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 .
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 6/26/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The amendment was filed on 5/27/2026 (AF) and RCE on 6/26/2026.
Claims 1, 3, 5-12, and 14-17 are pending. Claims 2, 4, and 13 are canceled.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see Remarks on pages 7-11, filed on 5/27/2026, with respect to the rejection of claim(s) 1, 3-12 and 14-17 under 35 USC 102/103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of WO2020/123418A1 to Chaudhuri, et al.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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 of this title, 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1, 5-9, 11-12, and 14-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JP2020-160590A to Tatsuki in combination with WO 2020/123418 A1 to Chaudhuri et al. (hereafter, “Chaudhuri”).
With regard to claim 1 Tatsuki discloses an information processing apparatus (Fig. 1) comprising: one or more processors connected to one or more memories storing a program including instructions, which when executed by the one or more processor, cause the information processing apparatus (page 3 sixth paragraph, processor and memory, learning model 15, processing device 1, storage device 3, third paragraph on page 10) to function as: an estimation unit configured to estimate a [severity of a disease] for a medical image of a subject by using a learning model learned by using training data including a set of a medical image and a [severity of a disease] of the medical image (starting at top of page 8; “The diagnostic system 100 executes the learning model generation method.”; page 8 second full paragraph – “The first test gives the first test result indicating that patient 42 may be ill.” Last paragraph on page 9; page 12 first full paragraph, etc. throughout the reference); an identification unit configured to identify a treatment method performed in a past case extracted based on a degree of similarity with the estimated [severity of a disease] as a candidate for a treatment method to be applied to the estimated [severity of a disease] (first and fourth full paragraph on page 9; last two paragraphs on page 10; Fig. 11, step S23; bottom of page 12; etc. throughout the reference; on page 9 first full paragraph that “the storage unit 23 stores patient information regarding the patient 42. FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram showing an example of the contents of patient information. Patient information includes the age, gender, clinically identifiable symptoms, or test history of the patient 42. The patient information may include treatment history.”); and an output unit configured to (a) output the candidate for the treatment method and (b) an evaluation value for the candidate for the treatment method (output device 2, display unit 25, page 8 last four paragraphs; page 9 first full paragraph; Fig. 8 and it’s respective description on page 10; top two paragraphs on page 11, page 12 second to last paragraph and so on throughout the reference).
Tatsuki teaches presence/absence and other information about the disease as disclosed on page 8 first 4 paragraphs. However, Tatsuki does not expressly teach severity of the disease. Chaudhuri teaches severity of the disease, estimating it for an image at paragraphs [0037-0040 and 0042, etc. throughout the disclosure].
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Tatsuki’s reference to have the severity of the disease by estimated. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to analyze patient monitoring data, including parameter data for multiple physiological parameters, in order to provide early detection of a patient’s medical condition, as suggested by Chaudhuri at paragraph [0021].
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results. Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Chaudhuri with Tatsuki to obtain the invention as specified in claim 1.
With regard to claim 5 Tatsuki in combination with Chaudhuri discloses wherein the learning model is constructed so as to include a neural network that performs deep learning using the training data (Tatsuki: Fig. 9, second and fourth paragraph on page 11).
With regard to claim 6 Tatsuki in combination with Chaudhuri discloses wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the information processing apparatus to function as a correction unit configured to correct the severity of a disease estimated by the estimation unit by inputting the medical image of the subject captured by a first imaging apparatus into a first learning model, using an output result obtained by inputting a medical image captured by a second imaging apparatus into a second learning model (Tatsuki: re-learning model for example, Fig. 14, last two paragraphs on page 13; top of page 14).
With regard to claim 7 Tatsuki in combination with Chaudhuri discloses wherein the instructions, when executed by the one or more processors, further cause the information processing apparatus to function as a correction unit configured to correct the severity of a disease estimated by the estimation unit based on at least one of following information: a severity of a disease for a medical image captured by an imaging apparatus different from the imaging apparatus by which the medical image is captured; subject information of the subject; and an imaging condition under which the image of the subject is captured (Tatsuki: re-learning model for example, Fig. 14, last two paragraphs on page 13; top of page 14).
