DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to applicant's response filed under 37 C.F.R. §1.111, dated February 16, 2026 in response to a non-final office action. Claims 1, 3, 8, and 11 have been amended. Claims 13 and 14 have been added. Claims 1-8 and 10-14 are subject to examination and have been examined.
Acknowledgement is made to the following amendments made by the Applicant:
Applicant's amendment to claim 3 to obviate the previous objection to the claim. The previous objection to the said claim is hereby withdrawn.
Applicant's amendment to claims 1 and 8 to obviate the previous rejection in regard to 35 U.S.C 112(b) indefiniteness. The previous rejection to the said claims is hereby withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to the claims have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection based on information submitted in an information disclosure statement.
Claim Objections
Claim 11 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Regarding claim 11, the claim recites the limitation: “… evaluate a criterion by at least verifying whether a coverage distance counted from a position occupied by the transmitter device during the acquisition of the current measurement and at which is achieved a given target value …” (Emphasis added). The limitation is inconsistent with the corresponding limitation of independent claim 1. For purposes of examination, the Examiner has interpreted the limitation to read, “… evaluate a criterion by at least verifying whether a coverage distance counted from a position occupied by the transmitter device during the acquisition of the current measurement and in which is achieved a given target value …” (Emphasis added).
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.
Claims 1-14 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 pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Regarding claim 11, the claim recites the limitation, "A transmitter device for controlling the ambient backscattering …” There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For purposes of examination, the Examiner has interpreted the limitation to read, " A transmitter device for controlling ambient backscattering …” (Emphases added).
Regarding claims 2-8, 10, and 12-14, claims 2-8, 10, and 13-24 each depend on independent claim 1, claim 12 depends on independent claim 11, and therefore, inherit the 35 U.S.C. 112(b) issues of the independent claims.
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, 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 1-7 and 11-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu et.al. “Ambient Backscatter: Wireless Communication Out of Thin Air”, ACM Digital Library, 2013, https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2534169.2486015, 12 Pages, hereinafter, “Liu”) in view of Han et.al. “Wirelessly Powered Backscatter Communication Networks: Modeling, Coverage and Capacity”, IEEE 2016, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7842391, 6 Pages, hereinafter, “Han”).
Regarding claim 1, Liu teaches:
A method for controlling ambient backscattering of an ambient signal emitted by an emitter device, said method including a current phase implemented by a transmitter device (Liu: … Fig. 3 shows a block diagram of our ambient backscattering device design. It consists of a transmitter, a receiver and a harvester that all use the same ambient RF signals [Fig. 1, TV Tower is the emitter of RF source] and thus are all connected to the same antenna. The transmitter and receiver use modulated backscattering of ambient signals to communicate, and the harvester extracts energy from those same ambient signals to provide power for the device. Further, they operate independent of each other. However, while the transmitter is active and backscattering signals, the receiver and harvester cannot capture much signal/power … Fig. 3, [Section 3.1, Page 41]) configured to backscatter said ambient signal and comprising (Liu: … consider two nearby battery-free devices, Alice [i.e., transmitter device] and Bob, and a TV tower in a metropolitan area as the ambient source, as shown in Fig. 1. Suppose Alice wants to send a packet to Bob. To do so, Alice backscatters the ambient signals to convey the bits in the packet … Fig. 1, [Section 1, Page 39]):
acquisition of a current measurement of an electromagnetic power received from the emitter device via the ambient signal (Liu: … Fig. 3 shows a block diagram of our ambient backscattering device design. It consists of a transmitter, a receiver and a harvester that all use the same ambient RF signals and thus are all connected to the same antenna. The transmitter and receiver use modulated backscattering of ambient signals to communicate, and the harvester extracts energy from those same ambient signals to provide power for the device … Fig. 3, [Section 3.1, Page 41]).
