DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. 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
2. 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 allowance or after an Office action under Ex Parte Quayle, 25 USPQ 74, 453 O.G. 213 (Comm'r Pat. 1935). 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, prosecution in this application has been reopened pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 07/13/2026 has been entered.
Priority
3. Receipt was previously acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Oath/Declaration
4. The receipt of Oath/Declaration was previously acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
5. The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 08/28/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Drawings
6. The drawing(s) filed on 03/22/2023 were previously accepted by the Examiner.
Status of Claims
7. Claims 1, and 3-14 are pending in this application.
Claim 2 was previously canceled.
Claims 1, and 3-13 were previously allowed.
Claim 14 is newly added.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
8. 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.
9. The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claim 14 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more.
10. Step 1—Statutory Category
Claim 14 recites an “electronic apparatus” comprising a human detector and a processor. Accordingly, the claim falls within the statutory category of a machine.
11. Step 2A, Prong One—Judicial Exception
Claim 14 recites the abstract idea of evaluating present and previously observed information to select an operating state. More particularly, the claim requires:
‘considering a present detection condition in which an observation target is outside a fourth detection area and within a fifth detection area; determining or recalling whether the observation target was previously detected in the fourth detection area; and selecting between different operating states depending upon the result of that determination.’
These limitations recite observations, an evaluation of current information in view of remembered historical information, and a resulting judgment or decision. Such activities can practically be performed in the human mind. For example, a person can observe that a target is presently located in an outer area, remember whether the target was previously located in an inner area, and decide that an apparatus should operate in one state if the target was previously in the inner area and another state if it was not.
Accordingly, the foregoing limitations fall within the “mental processes” grouping of abstract ideas identified in MPEP §2106.04(a)(2)(III). See also CyberSource Corp. v. Retail Decisions, Inc., 654 F.3d 1366, 1372-73 (Fed. Cir. 2011); Electric Power Group, LLC v. Alstom S.A., 830 F.3d 1350, 1353-54 (Fed. Cir. 2016).
The recitation of a processor performing the evaluation does not remove the limitations from the mental process grouping because a claim may recite a mental process even when the process is assigned to a computer or processor.
12. Step 2A, Prong Two—No Integration into a Practical Application
The additional elements include the electronic apparatus, the human detector having the fourth and fifth detection areas, the processor, and the instruction to “cause the apparatus to operate in different states.”
These additional elements, considered individually and in combination, do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application.
The human detector merely obtains the location information used in the abstract evaluation. The claim does not recite any particular detector structure, detection technique, signal processing operation, or improvement in detection accuracy. The fourth and fifth detection areas merely define a space or area and content of the information being evaluated. Limiting an abstract evaluation to information obtained from particular regions does not improve the detector or otherwise impose a meaningful technological limitation.
Similarly, the processor is used merely as a tool to perform the historical yes or no evaluation and implement the resulting decision. The claim does not recite any improvement in processor operation or any particular manner by which the processor performs the evaluation.
The limitation “cause the apparatus to operate in different states” recites only a desired result. Claim 14 does not identify the different states, or what part of the apparatus changes state, define any difference in power consumption, or recite how the apparatus is technically controlled to produce the different states. Thus, this limitation amounts to no more than an instruction to apply the abstract evaluation using a generic electronic apparatus to operate in any unspecified “different states.”
Therefore, considered as a whole, claim 14 merely uses generic detector and processor components to automate the abstract decision of selecting an apparatus state based on present location information and prior observation history. The claim does not recite a particular technological solution to a technological problem and does not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application. See MPEP §§2106.04(d), 2106.05(a), 2106.05(f), and 2106.05(h).
13. Step 2B—No Inventive Concept
The additional elements also do not amount to significantly more than the abstract idea.
The specification itself establishes that the additional technological components and their claimed functions are well-understood, routine, and conventional when recited at the claimed level of generality:
Paragraphs [0002-0004] acknowledge existing electronic apparatuses that detect persons or mobile objects in multiple detection areas located at different distances and change operating or power-consumption modes based on the detection results.