With regard to claim 8, claim 8 is rejected same as claim 1 and the arguments similar to that presented above for claim 1 are equally applicable to claim 8. Tatsuki discloses display control unit (display 25, page 8, bottom of page 12 to top of page 13), and all of the other limitations similar to claim 1 are not repeated herein, but incorporated by reference.
With regard to claim 9 Tatsuki in combination with Chaudhuri discloses wherein the identification unit identifies, as candidates for the treatment method to be applied to the severity of the disease, a first treatment method and an evaluation value for the first treatment method, and a second treatment method and an evaluation for the second treatment method, and the display control unit displays the evaluation value for the first treatment method that is one of candidates for the treatment method and the evaluation value for the second treatment method that is one of candidate for the treatment method on the display unit in a parallel manner, a superimposed manner, a superimposed manner, or a switchable manner (Tatsuki: last two paragraphs on page 10; Fig. 9 page 11; top of page 15 where score value is disclosed; and second test result and treatment information, non-numerical information is converted into a numerical value are processed).
With regard to claim 11 Tatsuki in combination with Chaudhuri discloses wherein the display control unit further displays supplementary information related to the evaluation value on the display unit (Tatsuki: display 25 outputs the value; Fig. 2; Fig. 9, pages 10-15).
With regard to claims 12 and 14, claims 12and 14 are rejected same as claims 1 and 8 and the arguments similar to that presented above for claims 1 and 8 are equally applicable to claims 12 and 14, and all of the other limitations similar to claims 1 and 8 are not repeated herein, but incorporated by reference.
With regard to claim 15 Tatsuki in combination with Chaudhuri discloses wherein the display control unit displays on a display unit an evaluation value for at least one of following indicators: a survival rate; a cost; a side effect; an effect on appearance; an effect on fertility; and a low recurrence rate (Tatsuki: Fig. 9, second and third full paragraphs page 11; bottom paragraphs on page 12, and throughout the reference).
With regard to claims 16-17, claims 16-17 are rejected same as claims 1 and 8 and the arguments similar to that presented above for claims 1 and 8 are equally applicable to claims 16-17, and all of the other limitations similar to claims 1 and 8 are not repeated herein, but incorporated by reference.
Claims 3 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JP2020-160590A to Tatsuki in combination with WO 2020/123418 A1 to Chaudhuri et al. (hereafter, “Chaudhuri”), and further in view of JP2020-48685A to Yoshimasa.
With regard to claims 3 and 10, Tatsuki in combination with Chaudhuri teaches an information processing/display apparatus as discussed above in claims 1 and 8. However, Tatsuki or Chaudhuri does not expressly teach that wherein in a case where there are two or more candidates for the treatment method, the output unit outputs at least two candidates for the treatment method, while in a case where there is only one candidate for the treatment method, the output unit outputs the only one candidate for the treatment method together with information indicating that there are no other candidates for the treatment method, as recited in claim 3 and corresponding features in claim 10.
Yoshimasa starting on page 10, Fig. 6, teaches teacher database that contains multiple teacher data. One teacher data includes the results of the first test and the second test of the second test performed on a patient 42, the patient information of the same patient 42, and the medical facility 4 visited by the patient 42.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Tatsuki’s reference to have the condition knowing that having multiple data to output multiple but only do it for one if there is only one data. The suggestion/motivation for doing so would have been to efficiently output data for each patient for example and provide treatment plans accordingly, as suggested by Yoshimasa.
Further, one skilled in the art could have combined the elements as described above by known method with no change in their respective functions, and the combination would have yielded nothing more than predictable results.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to combine Yoshimasa with Chaudhuri and Tatsuki to obtain the invention as specified in claims 3 and 10.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SHEFALI D. GORADIA whose telephone number is (571)272-8958. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 8AM-6PM, Friday 8AM-12PM.
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SHEFALI D. GORADIA
Primary Patent Examiner
Art Unit 2676
/SHEFALI D GORADIA/Primary Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2676
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