Although Liu teaches an ambient backscattering device, which includes a harvester to extract energy from ambient signals to provide power for the device, Liu does not explicitly teach:
evaluation of a criterion by at least verifying whether a coverage distance counted from a position occupied by the transmitter device during the acquisition of the current measurement and in which is achieved a given target value of quality of reception of a signal obtained by ambient backscattering of the ambient signal, is in a given interval, said coverage distance being defined as a function of said current measurement and said target value, and
upon a determination that said criterion is satisfied, ambient backscattering of the ambient signal.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Han teaches:
evaluation of a criterion by at least verifying whether a coverage distance counted from a position occupied by the transmitter device during the acquisition of the current measurement and in which is achieved a given target value of quality of reception of a signal obtained by ambient backscattering of the ambient signal, is in a given interval, said coverage distance being defined as a function of said current measurement and said target value (Han: [Page 4, Part B (Signal Distribution)] Under the circuit-power constraint, there exists a threshold on the separation distance between a pair of PB [power beacon] and affiliated backscatter node [i.e., coverage distance]: 𝑑0 [given interval] … such that the node’s transmission power is zero if the distance exceeds the threshold. Then transmission power of the typical backscatter node, denoted as 𝑃𝑡, is given as 𝑃𝑡 = 𝛽𝜂𝑔∣𝑋0 −𝑌0∣−𝛼1 if ∣𝑋0 − 𝑌0∣ ≤ 𝑑0 or otherwise 𝑃𝑡 = 0 … [Page 4, Part A (Network Coverage)] The network coverage is quantified by deriving the success probability, 𝑃𝑠 defined in (7), as follows. The event of successful transmission by the typical backscatter node occurs under two conditions: 1) the circuit-power constraint in (5) is satisified and 2) under this condition, the receive SIR [signal-to-interference ratio; i.e., quality of reception] exceeds the threshold 𝜃 [criterion] …), and
upon a determination that said criterion is satisfied, ambient backscattering of the ambient signal (Han: [Page 3, Part B (Backscatter Communication Model)]: To be able to transmit, a backscatter node has to harvest sufficient energy for powering the circuit, resulting in the following circuit-power constraint … Consequently, a backscatter node transmits or is silent depending on if the constraint is satisfied ... ).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Liu to include the features as taught by Han above in order to power a largescale IoT. (Han, ¶ [Abstract]).
Regarding claim 2, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Liu further teaches:
wherein said target value is a value of any one of the following quantities:
a bit error rate (Liu: … We measure the bit error-rate (BER) observed at the receiver as a function of the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. For each distance value, we repeat the experiments at ten different positions to account for multipath effects; the transmitter sends a total of 104 bits at each position. The BER is computed by comparing the transmitted bits with the bits output by the prototype’s demodulator circuit. Since the total number of bits transmitted at each position is 104, we set the BER of experiments that see no errors to 10−4 (the upper bound on the BER for these experiments) … [Section 6.2, Page 46]).
Regarding claim 3, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Liu further teaches:
wherein the ambient signal is characterized by:
a first spectral density when the acquisition of the current measurement is executed, and a second spectral density, distinct from said first spectral density, when the evaluation of the criterion is executed (Liu: Our key insight is that if the transmitter backscatters information at a lower rate than the ambient signals, then one can design a receiver that can separate the two signals by leveraging the difference in communication rates. Specifically, ambient TV signals encode information at a bandwidth of 6MHz, so if we ensure that the transmitter backscatters information at a larger time-scale than 6 MHz, then the receiver can extract the backscattered information using averaging mechanisms. Intuitively, this works because the wideband ambient TV signals change at a fast rate and hence adjacent samples in TV signals tend to be more uncorrelated than the adjacent samples in the backscattered signals … [Section 3.3.1, Page 42]),
said coverage distance also being defined as a function of the ratio between said first and second power spectral densities (Liu: The effectiveness of a backscattering transmitter is determined by the extent to which it affects the received signal. To quantify this, we compute the ratio of the received power, after averaging, between the non-reflecting and reflecting states of the transmitter … We configure the USRP to gather raw signals centered at 539 MHz using a bandwidth of 6.25 MHz—the bandwidth of the ambient TV signals. We average the received signal, as described in §3.3, and compute the ratio between the two average power levels. We repeat the experiments for different distances (from 0.5 feet to 3 feet) between the transmitter and the receiver in locations 1-4 … [Section 6.1, Page 46]).
Regarding claim 4, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Liu further teaches:
wherein the transmitter device is configured to backscatter said ambient signal to at least one receiver device, said receiver device being configured to decode said backscattered ambient signal, said transmitter and receiver devices being respectively characterized by antenna gains G_TX and G_RX, said coverage distance also being defined as a function of said antenna gains G_TX and G_RX (Liu: … To evaluate the worst case behavior where the transmitter always backscatters information, we connect the transmitter to a power source and set it to continuously transmit random bits. The transmit antenna is placed parallel to the TV antenna to maximize the effects of backscatter on the TV receiver. The transmitter is placed at a random location one foot away from the TV antenna. It is then moved towards the TV antenna until we first notice visual glitches in the video; we measure the distance at which this happens … A 100 bps backscattering transmitter does not create any noticeable glitches at the TV receiver unless it is less than 2.3 inches from the TV antenna. This is because the backscattered signal effectively creates a new path from the transmitter to the TV receiver. Since TV receivers are designed to compute the multipath channel parameters, they can estimate the effects of this new path and decode the TV transmissions without interference. However, for small distances (less than 2.3 inches), the nearfield effects dominate and hence the linearity model, typically assumed while estimating the multi-path channel, does not hold; resulting in video glitches … Fig. 11 and [Section 6.4, Page 48]).
