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 .
Claim Objections
Claim 18 is objected to because of the following informalities: Claim 18 ends with a “,” instead of a period. Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claim 11 is drawn a system, the examiner notes that the specification fails to provide a special definition that the control platform must be hardware and the claim itself based on context fails to limit the control platform to hardware. Software is not a physical article or object and as such is not a machine or manufacture. A software is not a combination of substances and therefore not a compilation of matter. Thus, software by itself does not fall within any of the four categories of invention. Therefore, claims 11-15, 17-20 are not statutory.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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, 2, 4, 5, 11, 12, 14, 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Malakuti et al (EP 3809216) in view of Schmitt et al (EP 3709227).
As per claim 1, Malakuti discloses a method of interaction of programs and devices using a control platform, the method contains the following stages: performing an initial connection of a client to a control platform, wherein the client is a device or software application (…the control unit is configured to control at least one of: the central conveyor line, the feeding line, and/or the manufacturing tool set…the control unit may comprise one or more controllers or processors and/or other types of computing devices…see par. 12); sending a primary message from the client to the control platform, wherein the primary message contains an information to create a digital twin (DT) (…retrieve an asset-information about the component and/or the manufacturing tool set…the asset-information about the component may be called a "Digital Twin Description" of this component…see par.7, 15); forming the client's DT on the control platform, wherein the DT contains at least information about the type of data processed by the client, message format generated by the client, and the current state of the client (…retrieve the asset-information of the component may comprise to get and/or to gather information on this component from one or more databases…this may include one or more transformation steps to transform the component's information and/or information parts into a format suitable for the control unit of the production line and/or of parts of the production line…the format of the component, which is suitable for the control unit, and/or the asset-information about the component may be called a "Digital Twin Description" of this component…see par. 15…examples for the model may comprise a functional model, e.g. describing electric properties and/or attributes, a CAD drawing, e.g. describing mechanical and/or geometric attributes, other kind of models, and/or a combination of them…the digital twins may be constructed, e.g., for soft assets, for composite assets, and further types…see par. 22-23); converting the messages in the form of structured data into a format accepted by the client (the transforming may include a format-transformation (e.g. from an output of a CAD-tool to an XML-based representation)…see par. 17); performing data processing using the DT when interacting with clients and DTs connected to the control platform to send information messages and/or commands (…to control the production line further comprises to process the component, by the manufacturing tool set, according to the asset-information (the asset-information about the component may be called a "Digital Twin Description" of this component…see par. 15), the processing-information and/or the manufacturing tool set information…see par. 21). Malakuti does not explicitly disclose synchronizing the states of the connected client and its DT on the control platform during the exchange of messages between clients of the control platform; performing extraction and enrichment of useful data received in messages from the client, wherein the useful data is presented in a structured form after being processed by the generated DT. However Schmitt discloses synchronizing the states of the connected client and its DT on the control platform during the exchange of messages between clients of the control platform (…other configuration is about synchronization of multiple models, for example, upon availability of both engineering and operational models of a device, the engineering parameters may be downloaded into the operational parameters to facilitate a plug and produce use case where device related data from different life cycles of the device can be instantaneously exchanged between engineering and operational models once they are plugged into the DTS…once their models become part of the collected models and the corresponding semantic relations are established they are immediately available for "production" (i.e., to be used to enable the interoperable data exchange between the respecting information systems)…the configuration module DTMC is further adapted to activate a synchronization mode for the digital twin to synchronize a data model associated with an information source associated with a first life cycle phase of the device with a data model associated with an information source associated with a second life cycle phase in that parameters of the first life cycle phase are loaded into parameters of the second life cycle phase…information sources and their corresponding model provider may be excluded/disappear from the system at any time, for example, when the device itself becomes defect and stops operating…different policies may be supported upon the disappearance of each model provider…policies can be defined by the referenced semantic and executed by the Plug and Collect process…see par. 53); performing extraction and enrichment of useful data received in messages from the client, wherein the useful data is presented in a structured form after being processed by the generated DT (…the relations between data models originating from different information systems having different formats are maintained in the semantic relations descriptions SRD of the DTS…the SRD is interpreted by Digital Twin Manager DTM to establish references among the various collected data models CM1…these references are automatically updated as data models are added to or removed from the digital twin…semantic relations between the one or more model element types of the added data model and model element types of pre-existing data models are then established in SRD (e.g., by receiving corresponding inputs from a user or by extracting the relations from a semantic dictionary of a suitable technical specification)…the semantic relations defined in SRD are used at runtime to connect model elements from different information sources along the life cycle of the device…the digital twin manager DTM may be configured by a digital twin manager configuration component DTMC…administrators may configure the digital twin to pull information from specific sources, or to only keep references to the original data instead of copying them inside the digital twin…the deployment of digital twins, which can be fully or partially on the cloud, edge or device…the DTMC may be adapted to select a deployment mode for the digital twin…the deployment mode can be selected for each data model in the collected data models for deployment to a cloud network, edge or device itself…the term edge is used herein in the meaning of edge computing which pushes applications, data and computing power (services) away from centralized points to locations closer to the user…if a digital twin contains a data model keeping the operational parameters of a device, a data model for engineering information and a data model for maintenance information, the first data model can be stored within the device itself, and only a reference to that is maintained inside the digital twin; the other data models and the digital twin can be stored, for example, in the cloud…see par. 51-52). Therefore one ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to use Schmitt in Malakuti for including the above limitations because one ordinary skill in the art would recognize it would further improve the interoperable data exchange between information systems connected to the network to exchange data associated with a particular physical device…see Schmitt, par. 6-7.