Paragraph [0026] states that any type of sensor capable of detecting the presence of an observation target may be employed, including an ultrasonic sensor or pyroelectric sensor.
Paragraphs [0062-0063] broadly define the processor as encompassing conventional general or dedicated processors, including CPUs, GPUs, ASICs, FPGAs, and programmable logic devices.
This disclosure provides express factual support for finding that the electronic apparatus, processor, human detector, acquisition of detection information, and changing of operating states are conventional components and functions. See MPEP §§2106.05(d) and 2106.07(a)(III).
The only distinction is the determining whether the target was previously detected in the fourth detection area and selecting a state based on that determination, which is also abstract.
Nothing in the claim requires an unconventional detector, an unconventional processor arrangement, a particular state transition, or a specific physical control operation. Nor does the ordered combination cause the components to perform anything beyond their ordinary functions of detecting information, processing information, and implementing an unspecified result.
Accordingly, claim 14 does not recite additional elements that, individually or as an ordered combination, amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. Claim 14 is therefore ineligible under 35 U.S.C. §101.
14. Suggestions for Overcoming the Rejection
To overcome the rejection of claim 14, the applicant may consider:
wherein the processor is configured to:
in response to detecting the observation target outside the fourth detection area and within the fifth detection area before the observation target has been detected in the fourth detection area, transition the electronic apparatus from a first power consumption mode to a second power consumption mode, power consumption in the second power consumption mode being greater than power consumption in the first power consumption mode; and
after detecting the observation target in the fourth detection area, in response to detecting that the observation target has moved outside the fourth detection area while remaining within the fifth detection area, transition the electronic apparatus from the second power-consumption mode to a third power consumption mode, power consumption in the third power consumption mode being less than power consumption in the second power consumption mode.
This language appears consistent with the two-zone embodiment in Figure 15 and paragraph [0059], as well as originally published claim 10.
Allowable Subject Matter
15. Claims 1 and 3-13 are allowed.
Examiner’s Statement of Reasons for Allowance
16. The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
The present invention is directed to an ELECTRONIC APPARATUS AND NON-TRANSITORY COMPUTER READABLE MEDIUM.
Claims 1, and 3-13 are allowed.
Claims 1, 10 and 11 are in independent form.
It follows that Claims 3-10, 12 and 13 are then inherently allowable for depending on an allowable base claim.
17. The following table lists cited references that are relevant to the subject matter disclosed and claimed.
Citation
Relevance
Masumoto et al.
(US 2014/0064774)
Discloses an image forming apparatus comprising a piezoelectric sensor that produces an variable output signal depending on the amount of infrared energy; a human body detecting device having a lens that forms a detecting area serving for detecting if the person enters; a peak detector that detects a peak of an output signal produced when the person enters the detecting area; an offset voltage judgment portion that judges if the output signal falls to the offset voltage after the peak; a moving direction judgment portion that judges the direction in which the person moves in the detecting area; and a mode controller that switches the power supply mode to a first mode if the power supply mode is found to be a second mode requiring less power than the first mode while the moving direction judgment portion judges that the person moves toward the image forming apparatus.
Ono et al.
(US 2015/0006927)
Discloses an information processing apparatus includes a first sensor unit that senses a person within a first distance from the information processing apparatus, a second sensor unit that senses a person within a second distance set closer to the information processing apparatus than the first distance, a shifting unit that sets the information processing apparatus to a first mode when a person is sensed by the first sensor unit, and shifts the information processing apparatus from the first mode to a second mode that consumes power less than in the first mode when the person is no longer sensed within the second distance by the second sensor unit, a receiving unit that receives an instruction to modify the first distance or the second distance, and a modifying unit that modifies the first distance or the second distance in response to the instruction received by the receiving unit.
Yamaguchi
(US 2016/0142576)
Discloses an image forming apparatus including an image former, accommodated in a housing, that forms an image on a sheet; a human detector that detects a person; a light emitter that emits light; a power supply that supplies power to the image former in any of multiple power supply modes including a normal mode and a power saving mode; and a controller. The controller sets a first detection area positioned outside of the housing and a second detection area contained in the first detection area, controls the light emitter to emit the light when the human detector detects the person in the first detection area, and controls to start terminating the power saving mode when the human detector detects the person in the second detection area.
