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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of invention 1, claims 1-10 in the reply filed on 1-5-2026 is acknowledged.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 6-8-2023 is being considered by the examiner.
Drawings
The drawings are objected to because the examiner notes that the submission includes the international search report as part of the drawings following Fig. 11. Corrected drawing sheets in compliance with 37 CFR 1.121(d) are required in reply to the Office action to avoid abandonment of the application. Any amended replacement drawing sheet should include all of the figures appearing on the immediate prior version of the sheet, even if only one figure is being amended. The figure or figure number of an amended drawing should not be labeled as “amended.” If a drawing figure is to be canceled, the appropriate figure must be removed from the replacement sheet, and where necessary, the remaining figures must be renumbered and appropriate changes made to the brief description of the several views of the drawings for consistency. Additional replacement sheets may be necessary to show the renumbering of the remaining figures. Each drawing sheet submitted after the filing date of an application must be labeled in the top margin as either “Replacement Sheet” or “New Sheet” pursuant to 37 CFR 1.121(d). If the changes are not accepted by the examiner, the applicant will be notified and informed of any required corrective action in the next Office action. The objection to the drawings will not be held in abeyance.
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.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-10 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 applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
As per claims 1 and 10, the phrases “accumulation of measurements”, “accumulator” and “unitary cloud” makes the claim indefinite as it is unclear what these values actually are or what they are derived from. Further clarification is required.
Claims 2-9 are rejected as per their dependency on the claims above.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
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.
Claims 1-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
An invention is patent-eligible if it claims a “new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. However, the Supreme Court has long interpreted 35 U.S.C. § 101 to include implicit exceptions: “[l]aws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas” are not patentable. E.g., Alice Corp. v. CLS Banklnt’l, 573 U.S. 208, 216(2014).
In determining whether a claim falls within an excluded category, we are guided by the Supreme Court’s two-step framework, described in Mayo and Alice. Id. at 217—18 (citing Mayo Collaborative Servs. v. Prometheus Labs., Inc., 566 U.S. 66, 75—77 (2012)).
Step 1 – Statutory Category
Claims 1-10 are directed towards a series of mathematical steps and is therefore a process.
Step 2A, Prong One — Recitation of Judicial Exception
Step 2A of the 2019 Guidance is a two-prong inquiry. In Prong One, we evaluate whether the claim recites a judicial exception. For abstract ideas, Prong One represents a change as compared to prior guidance because we here determine whether the claim recites mathematical concepts, certain methods of organizing human activity, or mental processes.
Claims 1 and 10 are directed to a method of, and computer system for, signal processing that is accomplished through a series of mathematical operations performed by a computer and generic “units”. The claim(s) does/do not include additional elements that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception because all claim elements, both individually and in combination, are directed to the mathematical manipulation of data by a general purpose computer.
Step 2A, Prong Two — Practical Application
If a claim recites a judicial exception, in Prong Two we next determine whether the recited judicial exception is integrated into a practical application of that exception by: (a) identifying whether there are any additional elements recited in the claim beyond the judicial exception(s); and (b) evaluating those additional elements individually and in combination to determine whether they integrate the exception into a practical application.
Claims 2-9 disclose further mathematical processing steps. These additional steps are all extraneous pre-solution activity. Viewed as a whole, these additional claim elements do not provide meaningful limitations to transform the abstract idea into a patent eligible application of the abstract idea such that the claims amount to significantly more than the abstract idea itself.
Step 2B — Inventive Concept
For Step 2B of the analysis, we determine whether the claim adds a specific limitation beyond the judicial exception that is not “well-understood, routine, conventional” in the field. See Memorandum.
The method recited in claims 1-10 merely uses a computer system including generic components and “units” as a tool to perform the abstract idea. The application of the abstract idea using generic computer components does not transform the claim into a patent-eligible application of the abstract idea and does not result in an improvement in the functioning of the computer or another technology.
Examiner’s Note: For applicant’s benefit portions of the cited reference(s) have been cited to aid in the review of the rejection(s). While every attempt has been made to be thorough and consistent within the rejection it is noted that the PRIOR ART MUST BE CONSIDERED IN ITS ENTIRETY, INCLUDING DISCLOSURES THAT TEACH AWAY FROM THE CLAIMS. See MPEP 2141.02 VI.
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claim(s) 1 and 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Boles, U.S. Patent Number 4,723,124, published February 2, 1988 in view of Armstrong-Crews, et. al., U.S. Patent Application Publication Number 2022/0137227, published May 5, 2022.
As per claims 1 and 10, Boles discloses a method for generating an optimized 3D point cloud illustrating an elongate object (3), in particular a ship (33), from a sequence of images of the environment of the elongate object (3) generated by a synthetic aperture radar (2) provided with a plurality of paths, each of the images referred to as multipath generated by the synthetic aperture radar
comprising one synthetic aperture image per path, the multipath images being subjected to an interferometric processing allowing to obtain, for each multipath image, a sum path image and angular maps in azimuth and in elevation (Boles, Col. 2, lines 26-40),
characterised in that it comprises at least the following steps: - a thresholding step (E1) consisting in carrying out an adaptive thresholding so as to generate a segmentation mask for each of the sum path images referred to as sum path (Boles, Col. 7, lines 1-5 where data is rejected);
a processing step (E2) consisting in carrying out, for each of said segmentation masks, an accumulation of measurements so as to generate, for each of said segmentation masks, at least one accumulator (AC) and [[an]] one or more energy profiles profile (Boles, Col. 7, lines 6-20);
and a merging step (E5) consisting in merging the unitary clouds (Nk), so as to obtain said optimised 3D cloud (Boles, Fig. 5).
Boles fails to explicitly disclose using a segmentation mask and aligning and calibrating the data before merging.
Armstrong-Crews teaches generating segmentation masks and provides a filtering algorithm to align the segmentations (¶40).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to provide for segmentation and alignment in order to gain the benefit of ensuring point cloud points actually belong to the desired object as taught by Armstrong-Crews (¶23-24).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-9 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 as well as correction of outstanding rejections.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure and is provided on form PTO-892.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MARCUS E WINDRICH whose telephone number is (571)272-6417. The examiner can normally be reached M-F ~7-3:30.
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, Jack Keith can be reached at 5712726878. 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.
/MARCUS E WINDRICH/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3646