirled Pauli operators and that, while the references individually teach portions of the claim (e.g., Oliver teaches probabilistic Pauli Z-gates and Burgholzer teaches mid-circuit non-unitary operations), the stated rationale to combine those references does not explain “why these teachings would have been combined into the claimed integrated protocol.” Remarks at 13-15.
Examiner respectfully disagrees. As an initial matter, Applicant appears to suggest that the references must be bodily incorporated into each other in order for the combination to render the claims obvious. But that is not the test. The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981). Here, Examiner indicated why an ordinary artisan would have been motivated to modify McDonough so that (a) the noise-learning system employs probabilistic Z-gates, as taught by Oliver, and (b) the noise-learning system employs mid-circuit non-unitary operations, as taught by Burgholzer.
Moreover, Applicant is putting the cart before the horse. Applicant is suggesting that the rejection fails to explain why an ordinary artisan would modify a mid-circuit unitary operation with a probabilistic Pauli-Z gate and twirled Pauli operators for the purpose of learning noise. But Burgholzer, the reference that discloses mid-circuit non-unitary operations, is, as the tertiary reference, not the reference being modified in the rejection. Rather, the rejection explains that an ordinary artisan would be motivated to modify McDonough’s system for learning noise with twirled Pauli operators such that it additionally employs Pauli-Z gates and mid-circuit non-unitary operations.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RYAN C VAUGHN whose telephone number is (571)272-4849. The examiner can normally be reached M-R 7:00a-5:00p ET.
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/RYAN C VAUGHN/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2125
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