Park
(US 2017/0195508)
Discloses an image forming apparatus and a method of controlling the image forming apparatus. The method includes receiving a reflection signal corresponding to a transmission signal transmitted from the image forming apparatus to a user sensing area, the reflection signal being reflected from a user, determining a distance between the image forming apparatus and the user, based on the received reflection signal, selecting a power consumption mode corresponding to the determined distance from among a plurality of power consumption modes, based on the distance between the image forming apparatus and the user, and performing user authentication or power control according to the selected power consumption mode.
18. Claim 1 recites several features as shown in the excerpt below:
“wherein a detection area of the human detector includes a first detection area, a second detection area located farther from the human detector than the first detection area is, and a third detection area that includes the second detection area and a region located farther from the human detector than the second detection area is, and wherein the processor is configured to: transition the electronic apparatus from a first power-consumption mode to a second power-consumption mode when an observation target is detected in the third detection area, power consumption being larger in the second power-consumption mode than in the first power-consumption mode, transition the electronic apparatus to a third power-consumption mode when the observation target is detected in the first detection area, the power consumption being larger in the third power-consumption mode than in the second power-consumption mode, and transition the electronic apparatus to a fourth power-consumption mode when the observation target is no longer detected in the first detection area or in the second detection area after the electronic apparatus enters the third power-consumption mode, the power consumption being smaller in the fourth power-consumption mode than in the third power-consumption mode and render detection of the observation target in the first detection area or in the second detection area for transitioning to the fourth power-consumption mode ineffective when the observation target is undetected in the first detection area or when the electronic apparatus is not in the third power-consumption mode.”
19. Claim 10 recites several features as shown in the excerpt below:
“wherein a detection area of the human detector includes a fourth detection area and a fifth detection area that includes the fourth detection area and a region located farther from the human detector than the fourth detection area is, and wherein the processor is configured to: transition the electronic apparatus from a first power-consumption mode to a second power-consumption mode when an observation target is detected in the fifth detection area, power consumption being larger in the second power-consumption mode than in the first power-consumption mode, and depending on whether or not the observation target has previously been detected in the fourth detection area, under an identical detection condition in which the observation target is outside the fourth detection area and within the fifth detection area, cause the apparatus to operate in different states depending on whether or not the observation target has previously been detected in the fourth detection area.”
20. Claim 11 recites several features as shown in the excerpt below:
“acquiring a signal detected by the human detector, the human detector having a first detection area, a second detection area located farther from the human detector than the first detection area is, and a third detection area that includes the second detection area and a region located farther from the human detector than the second detection area is; transitioning the electronic apparatus from a first power-consumption mode to a second power-consumption mode when an observation target is detected in the third detection area, power consumption being larger in the second power-consumption mode than in the first power-consumption mode; transitioning the electronic apparatus to a third power-consumption mode when the observation target is detected in the first detection area, the power consumption being larger in the third power-consumption mode than in the second power-consumption mode; and transitioning the electronic apparatus to a fourth power-consumption mode when the observation target is no longer detected in the first detection area or in the second detection area after the electronic apparatus enters the third power-consumption mode, the power consumption being smaller in the fourth power-consumption mode than in the third power- consumption mode; and rendering detection of the observation target in the first detection area or in the second detection area for transitioning to the fourth power-consumption mode ineffective when the observation target is undetected in the first detection area or when the electronic apparatus is not in the third power-consumption mode.”
21. These features, considered in combination with the remainder of the claim’s limitations are not fairly disclosed, taught or suggested by the cited prior art. Specifically, the closest prior art, as disclosed in the above table, fails to either anticipate or render obvious the above underlined limitations.
22. Any comments considered necessary by Applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance."
Conclusion
23. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NEIL R MCLEAN whose telephone number is (571)270-1679. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday, 6AM - 4PM, PST.
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, Akwasi M Sarpong can be reached on 571.270.3438. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/NEIL R MCLEAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2681
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