As per claim 11, Malakuti discloses a system of interaction between programs and devices using a control platform containing: at least one client, which is a device or software application, which is exchanging messages with the control platform (…the control unit is configured to control at least one of: the central conveyor line, the feeding line, and/or the manufacturing tool set…the control unit may comprise one or more controllers or processors and/or other types of computing devices…see par. 12); the control platform that is able to: exchange messages with at least one client (…retrieve an asset-information about the component and/or the manufacturing tool set…the asset-information about the component may be called a "Digital Twin Description" of this component…see par.7, 15); create a digital twin (DT) of clients connected to the platform, and the DT contains at least information about the type of data processed by the client, the format of messages generated by the client, and the current state of the client (…retrieve the asset-information of the component may comprise to get and/or to gather information on this component from one or more databases…this may include one or more transformation steps to transform the component's information and/or information parts into a format suitable for the control unit of the production line and/or of parts of the production line…the format of the component, which is suitable for the control unit, and/or the asset-information about the component may be called a "Digital Twin Description" of this component…see par. 15…examples for the model may comprise a functional model, e.g. describing electric properties and/or attributes, a CAD drawing, e.g. describing mechanical and/or geometric attributes, other kind of models, and/or a combination of them…the digital twins may be constructed, e.g., for soft assets, for composite assets, and further types…see par. 22-23); convert messages with structured data into a format accepted by the client (the transforming may include a format-transformation (e.g. from an output of a CAD-tool to an XML-based representation)…see par. 17); process data using the DT when interacting with clients and DTs connected to the control platform to send information messages and/or commands (…to control the production line further comprises to process the component, by the manufacturing tool set, according to the asset-information (the asset-information about the component may be called a "Digital Twin Description" of this component…see par. 15), the processing-information and/or the manufacturing tool set information…see par. 21). Malakuti does not explicitly disclose synchronize the states of connected clients and their corresponding DTs during messaging; extract and enrich useful data received in messages from the client, and the useful data is presented in a structured form after being processed by the generated DT. However Schmitt discloses synchronize the states of connected clients and their corresponding DTs during messaging (…other configuration is about synchronization of multiple models, for example, upon availability of both engineering and operational models of a device, the engineering parameters may be downloaded into the operational parameters to facilitate a plug and produce use case where device related data from different life cycles of the device can be instantaneously exchanged between engineering and operational models once they are plugged into the DTS…once their models become part of the collected models and the corresponding semantic relations are established they are immediately available for "production" (i.e., to be used to enable the interoperable data exchange between the respecting information systems)…the configuration module DTMC is further adapted to activate a synchronization mode for the digital twin to synchronize a data model associated with an information source associated with a first life cycle phase of the device with a data model associated with an information source associated with a second life cycle phase in that parameters of the first life cycle phase are loaded into parameters of the second life cycle phase…information sources and their corresponding model provider may be excluded/disappear from the system at any time, for example, when the device itself becomes defect and stops operating…different policies may be supported upon the disappearance of each model provider…policies can be defined by the referenced semantic and executed by the Plug and Collect process…see par. 53); extract and enrich useful data received in messages from the client, and the useful data is presented in a structured form after being processed by the generated DT (…the relations between data models originating from different information systems having different formats are maintained in the semantic relations descriptions SRD of the DTS…the SRD is interpreted by Digital Twin Manager DTM to establish references among the various collected data models CM1…these references are automatically updated as data models are added to or removed from the digital twin…semantic relations between the one or more model element types of the added data model and model element types of pre-existing data models are then established in SRD (e.g., by receiving corresponding inputs from a user or by extracting the relations from a semantic dictionary of a suitable technical specification)…the semantic relations defined in SRD are used at runtime to connect model elements from different information sources along the life cycle of the device…the digital twin manager DTM may be configured by a digital twin manager configuration component DTMC…administrators may configure the digital twin to pull information from specific sources, or to only keep references to the original data instead of copying them inside the digital twin…the deployment of digital twins, which can be fully or partially on the cloud, edge or device…the DTMC may be adapted to select a deployment mode for the digital twin…the deployment mode can be selected for each data model in the collected data models for deployment to a cloud network, edge or device itself…the term edge is used herein in the meaning of edge computing which pushes applications, data and computing power (services) away from centralized points to locations closer to the user…if a digital twin contains a data model keeping the operational parameters of a device, a data model for engineering information and a data model for maintenance information, the first data model can be stored within the device itself, and only a reference to that is maintained inside the digital twin; the other data models and the digital twin can be stored, for example, in the cloud…see par. 51-52). Therefore one ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to use Schmitt in Malakuti for including the above limitations because one ordinary skill in the art would recognize it would further improve the interoperable data exchange between information systems connected to the network to exchange data associated with a particular physical device…see Schmitt, par. 6-7.