Regarding claim 5, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Liu further teaches:
before the implementation of said current phase, a preliminary experimental phase during which the transmitter device is fixed and comprising steps of:
acquisition, by the transmitter device, of a reference measurement of an electromagnetic power received from an emitter device emitting an experimental ambient signal, and
ambient backscattering of the experimental ambient signal by the transmitter device and to a receiver device configured to decode said backscattered experimental ambient signal (Liu: Our key insight is that if the transmitter backscatters information at a lower rate than the ambient signals, then one can design a receiver that can separate the two signals by leveraging the difference in communication rates. Specifically, ambient TV signals encode information at a bandwidth of 6MHz, so if we ensure that the transmitter backscatters information at a larger time-scale than 6 MHz, then the receiver can extract the backscattered information using averaging mechanisms. Intuitively, this works because the wideband ambient TV signals change at a fast rate and hence adjacent samples in TV signals tend to be more uncorrelated than the adjacent samples in the backscattered signals … [Section 3.3.1, Page 42]),
said preliminary experimental phase further comprising, during the execution of said ambient backscattering, searching for a location at which the backscattered experimental ambient signal is received by the receiver device with a reception quality achieving said target value, the distance separating the receiver device from the transmitter device when such a location has been found being a reference distance, and said coverage distance also being defined as a function of said reference measurement and said reference distance (Liu: … To evaluate the worst case behavior where the transmitter always backscatters information, we connect the transmitter to a power source and set it to continuously transmit random bits. The transmit antenna is placed parallel to the TV antenna to maximize the effects of backscatter on the TV receiver. The transmitter is placed at a random location one foot away from the TV antenna. It is then moved towards the TV antenna until we first notice visual glitches in the video; we measure the distance at which this happens … A 100 bps backscattering transmitter does not create any noticeable glitches at the TV receiver unless it is less than 2.3 inches from the TV antenna. This is because the backscattered signal effectively creates a new path from the transmitter to the TV receiver. Since TV receivers are designed to compute the multipath channel parameters, they can estimate the effects of this new path and decode the TV transmissions without interference. However, for small distances (less than 2.3 inches), the nearfield effects dominate and hence the linearity model, typically assumed while estimating the multi-path channel, does not hold; resulting in video glitches … Fig. 11 and [Section 6.4, Page 48]).
Regarding claim 6, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Han further teaches:
wherein said current phase further includes determination of the coverage distance, said at least one verification performed during the evaluation of the criterion comprising a direct verification that the determined coverage distance belongs to said interval (Han: Under the circuit-power constraint, there exists a threshold on the separation distance between a pair of PB and affiliated backscatter node: d0 [Equation 13] .. such that the node’s transmission power is zero if the distance exceeds the threshold. Then transmission power of the typical backscatter node, denoted as 𝑃𝑡, is given as 𝑃𝑡 = 𝛽𝜂𝑔∣𝑋0 −𝑌0∣−𝛼1 if ∣𝑋0 − 𝑌0∣ ≤ 𝑑0 or otherwise 𝑃𝑡 = 0 … [Page 4 of 6, Part B (Signal Distribution)]).
The rationale and motivation for adding this teaching of Han is the same as the rationale and motivation for Claim 1.
Regarding claim 7, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Han further teaches:
wherein the interval associated with the coverage distance includes a lower bound and an upper bound, said current phase further including:
determination of an electromagnetic minimum power which, if it is received by the transmitter device from the emitter device, allows said target value to be achieved at a distance counted from the position occupied by the transmitter device during the acquisition of the current measurement and equal to said lower bound, and
determination of an electromagnetic maximum power which, if it is received by the transmitter device from the emitter device, allows said target value to be achieved at a distance counted from the position occupied by the transmitter device during the acquisition of the current measurement and equal to said upper bound,
said at least one verification performed during the evaluation of the criterion comprising verifying whether the current measurement is comprised between said minimum and maximum powers (Han: The network coverage is quantified by deriving the success probability, 𝑃𝑠 defined in [Equation 7], as follows. The event of successful transmission by the typical backscatter node occurs under two conditions: 1) the circuit-power constraint in [Equation 5]) is satisified and 2) under this condition, the receive SIR exceeds the threshold 𝜃. Therefore, 𝑃𝑠 can be written as [Equation 16] ... Replacing the transmission power with its minimum value gives a lower bound on 𝑃𝑠 … Then the main result of the section follows by substituting the results derived in the preceding section ... [Page 4 of 6, Part A (Network Coverage)]).
The rationale and motivation for adding this teaching of Han is the same as the rationale and motivation for Claim 1.
Regarding claim 11, Liu teaches:
A transmitter device for controlling the ambient backscattering of an ambient signal emitted by an emitter device, said transmitter device (Liu: … Fig. 3 shows a block diagram of our ambient backscattering device design. It consists of a transmitter, a receiver and a harvester that all use the same ambient RF signals [Fig. 1, TV Tower is the emitter of RF source] and thus are all connected to the same antenna. The transmitter and receiver use modulated backscattering of ambient signals to communicate, and the harvester extracts energy from those same ambient signals to provide power for the device. Further, they operate independent of each other. However, while the transmitter is active and backscattering signals, the receiver and harvester cannot capture much signal/power … Fig. 3, [Section 3.1, Page 41]) being configured to backscatter said ambient signal and comprising (Liu: … consider two nearby battery-free devices, Alice [i.e., transmitter device] and Bob, and a TV tower in a metropolitan area as the ambient source, as shown in Fig. 1. Suppose Alice wants to send a packet to Bob. To do so, Alice backscatters the ambient signals to convey the bits in the packet … Fig. 1, [Section 1, Page 39]):
an acquisition module configured to acquire a current measurement of an electromagnetic power received from the emitter device via the ambient signal (Liu: … Fig. 3 shows a block diagram of our ambient backscattering device design. It consists of a transmitter, a receiver and a harvester that all use the same ambient RF signals and thus are all connected to the same antenna. The transmitter and receiver use modulated backscattering of ambient signals to communicate, and the harvester extracts energy from those same ambient signals to provide power for the device … Fig. 3, [Section 3.1, Page 41]).
Although Liu teaches an ambient backscattering device, which includes a harvester to extract energy from ambient signals to provide power for the device, Liu does not explicitly teach:
an evaluation module configured to evaluate a criterion by at least verifying whether a coverage distance counted from a position occupied by the transmitter device during the acquisition of the current measurement and at which is achieved a given target value of quality of reception of a signal obtained by ambient backscattering of the ambient signal, is in a given interval, said coverage distance being defined as a function of said current measurement and of said target value, and
a control module configured:
to implement backscattering of the ambient signal upon a determination that the criterion is satisfied, and
not to implement backscattering of the ambient signal upon a determination that said criterion is not satisfied.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Han teaches:
an evaluation module configured to evaluate a criterion by at least verifying whether a coverage distance counted from a position occupied by the transmitter device during the acquisition of the current measurement and at which is achieved a given target value of quality of reception of a signal obtained by ambient backscattering of the ambient signal, is in a given interval, said coverage distance being defined as a function of said current measurement and of said target value (Han: [Page 4, Part B (Signal Distribution)] Under the circuit-power constraint, there exists a threshold on the separation distance between a pair of PB [power beacon] and affiliated backscatter node [i.e., coverage distance]: 𝑑0 [given interval] … such that the node’s transmission power is zero if the distance exceeds the threshold. Then transmission power of the typical backscatter node, denoted as 𝑃𝑡, is given as 𝑃𝑡 = 𝛽𝜂𝑔∣𝑋0 −𝑌0∣−𝛼1 if ∣𝑋0 − 𝑌0∣ ≤ 𝑑0 or otherwise 𝑃𝑡 = 0 … [Page 4, Part A (Network Coverage)] The network coverage is quantified by deriving the success probability, 𝑃𝑠 defined in (7), as follows. The event of successful transmission by the typical backscatter node occurs under two conditions: 1) the circuit-power constraint in (5) is satisified and 2) under this condition, the receive SIR [signal-to-interference ratio; i.e., quality of reception] exceeds the threshold 𝜃 [criterion] …), and
a control module configured:
to implement backscattering of the ambient signal upon a determination that the criterion is satisfied, and
not to implement backscattering of the ambient signal upon a determination that said criterion is not satisfied (Han: [Page 3, Part B (Backscatter Communication Model)]: To be able to transmit, a backscatter node has to harvest sufficient energy for powering the circuit, resulting in the following circuit-power constraint … Consequently, a backscatter node transmits or is silent depending on if the constraint is satisfied ...).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Liu to include the features as taught by Han above in order to power a largescale IoT. (Han, ¶ [Abstract]).