As per claims 2, 12, the combination of Malakuti and Schmitt discloses wherein the DT is located on the client or on an external source and is transmitted to the control platform during the initial connection (Malakuti: see par. 7, 15).
As per claims 4, 14, the combination of Malakuti and Schmitt discloses wherein integrity verification mechanisms are additionally applied to the DT when it is transferred from the client to the control platform (Malakuti: see par. 21).
As per claims 5, 15, the combination of Malakuti and Schmitt discloses wherein the control platform checks the technical condition and/or relevance of the client software based on its DT, and DT provides software updates on the client when connected to the control platform (Malakuti: see par. 62).
Claims 3, 9, 13, 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Malakuti et al (EP 3809216) in view of Schmitt et al (EP 3709227) as applied to claims 1, 11 above, and in further view of Fischer et al (Pub. No. US 2018/0227277).
As per claims 3, 13, the combination of Malakuti and Schmitt does not explicitly disclose wherein the client and the platform perform mutual authentication, and the authentication process using symmetric and/or asymmetric cryptographic algorithms. However Fischer discloses wherein the client and the platform perform mutual authentication, and the authentication process using symmetric and/or asymmetric cryptographic algorithms (see par. 23-24). Therefore one ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to use Fischer in the combination of Malakuti and Schmitt for including the above limitations because one ordinary skill in the art would recognize it would further increase the security in the processing of data from a digital twin of a production object…see Fischer, par. 3-5.
As per claims 9, 19, the combination of Malakuti, Schmitt and Fischer discloses wherein the connected client and the control platform contain pre-installed encryption keys, which are used to authenticate clients on the control platform (Fischer: see par. 23-24).
Claims 6, 7, 8, 10, 16, 17, 18, 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Malakuti et al (EP 3809216) in view of Schmitt et al (EP 3709227) as applied to claims 1, 11 above, and in further view of Park et al (Pub. No. US 2019/0098113).
As per claims 6, 16, the combination of Malakuti and Schmitt does not explicitly disclose wherein the client is an Internet of Things (IoT) device. However Park discloses wherein the client is an Internet of Things (IoT) device (…web services platform collects data from information systems, internet of things (IoT) devices…IoT devices may include any of a variety of physical devices, sensors, actuators, electronics, vehicles, home appliances, and/or other items having network connectivity which enable IoT devices to communicate with web services platform…see par. 85, 87). Therefore one ordinary skill in the art would have found it obvious before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to use Park in the combination of Malakuti and Schmitt for including the above limitations because one ordinary skill in the art would recognize it would further enable the web services platform to collect data from different data sources…see Park, par. 83.
As per claims 7, 17, the combination of Malakuti, Schmitt and Park discloses wherein the control platform additionally provides delegating partial or full functionality to at least one connected client and transferring the DT to at least one other client for subsequent messaging, using one of the connected clients as a gateway (Park: see par. 121-123).
As per claims 8, 18, the combination of Malakuti, Schmitt and Park discloses wherein the control platform dynamically reassigning clients which are used as gateways when managing a group of clients (Park: see par. 125-126).
As per claims 10, 20, the combination of Malakuti, Schmitt and Park discloses wherein the data exchange from the connected client with the control platform is carried out using a binary protocol, and messages between the client and the control platform are transmitted in a structured or unstructured form (Park: see par. 126-127).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure (see PTO-form 892).
The following Patents and Papers are cited to further show the state of the art at the time of Applicant’s invention with respect to a control platform using digital twin technology (DT).
Pandian (Pub. No. US 2019/0102761); “Computerized Messaging Module for Blockchain Networks”;
-Teaches in the blockchain network, information exists as a shared and continually reconciled data structure (e.g., blocks or records), such as a database or distributed ledger used to store transactions and results of transactions between participants…see par. 18.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GHAZAL B SHEHNI whose telephone number is (571)270-7479. The examiner can normally be reached Mon-Fri 9am-5pm PCT.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Philip Chea can be reached at 5712723951. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/GHAZAL B SHEHNI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2499