Regarding claim 12, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 11 as outlined above.
Liu further teaches:
An ambient backscatter communication system, said system including an emitter device configured to emit an ambient signal and the transmitter device of claim 11 (Liu: … Fig. 3 shows a block diagram of our ambient backscattering device design. It consists of a transmitter, a receiver and a harvester that all use the same ambient RF signals and thus are all connected to the same antenna. The transmitter and receiver use modulated backscattering of ambient signals to communicate, and the harvester extracts energy from those same ambient signals to provide power for the device. Further, they operate independent of each other. However, while the transmitter is active and backscattering signals, the receiver and harvester cannot capture much signal/power … Fig. 3, [Section 3.1, Page 41]).
Regarding claim 13, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Han further teaches:
upon a determination that said criterion is not satisfied, not implementing ambient backscattering of the ambient signal (Han: [Page 3, Part B (Backscatter Communication Model)]: To be able to transmit, a backscatter node has to harvest sufficient energy for powering the circuit, resulting in the following circuit-power constraint … Consequently, a backscatter node transmits or is silent depending on if the constraint is satisfied ...).
The rationale and motivation for adding this teaching of Han is the same as the rationale and motivation for Claim 1.
Regarding claim 14, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Han further teaches:
upon a determination that said criterion is satisfied, ambient backscattering of the ambient signal Han: [Page 3, Part B (Backscatter Communication Model)]: To be able to transmit, a backscatter node has to harvest sufficient energy for powering the circuit, resulting in the following circuit-power constraint … Consequently, a backscatter node transmits or is silent depending on if the constraint is satisfied ... ).
The rationale and motivation for adding this teaching of Han is the same as the rationale and motivation for Claim 1.
Liu further teaches:
ambient backscattering of the ambient signal by conditionally switching the transmitter device from a non-backscatter state into a backscatter state in which variation of the backscattered waves is perceptible by a receiver device at a distance from the transmitter device (Liu: [Section 1, Pages 39-40] … To do so, Alice backscatters the ambient signals to convey the bits in the packet—she can indicate either a ‘0’ or a ‘1’ bit by switching her antenna between reflecting [i.e., backscatter state] and non-reflecting states …. [Section 6.2, Page 46] … We measure the bit error-rate (BER) observed at the receiver as a function of the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. For each distance value, we repeat the experiments at ten different positions to account for multipath effects; the transmitter sends a total of 104 bits at each position. The BER is computed by comparing the transmitted bits with the bits output by the prototype’s demodulator circuit. Since the total number of bits transmitted at each position is 104, we set the BER of experiments that see no errors to 10−4 (the upper bound on the BER for these experiments) …).
Claim 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu-Han in view of Nguyen et.al. “Ambient Backscatter Communications: A Contemporary Survey”, IEEE 2018, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8368232, 34 Pages, hereinafter, “Nguyen”).
Regarding claim 10, Liu-Han discloses on the features with respect to claim 1 as outlined above.
Liu-Han does not explicitly teach:
A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to implement the method of claim 1.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Nguyen teaches:
A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to implement the method of claim 1 (Nguyen: … As shown in Fig. 5, there are three major components in the BBCS architecture: (i) backscatter transmitters, (ii) a backscatter receiver, and (iii) a carrier emitter, i.e., RF source ... To transmit data to the backscatter receiver, the carrier emitter first transmits RF signals, which are produced by the RF oscillator, to a backscatter transmitter through the emitter’s antenna which is connected to the power amplifier as shown in Fig. 5. Then, the backscatter transmitter harvests energy from the received signals to support its internal operation functions, such as data sensing and processing. After that, under the instruction of the backscatter transmitter’s controller, the carrier signals are modulated and reflected by switching the antenna impedance with different backscatter rates … through the RF impedance switch ... [Page 2899, Sect. III, Part A]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of Liu-Han to include the features as taught by Nguyen above in order to provide low-cost, low-power, and large-scale wireless networks. (Nguyen, ¶ [Page 2899, Sect. III, Part A]).
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LIEM H NGUYEN whose telephone number is (408) 918-7636. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday, 8:00AM-4:30PM PT.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Noel Beharry can be reached on (571) 270-5630. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/LIEM H. NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2416
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